Background
The Aurecon Group provides engineering, management and specialist technical services to government and private-sector clients. With more than 6,000 staff and over 80 offices worldwide, Aurecon has a presence in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Southeast Asia, China and the Middle East.
Challenge
The organization possessed highly skilled technical specialists who found themselves in positions of influence and leadership but felt that they needed additional skill sets in order to manage and lead their teams with greater confidence and effectiveness. In particular, they looked to build senior management’s capacity in leading and coaching others.To date, 120 senior leaders based in Australia have been through the program, and a further 120 will attend in 2011/2012. A similar program forms part of the senior management leadership development program in South Africa, and is administered and delivered by The Pacific Institute’s Johannesburg office.
Experience
- The Pacific Institute was asked to co-design a Leadership Development program by applying its cognitive-psychology-based principles and tools.
- Using scientific tools of Human Synergistics’ behavioral modeling, The Pacific Institute developed a three-day “Investment in Leadership Excellence®” program, which formed the foundation for Aurecon’s organization-wide Leadership Development Program initiative.
- The aim was to analyse the impact of management style on the behavior of others and to examine their perceived effectiveness as managers and leaders.
- In conjunction with Aurecon, we looked at conscious and subconscious management approaches, and helped identify the gaps between intent and actions to determine effectiveness.
The Pacific Institute also makes available highly experienced coaches for one-on-one mentoring sessions for senior management, and can provide survey tools to compare results against world benchmarks. Aurecon believes that, as a direct result of its partnership with The Pacific Institute, there has been a positive impact on the individual and collective skills of its leadership group.
Outcome
Aurecon’s direct investment in its key people means that the organisation has more effective leaders who can ‘practice what they preach’ and help drive sustainable change, vision, and are responsible for creating the desired organisational culture. Inevitably, culture drives performance.