Developing Inclusive Leaders At A Global FTSE 100 Consumer Goods Company

YSC Consulting partnered with a global FTSE 100 consumer goods company to help them reboot their leadership.

The client recognized that their culture was too skewed towards results and ‘speed over perfection’ at the cost of truly enabling leadership, creativity, strategic thinking, team spirit and personal growth.

They wanted to shape an intervention for their top 400 leaders that would challenge current assumptions about their leadership and culture, and would create space for reflection and an opportunity to connect with, share and learn together with peers. They wanted their leaders to be more self-sufficient, take responsibility for the longer term success of their business, prioritize and make decisions, and challenge the executive team.

They wanted an intervention that would help the top 400 leaders to be more engaging, more inclusive leaders and to help shape the culture and the future of the business.

YSC partnered with the client to co-create a leadership development program for the top 400 leaders globally. We worked closely and iteratively with the Human Resources Director (HRD), Global Head of Talent and the Head of Leadership & Development to co-create a program that would help leaders reflect on their personality, needs and aspirations and create and leverage their leadership story to engage the business. The program comprised of a 360 survey and psychometric instruments to help deepen self-awareness, a two-day experiential workshop with some pre-work in advance, and four individual coaching sessions with a YSC coach after the workshop to embed learning and commitment to their development.

The workshop focused on understanding the the following elements of leadership:

• Why, their sense of purpose and meaning.
• How, their leadership brand.
• What, the impact they wanted to have on the business.

It also included a core experiential session on inclusive leadership. The program was co-delivered by YSC and the key client stakeholders globally and is still ongoing with approximately seven global programs per year with twelve participants each.

More than 150 of the top 400 leaders have now been or are going through this program, with 80 -100 more planned to participate in 2018.

The astute insights that this program helped generate on the client’s culture and leadership were shared with the CEO and HRD and helped inform the refresh of their values that were recently relaunched to help shape the future leadership of the business after a large acquisition and restructure.

The feedback from participants has been positive and the demand for more programs is a testament to their impact. Participants report increased self-awareness, a greater sense of choice in their behavior and more ownership of their leadership impact. The program has also been successful in creating informal networks among a population of leaders that were dispersed and rather isolated before.