Background:

A global pharmaceutical company seeking to change its organizational culture developed a set of core leadership behaviors. The six behaviors chosen by the high-level task force reflected a critical evolution in the beliefs and behaviors for the company as it accelerated its growth strategy. WLH’s long-term and in-depth involvement in this initiative illustrates the integration of many of our capabilities: diagnosis, planning, design, implementation and facilitation.

Approach and Deliverables

WLH collaborated with the Organizational Effectiveness function to craft categories and determined specific behaviorally-based items to reflect key values and strategic focus.  These competencies were turned into a web-based 360⁰ process with development planning guide that was rolled-out globally.

WLH created a Manager’s Toolkit to accelerate the practice of the Leader Behaviors which included:

  • Learning activities for leaders to use with their teams to improve leadership behaviors and performance; included easy, step-by-step guide for ease of facilitation and targeted learning.
  • Assessment checklists for line managers to quickly and accurately identify which of the Leader Behaviors they wanted to concentrate on developing with their teams in order to improve performance
  • Created and conducted a “Mastering Leader Behavior Development Workshop” which was used as the model to cascade the program to 50 countries

Results

  • The organization’s new Leader Behaviors became the foundation for all Leadership Development initiatives
  • Colleague engagement in the annual Individual Development Planning process increased from 50% to nearly 75% globally in less than 18 months
Author
Wendy L. Heckelman, Ph.D.

Dr. Wendy Heckelman, president and founder of WLH Consulting, Inc. has over 30 years of experience working with Fortune 100 industry clients. These include pharmaceutical, biotech, health care, animal health medicines, and consumer products, as well as international non-profit organizations and growing entrepreneurial companies.

Tags
LeadershipCase StudiesOrganizational CultureWLH Learning Solutions