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June 24, 2011
Keywords:
leadership skills,
Talent Management
Plan, one of the largest international development charities in the World, reports continuing success with its management development programme, with more than 250 staff now having entered the programme. Crucially, in a recent survey, almost without exception graduates said the training had changed their behaviour. This success is a real testament to the learning and development team, which has responded to changing circumstances and demands, and refined and evaluated its offering. Read on to find out about the lessons learned along the way.
The organisation has nearly 8,000 employees and 60,000 volunteers. Most representatives work in the field, making a difference to the lives of more than 1.5 million children and their families.
Just over four years ago, Plan launched an innovative blended management development programme to improve the behaviours of managers, based around the globe, in developing countries. (see original story here) So has it done what it set out to achieve?
Overall, there has been improvement in all areas that were initially identified as being urgent for development need. However, Plan, like many organisations was mindful of the recession and, as a result of budget constraints, reduced the number of programmes that were run during 2009 and 2010. During this time the programme has been consistently reviewed and fine-tuned; some things have stayed the same but there have also been some refinements.
Plan gave itself a challenging and ambitious task of implementing an e-enabled course that would result in improved results and new behaviours. Graduates of the programme and the impact they have seen first-hand on projects they are delivering are a testimony to what can be achieved by adopting a holistic blended approach.
Download the case study below for more information about how they went about engaging with managers and learners and lessons learned along the way
Lessons learned
• Line manager engagement: don’t just expect it to happen, give your line managers the coaching skills they will need to make it work.
• Choose partners carefully: if you are offering a blended approach, you may need different partners to provide you with different elements of your mix.
• Practice, practice, practice: behaviour change does not happen overnight, allow learners time to develop new skills in the workplace and make any assignments relevant to day to day tasks.
• Blend the technologies: using a combination of learning materials, webinars and online forums adds interest as well as interactivity.
• Review and refine: don’t expect everything to be perfect from the outset, its ok to make changes to the programme.
• 360°feedback: it’s a really useful process to support and encourage behavioural change and it too can be e-enabled.
Find out how others are implementing technology to support leadership development in our new benchmark at www.towardsmaturity.org/leadership.
