Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan: Blue Leader Onboarding
Blue Leader Onboarding is a leadership development program for leaders newly hired into or promoted to a leadership position within Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. The program aims to build a community of accountable leaders who commit to demonstrate the leadership expectations of Blue Cross and support one another to achieve higher levels of personal and collective performance. By participating in Blue Leader Onboarding, new leaders will align with leadership principles at Blue Cross, assimilate into the organization quicker, avoid potential obstacles and pitfalls, and build positive brand reputations and new relationships as part of the organization’s community of leaders.
Program Details
A common attribute of successful leaders is that they have a growth mindset. To support this, each participant takes a “Growth Mindset Quiz” before starting the Blue Leader Onboarding program, as well as a 90-day post-training evaluation, which combines their self-reported answers with those of their manager.
Themes throughout the program include: live out the leadership competencies, deliberately decide to become and act as a leader, address issues with others as they appear, understand the importance of a growth mindset, and establish a community of leaders in the organization.
Individual course objectives include:
- Build your leadership self-awareness
- Explain your responsibilities in each of the primary human resources practice areas
- Describe your role as an agent of the company and responsibilities for minimizing legal liability to the organization
- Prepare for meaningful career development coaching conversations with your team
- Provide awareness and clarity around building an empowering environment for yourself and your team
- Describe how to inspire trust/credibility through best practice behaviors
“Choose to Lead,” the in-person kickoff session, lasts four hours. Overall, the focus of Choose to Lead is on personal development. It’s not designed to make every participant a perfect leader; instead, it’s a way to make them aware of their strengths and opportunities, and how to get the support they need. Participants need a space where they can say, “I don’t know how to do ‘x’” and not feel bad admitting they don’t understand everything about being a leader. Sessions are kept to 10 to 20 participants to create an intimate space for open conversation and lessen the chance a person will be afraid to speak up in front of a large group. Choose to Lead ends with a signature moment: a Leader Pledge, during which the trainee stands in front of a peer and reads aloud the actions and behaviors Blue Cross expects all leaders to embody. Participants select an accountability partner during the kickoff session so they can hold one another accountable for what they promised to do in their Leader Pledge. Reinforcement begins with their accountability partner immediately after the training is complete and lasts up to two years after training has been finished.
The remaining content includes workshop modules, Webinar/virtual training options, and e-learning components. Supplementing the five core modules is an individual development plan, which participants complete on their own. Participants are asked to complete their training in the first six months in their role as a leader, although they can take the core modules in any order. Blue Cross also asks leaders to compile “empathy maps,” in which they put themselves in the shoes of their team members to better understand their needs.
Results
To date, 167 Blue Cross leaders have attended one of the 15 Choose to Lead kickoff sessions as part of the Blue Leader Onboarding program.
More than 13 percent of the new leaders who completed the program have received a promotion since taking the session. Some 78 percent of participants’ leaders said this program improved their employees’ job performance, and 81 percent of participants believe their own performance has improved because of the program. Some 92 percent of responding leaders said they’ve been able to successfully apply the knowledge/ skills learned in this program to their job, and 94 percent of participants’ leaders said their employees have been able to successfully apply those skills.
Furthermore, empowerment and engagement among leaders have gone up. On the corporate-wide culture survey administered in 2018, leaders rated empowerment at the company 9 percentile points higher than on the previous all-employee survey in 2016. Leaders also rated capability development 8 percentile points higher than they had previously.
CHG Healthcare: ELEVATE – Encouraging Leadership Excellence & Value as Tenured Executives
CHG Healthcare’s ELEVATE (Encouraging Leadership Excellence & Value as Tenured Executives) is a highly individualized senior leadership development program that provides experiential learning opportunities for strong performers with potential in areas where a business need dictates accelerated learning. CHG Healthcare’s Executive Learning and Development team works through the leader of the ELEVATE participant to create a development action plan that focuses on critical competencies and the 70/20/10 learning model.
Program Details
The program is focused on accelerating development based on the specific needs of the participant and the organizational gaps. In order to pinpoint what those needs are, CHG Healthcare purchased the Korn Ferry competency library, which helps the company diagnose areas where it may be less skilled, and also provides a common language to identify and standardize common themes.
The structure of the ELEVATE program includes:
Cohort meetings: The company is divided into two groups or cohorts based on location. The two groups run concurrently, one month apart. Each group meets, in person, four times throughout the year. The first meeting is to kick off the program and introduce the participants, their leaders, and the Korn Ferry competencies. The next three cohort meetings are workshops focused on the topics of communication, influencing, and strategic mindset. The cohort meets one last time at the end of the program via videoconference, participants and leaders in separate meetings, to wrap up, reinforce, share takeaways, and provide feedback for improvement of the program.
Leader meetings: After the kickoff meeting, program facilitators go through a series of three or four meetings with the leader of the participant to review and refine a development goal plan that the participant and his or her leader have been working on together. These meetings take a heavy consultative approach, guiding the leader though what a good development goal plan looks like. During this time, resources, experiential learning opportunities, and fellowship mentors are discussed, vetted, and assigned. Experiential learning projects are designed to force the participants out of their comfort zone and expose them to opportunities, which allows them to flex their muscles with the competencies they are focused on.
Participant touchpoints: Facilitators check in with participants in various ways throughout the duration of the program to ensure they are receiving the time and information from their leader that is expected.
Sub-cohort meetings: Each cohort is divided into groups of five or six participants (or their respective leaders) who are working on developing similar competencies. These subcohorts meet every four to six weeks to share experiences and bounce ideas off one another.
Past participants serve as fellowship mentors in future offerings and sub-cohorts, which provides participants and leaders a social network to collaborate with.
ELEVATE is the model for what has become CHG Healthcare’s people development standard. CHG Healthcare now is using the Korn Ferry competencies throughout the company to create goal plans in its learning management system (LMS) and connecting them to learning items/opportunities available. It also is using the common competency language in its leadership 360-degree assessments and employee engagement surveys.
Results
In 2019, 10 percent of CHG Healthcare’s leadership participated in ELEVATE at the target participant level. This consists of 67 percent director level and 33 percent manager. With a primary focus on coaching the leaders of the participants to accelerate their people’s development, 24 percent of these leaders are at the executive level; 45 percent of these leaders are at the VP level; and 31 percent are at the director level.
Through the 2019 session of ELEVATE, 38 percent of the participants were promoted since starting the program. That is 11 percent higher than leaders companywide during the same timeframe. Based on 2019 9-Box placement, another 34 percent of ELEVATE participants are positioned for promotion in the near future. The average engagement score for the cohort was 86 percent. Comparing this to the industry average, these participants scored 36 percent higher than the company’s competitors.