Custom Solutions for the City of Saskatoon
Canadian municipality develops “one-city” approach with unified leadership development training.
Industry: Government
Number of Employees: 4,500
Challenge
Uniting disparate departments’ organization, management and leadership practices under a singular framework for consistent execution and employee experiences.
Solution
Deploying Situational Leadership® virtual programs and sustainment content to instill, hone and standardize leadership and coaching skills across management and teams.
A Modern Vision for Transformation
Serving an estimated 250,000 citizens, the City of Saskatoon’s purview includes fire and police departments, water/sewer management, recreational activities and funding for various civic boards. Meeting the city’s governance and budgetary demands while nurturing a thriving community requires innovative strategies to influence employee performance toward organizational goals empowered by consistent leadership processes.
With a vision to modernize the organization, the new city manager sought to drive successful goal attainment with a “one-city” approach by ushering in an overdue change in management development and execution. Maintaining their corporate value of setting priorities, the organization recognized that a leadership investment would significantly uphold their People Matter value.
Factors highlighting the need for aligned management development entailed disparate leadership approaches and employee experiences dictated by who managed them. Vast differences in functions and multiple unions also contributed to the divide in leadership mindsets. Existing leadership training provided a solid start, but it was time to evolve the training to support the organization’s transformation. This opportunity led Cameron to The Center for Leadership Studies as she had previous experience with the simple yet scalable power of the Situational Leadership® methodology. “I just went straight to Situational Leadership® because I’d seen the immediate and tangible impact that it had for leaders.”
“Situational Leadership® was a solution that I knew was tested and proven. I felt that it could be relatable and easy to understand at all levels of the organization and could be rolled out successfully in a consistent way.”
Sarah Cameron
Chief Human Resources Officer
A Strategic Path Forward
The Center for Leadership Studies devised a strategic learning path for the organization using virtual delivery technology. To instill supervisor accountability, provide uniform opportunities for employee coaching and integrate a cohesive model and performance vocabulary for how to develop performers, it incorporates the foundational Situational Leadership®: Building Leaders and the complementary Situational Coaching® programs.
“The only way to embed this in the organization, is if everybody is using the tools, the language and the processes.”
Sarah Cameron
Chief Human Resources Officer
Initial Rollout
Learner Cohort:
500 leaders
- Cross-divisional executives
- Safety leadership
- Frontline HR staff
Goal:
Accumulate buy-in
- Create change champions
- Establish familiarity with the leadership language
Outcomes:
participants indicated a highly successful program that will revolutionize the organization’s leadership development efforts
Next Steps:
- Comprehensive rollout targeting the organization’s remaining leaders
- Considering the Situational Leadership: Taking Charge course to engage individuals contributors
Solutions Employed
Learning Path
Coaching Planner
Leadership Styles Handout
“Leaders can take what they learned – literally, the next day after they take the training – and implement it.”
Jodi Fick-Dryka
Organizational Development Consultant
Partner with Our Team to Develop Custom Learning for Your Organization
At The Center for Leadership Studies (CLS), our personalized learning solutions go beyond off-the-shelf engagements, to help you design, deliver, and evaluate leadership development experiences and drive ongoing and sustainable performance improvement
Three tiers of customization allow you to directly address your specific challenges and gaps. Choose any CLS course and personalize as little or as much as you need to meet your learning goals. From off-the-shelf solutions to a fully personalized learning experience, and everything in between, we meet learner preferences through multi-modal, multi-lingual, always personalized learning solutions.
