Creating Scalable Leadership Development at a Large Company
I wrote the final chapter of the book Maturing Leadership: How Adult Development Impacts Leadership edited by Jonathan Reams. Targeted for readers of leadership science, the book contains many of the latest theories on leadership and adult development. My chapter was a tangible example of how these leading theories can be applied in a demanding business environment to enhance leaders’ effectiveness at scale. The chapter describes the executive development programs I designed for a very large organization with more than 500,000 employees. It includes an overview of program mechanics, effectiveness metrics, design principles, and lessons learned. This kind of program has since been expanded to non-executive audiences and was eventually approved for rollout to all people leaders in the organization at all levels--about 50,000 people.
Note: the programs in this book chapter used old design principles from 2016. The new approach created in 2023 is based on the concept of microexperiences which formally integrates vertical development, horizontal development, the science of habit formation, an upgraded process built on the 5 drivers of transformational growth, and many lessons learned from 30 years of developing people, teams, organizations.