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.

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.

A Strategic Path Forward

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.

Our custom solutions team devised a strategic learning path for the organization using virtual delivery technology that incorporates Situational Leadership®: Building Leaders and complementary Situational Coaching®, to instill supervisor accountability, provide uniform opportunities for employee coaching and integrate a cohesive model and performance vocabulary for how to develop performers. To support learning retention, each course offers related microlearning, Discussion Guides and gamification for ongoing skill development.

SOLUTIONS DEPLOYED

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Learning Path

“I just went straight to Situational Leadership® because I’d seen the immediate and tangible impact that it had for leaders.”

Sarah Cameron
Chief Human Resources Officer

Creating Champions for Change

Well on the path to changing the leadership culture, the organization is considering the Situational Leadership®: Taking Charge course to engage individual contributors in their own performance development journeys. As the City of Saskatoon evolves their training initiatives, we remain poised to support their efforts through partnership and look forward to sharing their forthcoming successes

“Leaders can take what they learned – literally, the next day after they take the training – and implement it.”

Jodi Fick-Dryka
Organizational Development Consultant