CASE STUDY: API’s Future Leaders Program for MaxiTrans
Tailored Solutions for a Unique Management Environment
An organisations front-line leaders play a crucial role in bridging the gap between strategic goals and daily operations. Skilled frontline leaders transform complex organisation-wide change into simple everyday actions for their team, providing clarity, guidance, support, and accountability. MaxiTRANS, a leading manufacturer in the transport industry, recognized that a lack of capability in their front-line leadership team presented a significant risk to a multi-million-dollar organizational transformation project.
Ascent People Insights collaborated with MaxiTRANS to create their Future Leaders Program to provide front-line leaders with the foundational skills and experience required to support the organisation to achieve its strategic change goals.
Lead by Director, Jonathon Gamble (M. Psych. Org.), Ascent People Insights delivered a program of five targeted workshops that helped Future Leaders build real leadership skills in a hands-on learning environment.
Bridging the Gap to Transform Frontline Leaders
Knowledge and skill gaps are a common challenge for manufacturers such as MaxiTRANS. Team members are often promoted into leadership roles due to their technical skills and are provided with little training to develop a new skillset in leadership. This can lead to challenges with team culture, performance, and turnover as frontline leaders ‘stick to doing what they know’, remaining technically excellent while demonstrating a gap in their leadership skills.
The challenge of transitioning from individual contributor to people leader is well documented, with over 100 years of research from scholars such as Ram-Charan (2011), Maurer, and London (2018). Even for organisations who do provide leadership training, it can be challenging to cut through the noise of multiple theories and frameworks to identify a leadership model that fits their unique requirements and operating environment.
MaxiTrans recognized the need to enhance the skills and knowledge of their front-line leaders to support their organization-wide transition project. Partnering with Ascent People Insights, they engaged in a detailed process of discovery and consultation, working closely with their senior leaders to identify the key areas for development. Several high-potential evidence-based leadership frameworks were evaluated before Bass and Avolio’s (2011) Transformational Leadership Framework was selected to underpin the Future Leaders Program. This model of leadership was chosen for its proven impact in a manufacturing environment, and strong alignment with MaxiTRANS organisational needs.
Each of the five workshops included in the Future Leaders Program focused on a different aspect of leadership, with a focus on hand-on skill building tailored to the manufacturing environment. Topics covered included essential leadership areas, like effective communication, conflict management, feedback skills, and change management. This was delivered along with key leadership foundations including motivation, team dynamics, and personal development for new leaders.
Throughout the program, activities were designed to simulate challenges that leaders might face in their day-to-day practice as leaders. Challenges such as poor communication scenarios, and poorly managed change, were simulated to help participants understand the impact of these issues firsthand. This experiential learning approach ensured that participants could relate the workshop content to their everyday experiences, making the learning more impactful.
A key element of the program’s success was MaxiTrans’ contribution from senior leaders from across the organisation that acted as mentors to participants, playing a crucial role in bridging the gap between theory and practice. They shared their experiences, provided guidance, and helped translate the concepts discussed in the workshops into real-world applications on the manufacturing floor.
Lessons Learned & Recommendations
The Future Leaders Workshop was unique in its focus on frontline leaders in a manufacturing environment, a group that is often overlooked in leadership development programs. The program's success lay in its ability to combine contemporary research on best practices with practical approaches to leadership development tailored for the manufacturing context.
The workshop's success was measured through a continuous feedback loop with key stakeholders and formal evaluation. The combination of participant feedback, mentor evaluations, and HR observations provided a comprehensive view of the program's impact. This focus on both quantitative and qualitative data ensured a thorough assessment of the workshop's effectiveness.
Investing in the development of your organisations front-line leaders is an investment in the future growth and success of your business. Ascent People Insights highly qualified team of people-scientists can simplify the science of people leadership into tailored high-impact leadership programs that meet your unique needs.
