• Stellantis (formerly known as Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles): 2022, 2021, 2020
• Cognizant: 2022
• Merck: 2019

Stellantis & CCL Win Awards for 3 Consecutive Years in Women’s Leadership

Stellantis and CCL received a Brandon Hall Silver Award in both 2022 and 2021, as well as a Bronze Award in 2020, for excellence in the category of “Best Advance in Leadership Development for Women.”

The Stellantis Women’s Leadership Experience (WLE), developed in partnership with CCL, is a unique training and development program for women, focused on early- to mid-level career professionals. Now in its fourth year, WLE was spearheaded by members of the Women’s Alliance business resource group.

Women’s Alliance is one of 10 employee-directed business resource groups at the company that work to bridge multicultural differences and to support career opportunities for members.

“The result was an 8-month program offering participants a mix of experiences, including executive coaching, executive sponsors (both men and women), 360 surveys, and customized leadership training opportunities,” said Teresa Thiele, Director of Mopar Purchasing and Supplier Operations and co-chair of the Women’s Alliance Board and WLE Committee, FCA-North America. “This robust program was designed to enrich participant perspectives of the business, connection to senior leaders, and enhance their individual leadership toolkit.”

Cognizant & CCL Win Gold for Women’s Leadership Program

Cognizant, a leading business and technology consultancy serving many Global 2000 clients, won a 2022 Brandon Hall Gold Award in the category “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” for its signature women’s leadership development program, Propel.

Cognizant has been focused on supporting gender diversity and levelling the playing field for women in tech careers around the world. The company has made significant progress in setting and committing to gender goals that invest in women through training, mentorship, and professional development.

Part of that commitment is its Propel women’s leadership development program, developed in partnership with CCL. Over 1000 mid- and senior-level women leaders across the globe been through the program to date, and Cognizant continues to have a vision of accelerating a diverse pipeline and strengthening the proportion and voice of women in senior leadership roles.

The 3-month women’s leadership development experience includes sessions with CCL faculty on amplifying your leadership brand, enhancing your executive presence, expanding strategic networks, and accessing mentoring support. Peer networking and community-building are an important component of Propel, too. Program outcomes include increased promotions, expanded responsibilities, and new roles taken on by women leaders who have completed the program.

Merck & CCL Partnership for DEI / EDI Wins Gold Award

Merck, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, partnered with CCL to develop its Diverse Leadership Program (DLP), which a received a Brandon Hall Gold Award for excellence in 2019.

Merck’s leadership program, also developed in partnership with CCL, is aimed at preparing their high-potential African-American, Hispanic / Latino, and Asian American leaders for senior leadership positions. It’s also designed to help prospective senior leaders of color develop stronger networks inside the company to build a culture of inclusion.

Merck is strongly committed to diversity and inclusion in all aspects of its global business and considers diversity in management, both from a gender and racial / ethnic perspective, a key performance indicator.

We are proud to partner with these clients on award-winning programs that are contributing to the important work of elevating and supporting women leaders and promoting increased equity, diversity, and inclusion in workplaces around the world.

These 3 client partnerships are among the many awards and accolades that CCL has received from The Brandon Hall Group and others in recent years.

The post CCL’s Work to Elevate EDI & Women’s Leadership Earns Multiple Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards appeared first on CCL.

Privately held Crowley Maritime is focused on logistics and shipping, energy, and other competitive sectors. The company has thousands of employees who maintain a fleet of more than 200 vessels and operate terminals, warehouses, tank farms, office buildings, trucks, cranes, and other specialized vehicles.

Crowley runs a leadership development program for high-potential mid-level leaders who are new to managing others, aren’t in formal leadership roles but are managing project teams, or who are preparing for the next step in their careers. The program includes assessment, a leadership learning program, a group meeting in El Salvador, and developing solutions to address real company challenges.

It is competitive, with 120 applicants from all Crowley business units and locations vying for 24 spots.

“With such a diverse group from multiple time zones and different countries, we wanted to steer away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to leadership development,” says Gloriana Garro, Director of People Development & Learning at Crowley.

The firm wanted to tailor the program to individual needs, help participants strengthen their soft skills, and develop the foundational competencies required to lead others. The company also wanted to improve collaboration and networking between participants.

And the experience needed to work for participants from multiple time zones and different countries.

Solution & Results

We suggested Crowley add our Frontline Leader Impact virtual experience to its leadership development initiative. Frontline Leader Impact content and flexibility allow it to be shaped for the needs of the organization using it. Because it’s 100% digital, it’s ideal for a cohort spread across the hemisphere.

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The course provides 18 hours of learning over 6 weeks focused on key leadership competencies: self-awareness, learning agility, communication, political savvy, influencing outcomes, and motivating others. It also includes weekly team discussions to help participants absorb the content, collaborate, and support each other as they tackle issues.

“The virtual experience was the best solution for our needs. The group made it fun, allowed them to interact more often, support each other, and develop key leadership competencies,” Garro says.

Because the platform is digital and asynchronous, participants who weren’t as confident in their English fluency could take extra time to respond. The program also uses an incentive — Impact Points — that measures how often people comment, contribute, or otherwise engage in the virtual course environment. The points allow us to assess how engaged participants are; we found that for some especially competitive participants, they also provided motivation.

A CCL course moderator coordinates the program, providing teams and individuals additional support. The leadership experience also included 2 elements to amplify the power of Frontline Leader Impact.

• A Leadership Growth Plan. Participants, with guidance from the course moderator, build a leadership development plan to help them continue growing even after the course is over.
• A Key Leadership Challenge. Participants identify a real leadership challenge they’re facing and develop a plan to solve it while integrating what they’re learning about key leadership competencies. For Crowley, the leadership challenges included building bench strength and making strategic hires, developing a strategy for rolling out a new system, and empowering a team to perform higher-order tasks independently.

In the end, the company gained a new cohort of leaders grounded in leadership fundamentals, equipped with a strong cross-company network, and prepared to deliver results that matter for Crowley.

Program Impact

Lessons Learned

• Out of the box doesn’t equal “check the box”: Online solutions can be tailored to individual needs to be made highly effective and, as a result, deliver more value.
• Less is more — be the choice architect for your learners: Provide a curated set of lessons over a limited period of time with intentional cadence. This delivers results and designs an efficient path for a leader to grow.
• Leverage human expertise wisely: The program leverages videos of recorded experts teaching content, with a CCL guide helping each learner apply the lessons to their work. The guide doesn’t have to repeat the same information over and over, but rather focuses individuals to grow, solve leadership challenges, and deliver results for their business.

The post Developing High-Potential Talent With Virtual Leadership Training appeared first on CCL.

Based on operational performance and financial results, Copa Airlines is one of the world’s best-performing airlines. But Copa leaders aren’t resting on their laurels.

Copa serves a large market, the Americas, where air travel is projected to grow faster than the global average. Not only has the company grown rapidly for nearly 2 decades, but in recent years, its workforce has shifted to a younger demographic. Employee engagement at Copa is generally high. However, one of its 2 culture-based KPIs — Copa’s Leadership Index — wasn’t at optimal levels.

In response, the airline spent 15 months assessing whether its formal leadership behaviors, established more than a decade earlier, were still valid and as effective as they could be. Copa’s Learning & Development department and Corporate Communications team conducted more than 50 focus groups with employees across all functions and at all organizational levels. They asked employees what behaviors they wanted and expected from leaders. After a deep analysis of that input, Copa established 5 new leadership behaviors.

Leaders should:

• Inspire with their work, friendliness, and positivism;
• Live the company’s values, and be a role model at all times;
• Listen and communicate frequently and respectfully;
• Know their people and care about their wellbeing; and
• Guide, develop, and recognize their teams.

Historically, Copa’s leaders have focused on business goals. Now the airline’s leaders would be asked to better connect with the people they lead, helping the airline continue its strong performance. Copa needed a partner to help implement training that would allow these new leadership attributes to take flight.

Solution & Results

As Copa Airlines started to look at potential partners, it encountered its first obstacle: consultants who wanted to redo Copa’s research and analysis. “Most consultants would want to start with the company strategy, and then they would want to walk us through the entire journey,” says Dominik Rus, Corporate Learning & Development director. “CCL instead acknowledged the analyses we had done and said, ‘You guys did the heavy lifting. Let’s not redo that.’”

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We saw the opportunity for a high return on training time by focusing on developing 2 vital skills: active listening and providing feedback. Those 2 skills would cover about 80% of the desired new leadership behaviors. We partnered with Copa and developed a scalable solution: a half-day workshop on giving effective feedback on positive and negative behaviors, based on our Situation – Behavior – Impact (SBI) feedback method. Leaders also received training in active listening, learning to concentrate on what’s being said, fully understand it, respond, and remember. This deeper listening involves understanding facts plus emotions and values, helping leaders better navigate critical conversations.

The first training session included Copa’s CEO direct reports, and some vice presidents. By starting with the senior leadership team and scaling to the rest of the organization, Copa ensured the training would take off within the company’s culture. Training sessions were conducted in Spanish and English, making them accessible to Copa’s diverse, multilingual, multinational workforce.

Though we led some initial workshops, a linchpin of the Copa engagement was helping the airline own the process so it could teach and sustain the new leadership skills. CCL trained more than 20 vice presidents and directors from across the airline to deliver the solution. This train-the-trainer and licensing approach allowed Copa to provide the training to more than 1,000 leaders in less than a year. The fact that most internal trainers were from various functional units — not only Learning & Development — further fueled Copa’s efforts to elevate the new leadership attributes.

Company leaders are confident the leadership index will continue to rise. “Before, it was all about efficiencies, operational excellence, and profit margins,” Dominik says. Those are still top priorities at Copa, but a new focus has been added: “It’s about people and people and people.”

The post Helping Leaders Form Deeper Connections by Building Active Listening & Feedback Skills appeared first on CCL.

CCL received a Silver excellence award for their partnership with Noblis, a nonprofit science, technology, and strategy organization, to develop and execute a personalized leadership development experience for highly dispersed leaders working remotely. While many of these new or up-and-coming young leaders were well-versed in technical requirements, they needed further development of their foundational and soft skills. Each leader developed 6 key skills critical to success at their level. Core to this work was CCL’s Frontline Leader Impact program, a 6-week, fully digital learning experience.

“Receiving this award means a great deal to our team and really validates the hard work we do to make professional development one of our greatest employee benefits,” says Amy Rivera, director of OD/PD for Noblis. “Our partner, CCL, was open to working with us toward a quality program combining both our organizations’ insights, ideas, and knowledge.”

Crowley Maritime, a marine solutions, transportation, and logistics company, and CCL received a second Silver excellence award for their Developing Empowered and Innovative Leaders Using Human-Supported Digital Learning program. Also in conjunction with the FLI program, this initiative provided a leadership development solution for Crowley’s mid-level leaders, who were new to managing others and preparing for the next step in their careers.

“The CCL course reaffirmed that I’m aware of my strengths and weaknesses, and that we all have opportunities for growth,” says program participant Trevor Carbaugh. “We all come from different backgrounds and experiences in life, and it’s beneficial to understand that as we attempt to direct, align, and seek commitment. I enjoyed the 6-week course and downloaded a lot of weekly takeaways from the sessions.”

Because of the flexibility of CCL’s FLI program, geographically dispersed participants could interact and share learnings.

Read Crowley’s full case study.

“Organizations of every shape and size submitted entries for Excellence Awards, each with a unique program that matches their culture,” says Rachel Cooke, Brandon Hall Group’s chief operating officer. “In judging the entries, our panel identified the very best programs and practices that every company should follow.”

The award entries were evaluated by a panel of independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall analysts, and executives. Winners will be recognized at Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Excellence Conference in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 5, 2020.

“It’s truly a privilege to partner with Crowley and Noblis on leadership solutions that drive performance,” says CCL President and CEO John R. Ryan. “This recognition from Brandon Hall Group confirms the innovative nature of these partnerships, and we are grateful for the opportunity to work together.”

The post 2 CCL Virtual Leadership Programs Win Prestigious Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards appeared first on CCL.