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How do you lead a team that takes responsibility and takes action? How do you give targeted feedback and help your colleagues grow? Multitechnical service provider SPIE faced a challenge: their site supervisors are often seasoned workers who have progressed to a managerial position. They are excellent professionals taking their first steps in leadership. After an intensive five-month leadership program, Anouck Van Couter, trainer and L&D advisor at Obelisk, and Joris Brems, HR business partner at SPIE Belgium, look back with enthusiasm.
Advancing from a blue-collar environment to a managerial position is a challenge. Communicating constructively, addressing employees on both good and improvable behavior, and daring to delegate tasks. The key insight? When you invest the right energy in your people to help them develop, you earn their respect in return. SPIE Belgium went in search of a reliable partner and approached Obelisk. Providing stimulating, tailor-made leadership training?
“Obelisk’s corporate culture fits perfectly with that of SPIE: open and people-oriented. Thanks to their authentic approach and interactive training courses, our people were able to gain a lot of insights and experience. The feedback from our site supervisors was also very positive: an interesting and enjoyable training course!” – Joris Brems, HR business partner at SPIE Belgium
At Obelisk, we firmly believe that combining different learning methods and learning moments is extremely valuable. This gives people ample time to learn and apply new insights in their daily work. By revisiting those initial experiences afterwards, there is room for further exploration.
“For SPIE Belgium, we didn’t opt for a traditional training program, but rather a diverse leadership program with training, role-playing with actors, peer reviews, and individual coaching.” – Anouck Van Couter, trainer and L&D advisor at Obelisk
To make the program as productive as possible, we created a safe learning environment where everyone, including the trainer, got to know each other well. We also organized a Dutch-language and a French-language program, so that each participant could receive the input in their own native language and get to work with it.
After an initial intake with the HR department, we conducted an online survey among the participants to gather concrete examples of challenging situations. We incorporated these into real-life cases so that everyone could relate to the exercises. During the sessions, we focused on self-awareness, communication, giving and receiving constructive feedback, dealing with resistance and difficult conversations, tailored delegation and follow-up, and individual and team coaching.
We processed the input through discussions, reflection exercises, practical sessions, and case studies. We also organized simulation discussions with actors to learn how to deal with challenging situations. By giving participants the opportunity to ask their own learning questions and discuss them together, we also facilitated peer coaching, allowing them to learn a lot from each other. This laid the foundation for them to continue helping each other as buddies in the future. In addition to the classroom-based program, we also provided personal coaching: the ideal opportunity to zoom in on their unique development plans. SPIE will also follow up on these programs through individual coaching to reinforce the insights and skills acquired.
“It was fantastic to see how open and motivated the participants were when they got started with the exercises. Understanding that they can help employees grow by asking questions instead of providing the solution themselves was a real eye-opener. Senior management was also involved in the training: SPIE's HR director kicked off the first day. Fantastic!” – Anouck Van Couter, trainer and L&D advisor at Obelisk
Are you also interested in a leadership program for your employees? Obelisk develops impactful, customized training tailored precisely to the needs of your people.
