British Telecommunications plc
‘Inspirational Leadership Programme’
BT is a global communications services company; one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services. Its principal activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher value broadband and internet products and services. It operates in more than 170 countries
As one of the UK’s leading innovators in the commercial sector, BT has an enviable track record of bringing new technologies to market, but its aspirations are for even greater achievements in this area. BT needs to continuously adapt to radical new and innovative ways of working if it is going to move from being a telco company to becoming a 21st century software-driven services organisation.
As part of the BT Leadership development pathway, BT Group identified the need equip up to 10,000 front line leaders (UK & Global) with the capabilities & confidence to drive BT’s transformation through inspzirational leadership. This requires a change of leadership style.
Following the request for submissions from 12 training suppliers, Leornian Consulting was chosen as BT’s preferred supplier for this long-term leadership development investment based on the quality of our design & delivery proposal, the reputation of our leadership work and BT’s desire to work in partnership with a credible external provider.
A programme entitled ‘Inspirational Leadership’ was developed and is being delivered as a 6-month programme; comprising of pre-work, a 2- day workshop and 6 months of Action Learning, with a BT senior manager as a group Mentor - a methodology which is helping to embed the learning in a pragmatic and sustainable way.
Leornian developed a Pan BT Inspirational Leadership Programme to meet the following objectives:
To develop leaders:
- With high levels of self-awareness who understand their personal impact on others & on results
- Whose behaviour & actions are driven by a clear understanding of customer (internal & external) and business needs despite internal barriers
- Who have the confidence to make decisions that are right for the business
- Who have the ability to accelerate and execute innovation and change by engaging & inspiring BT people in a straightforward way.
- Who can work across boundaries in a collaborative manner to achieve results for BT
- Who coach others and provide feedback to excel & create a high performing culture
- With personal presence who can articulate and arouse enthusiasm for a personal & shared vision for BT
Testimonial
Kim Stanbrook from Leadership Development Excellence, BT Group comments “I have been working with Leornian for over six months now on one of our core leadership programmes. They are a pleasure to work with, very responsive and professional and always keen to provide the support we need to ensure the programme continues to be successful.”
Leornian is delivering Inspirational Leadership in the US & Europe. Khatia Paulmier, (Senior Consultant) Leadership & Talent Development, BT Global Services adds: “ We have a real challenge to deal with in BT Global Services – to deliver a global corporate programme with the required adaptations to fit with the different cultures of the various countries. Each country has its own challenges and Paula has shown real FLEXIBILITY and professionalism. In Germany, for instance, Leornian responded to the need to review the programme content in order to respond to German requirements. What I particularly appreciate about working with Paula is the fact that she acts as part of our team, as do all her facilitators. This is critical to ensure we are heading towards the same successful goal.”
Participant Feedback from BT Spain
As a consequence of becoming more proactive and able to influence others by adapting their style, interviewees have observed some positive and tangible impact on their day to day work adding real value to our GS business overall:
“I am resolving problems more effectively now. I have increased productivity by around 10%.”
“I now analyze issues more effectively with the skills learned on ILP. It has improved my time management by ca. 15%.”
“After having worked with different teams [and applying my ILP learning with them], we have come up with a 20 day process. At least now we have a design-delivery process which a starting point we can improve while we did not have anything in place before.”
“‘Now we are able to terminate the project in this Q4 while before it was difficult to put a final date.”
“I am championing a project focusing on saving costs with our capex CPE - I don't have any financials now as we are still implementing things however we know it will happen earlier than planned.”
Participant comments from UK programmes:
“The programme has given me access to tools that will help me as a Manager of people to be a better ‘leader’ and not just a ‘manager’”.
“It has given me insight into different management techniques which will enable me to carry out more effective discussion sessions albeit 1-1's, coaching or team meetings”
“Probably the one thing I have learned from ILP and use most is "active" listening. It has really made me very conscious of "listening" what is being said and not just "hearing" what is being said”
“…..At one of our Action Learning sessions we used the "How to resolve the problem" tool to come up with solutions. It brought other people from BT (Operate) into the equation and the outcome was that one of the team was able to supply a contact name within Service Introduction who was able to assist me in resolving this issue”