Leading the Way Through the Economic Crisis

Effective leadership training can drastically improve performance, increase productivity and boost results. But, in an economic downturn, is it a necessary outlay or a frivolous expense? BM investigates.

“FranklinCovey has spent the last several years studying and working to define greatness. And specifically the key inputs to greatness, of which leadership is one essential element.”
-Bill Bennett, President of the Organizational Solutions Business at FranklinCovey

Many organizations are keen to increase the effectiveness of leadership in order to significantly improve productivity, customer and employee loyalty and increase their bottom line results. Bill Bennett, President of the Organizational Solutions Business at FranklinCovey believes that most companies want to be “great”. “FranklinCovey has spent the last several years studying and working to define greatness,” he says. “And specifically the key inputs to greatness, of which leadership is one essential element.”

Bennett goes on to explain that all of FranklinCovey’s solutions and processes are based on key universal principles that are then customized to the specific needs of their clients. “We find that leaders and organizations leave with something they can immediately apply and utilize continuously throughout their careers that is also memorable, inspiring and self-directing. A leader will walk away from their training knowing how to implement these principles and how to improve upon themselves as repeatedly as they face new opportunities and challenges.”

Objectives

Sue Dathe-Douglass, one of FranklinCovey’s Leadership Consultants who also teaches their leadership course, “Great Leaders, Great Teams, Great Results,” explains that the workshop is about the need for great leaders today to develop the mindset, skill set and tool set necessary to engage and unleash the highest talents and capabilities of people against the organization’s most important priorities,” she says.

So what does the workshop itself involve? Dathe-Douglass is keen to stress that the workshop can run in multiple ways, although it is usually held over three concurrent days. Many organizations find it more effective to break it into four-hour modules over an extended period of time. A typical timeline starts on day one by learning about the four imperatives of leadership: inspiring trust, clarifying purpose, aligning systems and unleashing talent. On the first afternoon clients address the first imperative, “This segment deals with how a client deals in getting things done – is it through personal influence and credibility, or simply because you are boss,” explains Dathe-Douglass.

The second morning looks at clarifying purpose under the basic premise that if a clear and compelling purpose exists, people will volunteer their best efforts. “In today’s workplace, whole person leadership demands that leaders help link what they do to a real purpose that the organization serves,” says Dathe-Douglass. “It’s all about engaging them to volunteer their very best versus establishing and enforcing rules.”

This is followed in the afternoon by imperative three, aligning systems. Day three starts with a focus on unleashing talent followed by the final afternoon concentrating on action planning.

Dathe-Douglass stresses that, “everything that they experience and work on in the workshop is designed to be replicated over and over again in order to deal with the change that they will encounter within their leadership role, whether it be two weeks or two years later. The expectation from the start is that everything they are learning and doing they can apply tomorrow, but even more importantly as new challenges come along, it equips them to take on anything and everything with confidence.”

Benefits

Richard Stocking, an Executive Vice President at Swift Transportation is just one of FranklinCovey’s clients who has walked away happy. As the largest truckload fleet in the US, Stocking recognized that tough times were ahead over the next few years and wanted to identify goals in operations, sales and safety arenas. “We really had to work on ourselves and react to the changing market,” says Stocking. And so he turned to FranklinCovey, but what did Stocking get out of the course? “The main benefit is that we are focused on our goals. We had goals in the past but we were all trying to reach them in a different way, and this course has unified our group. Clarity of purpose and trust has increased so much that we are able to work through our goals at a much more rapid rate.”

Tough times

There is no doubt that leadership training is an extremely effective tool, but, in the current financial situation, as budgets tighten and projects are slashed are companies still willing to spend on leadership training? Adam Merrill, FranklinCovey’s Director of Innovations, explains that despite the tough times he has seen clients that are even more committed to leadership because they recognize that it is the most important challenge that can be overcome. “We have to lead ourselves out of this situation and get people engaged in the most important areas,” says Merrill. “One of the tools we use examines a company’s economic model which assists them in taking the actions necessary to improve business results. You want everybody in the company thinking this way. You need to deal with the real business issues.”

Bennett agrees and compares what’s happening now to the economic downturn of 2001. “Then, we saw a wholesale decline in training and we were all adversely impacted. This time, however, there is more divergence. Although the economic news is worse, and we are finding that some companies cutting back, interestingly enough, a substantial portion are stepping up their leadership training investments to proactively sustain performance, both short and long-term.”

As a company that is in the midst of the economic crisis, Stocking is keen to highlight how fortunate he feels to have implemented the principles of the FranklinCovey leadership course at Swift Transportation. “Now that the economy is suffering, we have elevated ourselves to a certain degree. We have unleashed the talent of our people, which has been tremendously beneficial in these tough times. We have improved and aligned processes, which has cut a great deal of bureaucracy out of our system and sped it up, meaning we are able to do more with less. Bottom line, it’s all about effective leadership, and the ability to completely engage and unleash your talent. This investment pays huge dividends.”

Extra info…

Five key outcomes
The five key outcome of the FranklinCovey leadership program are:
1.     A vision of what it means to be a great leader and a renewed desire to get there.
2.    A radically new paradigm or mindset for leading in the knowledge worker age.
3.    A powerful framework for solving chronic leadership problems.
4.    A practical set of skills and tools that the leader can begin using right away.
5.    A specific process and database action plan to get them started and provide support.

Four core imperatives
1.    Inspire trust
2.    Clarify purpose
3.    Align systems
4.    Unleash talent

To find out more please visit www.franklincovey.com.