About the Client
Founded in 1974, the Eakin Healthcare Group has grown from a family-run business to a world-leading conglomerate of medical equipment. They have a successful track record as a medical device manufacturer of high quality skin protection and ancillary products for use in ostomy, would care and single use surgical instruments.
The Business Need
We identified a need for succession planning at executive and senior leadership levels. Key individuals were looking to retire and without succession plans in place; we wanted to identify Eakin’s future leaders and ensure they had the capacity to take the business forward whilst maintaining the family values Eakin is rooted in.
A solution focusing on strategic leadership development was paramount to ensure Eakin’s organisational sustainability:
Nurturing development of organisational values in future leaders.
Increasing Eakin’s organisational agility, opening up capability in the employees.
Attracting and retaining talent
Developing future leaders for future strategic direction
The Solution
We took a collaborative approach to the design of the programme, partnering with the sponsor to determine the key skills a future Eakin leader would need to deliver the business strategy.
A holistic development programme named “Leadership Development Inspiring Excellence” was designed for 14 leaders throughout the organisation. The content was structured around 5 modules:
Module 1: Leading with Purpose,
Module 2: Leading Hearts and Minds,
Module 3: Leading High Performance Teams,
Module 4: Leading for Results,
Module 5: Leading the Organisation.
The programme content was delivered using several methods including face to face and virtual workshops, 1-2-1 coaching session, Action Learning Groups and self-directed learning supported by access to a Learning Management System.
Various assessment tools were used throughout the programme to identify strength, potential and development areas – as well as benchmark and track progress:
Korn Ferry 360 Feedback Survey – it was launched prior to Module 1 and after Module 5 in order to reflect individual’s development progress before and after the programme
MBTI Personality Instrument – it was launched prior to Module 2 for the leaders to better understand self and others
Advantycs®: The Dynamics of High Performing Teams Diagnostic – it was launched prior to Module 3 to assess the teams’ dynamics in its Reason, Result, Routine, Relationship and Resilience. To track the team’s progress, a 2nd Diagnostic was launched after Module 5
Korn Ferry Assess: Potential– it was launched prior to Module 3 to provide insight into individual leader’s potential to success at higher levels of leadership.
The data-driven insights gained from the tools, as well as quantitative and qualitative feedback from both participants and the programme sponsor, enabled us to further adapt the content to suit or clients needs. What resulted was a highly bespoke, research-backed and impactful programme.
The Results
Overall, the LDIE was an inclusive and engaging leadership development initiative that addressed key development gaps as well as gaps within succession planning. Of the 14 participants, 11 have been promoted resulting in a 79% promotion rate – 2 being promoted to board level.
From the feedback collected after each module, on average out of 5, the leaders rated:
4.8 for workshop content in terms of how educational the content was, how practical the content was, its level of challenge to individual personally and how relevant the subject matter was.
4.62 for the level of impact the workshop has had in terms of their development objectives and how they can be effective at work.
4.73 for the performance of the workshop facilitator in terms of how enjoyable the facilitator made the programme, the ability of the facilitator to help them understand the content, the facilitators’ delivery style and the trustworthiness/ approachability of the facilitator.
From the Advantycs® Diagnostics, the leadership team improved in all dynamics of high performing teams in 6 months time as a result of participating in the programme . Diagram illustrates the improvement.
From the Korn Ferry 360 Group Competency Report, the key strengths of the group such as Communicates Effectively, Collaborated, Being Resilient and Instils Trust were improved by 25%. The attributes of Strategic Mindset and Decision Quality, key attributes for an Eakin leader as outlined by our key sponsor, were moved to become “Team Strengths”.
Eakin will continue to develop this group after the formalised programme is finished. At their graduation, the participants will present to the board where they see their opportunities for leadership are going forward and how they want to get involved. This current cohort will serve as mentors for the next cohort, which is in the planning phase.
