Driving Culture Change Through Inclusive Leadership Development
The Client Need
A $600 million U.S. oil and gas company needed to build a learning culture that empowered leaders to foster an inclusive work environment. While the company had a robust learning and development strategy, they recognized an opportunity to invest in critical education initiatives that upskilled management on how to recruit and retain employees in today’s competitive market. Given nearly 40% of candidates say they have chosen not to pursue a job because of perceived lack of inclusion, the executive team was looking for an innovative approach to accelerate their leaders’ inclusive leadership skills.
The company embarked on a two year learning journey with ModelExpand, deploying a multimodal education campaign that combined research backed strategies with real-world case studies. The Inclusive Culture Series taught leaders core competencies and behaviors while connecting it to the business-critical themes of strategic thinking and innovation. As the leaders worked to develop a framework for modeling inclusion, they also established tangible and actionable strategies that enabled the efforts of all their team members, regardless of their backgrounds, to fully contribute to the company’s mission and goals.
The Solution
The development journey was spread across several multimodal learning paths. The audience was all team members, with an emphasis on people managers and leaders.
Company All Hands
ModelExpand delivered an enterprise-wide workshop to engage the company’s workforce on important discussions around diversity and inclusion. The goal was to inspire excitement for the work that the DEI committee was rolling out throughout the year, and provide them with the learnings they needed to positively contribute to an inclusive hybrid environment.
On-demand learning module for leaders
In preparation for the live inclusive leadership session, managers were provided the option to take abridged, on-demand learning modules to level up their skillset. The six modules covered topics ranging from microaggressions to inclusion in a hybrid world. This customized experience included various knowledge checks to ensure participants were retaining the information, and provided the flexibility for participants to self-pace their learning journey.
ModelExpand implemented several techniques to not only encourage participation, but also the application of educational content. Gamification techniques were used to encourage friendly competition between departments, and messaging was cascaded down from executives to department leaders and managers.
To generate behavioral change, leaders were encouraged to share learnings with their teams and incorporate the completion of the DEI learning path as part of their leader learning goals and performance review process.
Live Inclusive Leader Training
In the next phase of the learning journey, ModelExpand facilitated an hour-long workshop that inspired leaders to evolve the company culture. Participants started by unpacking why inclusive leadership was important for their ability to compete in a market with diverse consumers, clients, and talent. They were then educated on key elements of allyship they could build into their daily dynamics, learning critical skills to create a psychologically safe work culture. The live, virtual experience included three rounds of case studies, which enabled participants to practice applying “in-the-moment” inclusive leadership skills in small groups with peer and expert feedback.
To reinforce behavioral change resulting from the sessions, participating leaders committed to simple actions that would facilitate accountability and the implementation of their learnings to their teams. Facilitators also provided supplemental resources, ensuring leaders had the support necessary to continue their learning journey after the session ended.
Results
Providing multimodal learning paths proved to be quite fruitful for the company’s goal of building an inclusive culture. Combining on-demand modules with live virtual workshops accommodated for a variety of learning styles, affording learners the opportunity to digest the information in the way they could best receive it.
“I really enjoyed this session. The real world situations that were discussed in the breakout groups provided great examples of how to practice allyship.”
By the end of 2022, over 200 managers had been trained via the live virtual session, an increase over the 150 who had been trained the year before. With 100% of respondents reporting that they understood why inclusive leadership was important, and nearly 90% of managers recommending the training, the results represented a steady increase in leaders’ comfort with, and their ability to, apply the core concepts.
The impact of the on-demand learning journeys was greater than just on managers, but company-wide as well; the Inclusion Hybrid workshop at the All Hands meeting was attended by most of the organization. Much of the feedback centered on the applicability of the scenarios and the appreciation of peer learning. In fact, one participant remarked, “I really enjoyed this session. The real-world situations that were discussed in the breakout groups provided great examples of how to practice allyship.”
Taken together, the results indicate that people leaders and individual contributors alike were able to gain the foundational skills necessary to embed everyday, micro-level inclusion strategies into their toolkit, the benefits of which will inevitably lead to enterprise-wide impact.
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