The best way to understand the work we do and the way we do it is to speak to some of our clients and we would be pleased to organise this for you. The next best option is to read the sample client stories that follow:
A People Leadership Program for Middle Managers in a Leading Technology Firm
A leader in the IT sector, this Company engaged totus to develop a leadership program for its potential and current middle management leaders.
Branded as CAMP – The Capable People Manager Program incorporated the following design considerations:
We started this program with a formal interview of each participant to get them to understand the philosophy of the program and also to test for their readiness to participate.
We prepared the Supervising Manager through a two day workshop that covered both the contents of the program as well as the role of the manager in the program.
The classroom sessions covered the basic modules such as personal effectiveness, team leadership, securing performance and developing people.
Each participant was expected to take on at least four mini projects and one major project which ensured that the inputs were converted into application.
To help individual learning each participant also drew up a personal development plan (PDP), based on a 360 degree feedback process. Progress in the PDP and the application was ensured through a rigorous one-on-one review process.
totus has run two offerings already. The program fits well with the business needs of the organisation. Through the use of blended learning methods the program is both contemporary and addresses the current personal learning needs of the participants.
A Frontline Leadership Development Program for a multi-national Insurance Company
The Client was an Insurance major that had grown tremendously over the last few years across the globe – largely through acquisitions and mergers. This posed the problem of diversity and lack of a common talent development platform for the organisation. To address this, it was decided to launch a common leadership program that would help managers in different geographies imbibe the same values, skills and competencies. It was in this context that totus consulting was invited to design and launch the frontline leadership development program.
The design of the program had to address one key challenge – given that the participants were spread across several geographies, we needed to ensure that face time was optimized without compromising effectiveness. Therefore the program incorporated the following elements: such as pre-work, involvement of the Supervising Manager, a detailed participant kit, focus on application and a facilitator guide.
This frontline leadership program has been acknowledged by the leaders in the organisation as one of the most powerful learning initiatives launched. We have already completed 8 offerings covering 200 managers in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
A Comprehensive Management Development Initiative for the Delivery Team of a large Technology Service Provider
This was a comprehensive leadership development initiative for project managers and senior project managers in the delivery units of one of India’s largest technology firms.
Some of the salient design elements were
Creating a common platform for leadership development in an organisation with 6 different business verticals.
Customisation to meet differing individual learning needs.
We started by creating a capability framework for the organisation. This framework also incorporated the different needs of each business based on aspects such as stability of business, maturity of customers and the external market forces.
Once the competency framework was communicated across the organisation, we helped the participants assess themselves against the competency framework to identify learning needs. The assessment was done using assessment centres, 360 degree feedback and behavioural interviewing.
Based on individual feedback, each participant then drew up a Personal Development Plan with the support of the supervising manager.
The program was based on “Blended Learning” incorporating class room sessions, learning labs, project work and group work.
Over 8 months of learning and guided practice each participant made significant change in one or two areas.
Our engagement helped cover over 100 participants through this program.
Creating a culture of coaching in the organization
We were invited by a large international BPO Organization, having a significant presence in India, to partner with them on improving their Managers’ skills to give performance feedback. Having interviewed many employees, we went back to the organization and submitted that the real issue was around the lack of a coaching orientation among Managers.
The organization thought it over and decided to work on building a coaching culture in the organization. totus was retained for this purpose.
The engagement was run in two sections. One of the initiatives focused on the Managers and worked with the model of Manager as Coach (a totus proprietary model). The other initiative focused on the Supervisors/Team Leads and dealt with imparting Coaching Skills to them.
The Manager as Coach Workshop sensitized managers to their dual responsibilities of managing task and leading people. The crux of the program was that while it is important to set goals, review progress and evaluate performance, it is equally important to focus on supporting the employee to succeed and developing the employee.
The Coaching Skills Workshop covered elements of “a coaching approach”, importance of coaching and certain key skills of coaching.
The workshop covered close to 200 employees in the organization and helped many managers have better quality conversations with their employees.
Evaluating the effectiveness of leader development program
A very large conglomerate with diversified business interests had been running a leader development initiative for over eight years. This leader development initiative was very central to its strategic intent of building a leadership pipeline.
The group invited totus to evaluate the effectiveness of this program and recommend the way forward for the next version.
Given the long history of the Organisation and its demonstrated ability to groom leaders from within, totus dwelled deep to uncover the formula that had helped groom its leaders from within. In addition, totus also used its own leader development framework to use as a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the program.
What was unique about our work was that we separated the issues and recommendations into governing variables, action strategies, adopting Chris Argyris’ Double Loop Learning model.
Our recommendations around the governing variable were structural whereas our recommendations around the action strategy were most tactical.
The group has accepted most of our recommendations and implemented them in the next version of the program that has been rolled out. The group’s responsiveness and the leaders feedback through this action research project has been highly appreciated.
Developing Leaders and helping them demonstrate a more contemporary approach to leadership
One of India’s foremost private sector companies wanted to develop a program that would help its managers demonstrate a much more contemporary approach to leadership and people managers. This need emanated from the fact that the group’s workforce profile was changing with a younger generation of employees entering the workplace. Simultaneously, external career opportunities had also increased over the years making it necessary for managers to have a much stronger talent, mindset and a much more contemporary leadership style that would help attract, develop and retain employees in a competitive environment.
totus worked with the HR leadership team of the Organisation to conceptualise and design a 3 day workshop titled Manager as Leader and Coach for its senior level management team across business divisions. The design consisted of significant pre-program work including a 360 Degree Feedback Process. The workshop itself included several opportunities for enhancing self awareness using a variety of tools including our proprietary Manager as Coach model. This feedback intensive program makes it a very rich developmental experience.
In addition to rating the program very well, many of the leaders who attended the program have begun to forward ways of cascading their coaching culture within their own business division in addition to finding ways to demonstrate the coaching oriented style of management with their own team members.
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