Join John Benson, Senior Director, Leadership Development for Skanska, and Scott Blanchard, Executive Vice President of The Ken Blanchard Companies for a live, online chat today at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time. Benson and Blanchard will be answering questions immediately after their webinar on Executive Development: Harnessing the Power of Action Learning Teams.
To participate in the online discussion, stop by www.leaderchat.org beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time.
Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat
If you have a question that you would like to ask John Benson or Scott Blanchard, just click on the COMMENTS link above. Then post your question and push SUBMIT COMMENT. John and Scott will answer as many questions as possible during the 30-minute online Q&A. (Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.)
If you can’t stay for the entire 30-minute chat, but would like to see all of the questions and responses, you can always stop by later. You can also click on the RSS FEED button in the right-hand column to receive updates automatically through email.
Thank you for a fantastic presentation. We recently started a leadership book club within our organization and I would greatly appreciate any great leadership book recommendations from the two of you (must reads).
must reads on leadership from Scott…..Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus- Leaders, Why Smart Executives Fail- Sydney Finkelstein and of course, The One Minute Manager…a great book to read ro reread!!
Thank you for the inspiring presentation. Could you estimate the resources required, both financially, dedicated bodies, and time required to manage the program from invitation through to graduation. Also, what infrastructure/format do you use for the virtual team assignments and do you actively manage those? Finally, what is the time commitment required of pariticipants and executive sponsors?
The participants, during the team assignment, spend approximately 60 to 80 hours of work on the team assignment. On the program side, there are a couple of us with Skanska and a couple of folks with Blanchard to are dedicated to making sure all of the moving parts, per se, are taken c/o in anticipation of.
Thank you for sharing the program details and value during the presentation. We’re currently scoping a similar program and happen to be engaging Ninth House also. The decision on what audience should be targeted during the initial execution is still undecided. What is Skanska doing to develop their Level 7 group?
I don’t happen to be work directly with the Level 7 group and their development, so I won’t be able to provide details…my scope of work and our Leadership Program is more closely related to Levels 6 and below. What I do know is that their development has been very heavily oriented towards working as a team (which they do very good job of, I’d like to note) and strategy.
Do your Level 6 go through a similar Development program as described today? What is the key outcome for the Level 6 development?
For levels 6 and 5, the company has a similar program, called Skanska’s Top Executive Program (STEP), hosted at IMD in Switzerland. The program is similar in that there are two separate group sessions, a team assignment and connecting of Senior Executives (globally). Key outcomes are connecting those management tiers across the business unit as well as providing them an opportunity to participate/influence the future strategic direction of the company (from a global perspective…across business units/borders).
must reads on leadership…..Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus- Leaders, Why Smart Executives Fail- Sydney Finkelstein and of course, The One Minute Manager…a great book to read ro reread!!
Here’s a question from the webinar–are participants given a lighter workload during the course of the program?
No. The workload does not lighten. Practically though, other participants (and the managers of), are well aware of the workload that a current participants is going through…we are now seeing quite a few comments from participants, in the program evaluations, that the participants’ managers/colleagues are assisting with the workload.
Another question from the webinar–in the follow-up coaching that took place, what were the types of questions participants asked their coaches?
In Coaching sessions, participants are free to discuss whatever they need to address. Often, the leanirng process triggers slight to significant shifts in the participants outlook on running their business and applying what they have learned. The great part of coaching is that the agenda and the focus is driven by the participant.
Do your senior leaders have any challenges with the word “coach”? If so, what did you do to reposition the word in the perceptions or do you refer to the coaching activity by another name?
Also from the webinar–Have their been any type of follow-up activities since participant’s graduated?
We have held an all-alumni webinar to follow-up on part of the education (eg – Sit Leadership II) as well as to provide updates to changes to the program. We are seeing quite a few team members re-unite at many of the local, or regional meetings/events. Next Spring we will have the first opportunity to have all alumni together at our first USA-wide management meeting. Our initial plan is to provide an alumni-only reunion/follow-up.
Thanks for your particpation today. We hope this session was useful to you and your work. also special thanks to John Benson for the time and effort in sharing the E2L story.
Please send any additional comments to webinars@kenblanchard.com
Thank you as well. It is an honor to represent a great group of people who worked on this project. Thank you to all of today’s webinar participants for your time, interest and questions. I am happy to answer any additional questions at john.benson@skanska.com.