British Airways Case Study | Core Leadership

The Brief

Building on their successful partnership with NKD to create ‘Leadership Matters’ for its inflight leadership teams, BA approached NKD again for its support developing a major leadership programme for its entire leadership team.  As with its onboard management, BA wanted the solution to combine the latest leadership thinking to broaden and challenge their managers’ perspective, increase their managers’ self-awareness of their personal impact, and offer practical techniques to help managers develop their skills managing and leading the performance of their teams. In essence they wanted help transforming their leadership culture.
 

The Solution

After working with the business stakeholders to understand the ‘will’, ‘skill’ and ‘commitment’ levels across the wider leadership team and testing out our insights and assumptions, NKD set about creating a challenging, engaging and inspirational leadership development experience to satisfy BA’s tough objectives.

The resulting 3-day programme gave BA leaders time and space to consider their leadership style and the impact they have on their teams, internal and external stakeholders and customers in relation to the key traits of Modern Leadership and the BA Leadership Framework and Values. In keeping with NKD’s creative approach to learning design, the event used a range of materials, accelerated learning methods and media to enhance the leaders’ engagement with the programme.

The use of a bespoke 360° leadership diagnostic tool and completion of a ‘Life-Line’ activity provided leaders with powerful insights into how and why they behave in the way they do, and enabled them to generate ideas for improving their future performance.  All leaders leave the three days with specific development actions addressing aspects of their personal leadership, ready to discuss with their manager and agree measurable implementation plans.

To help BA manage the delivery of the leadership development programme in-house, NKD designed and delivered an intensive ‘Train-the-Trainer’ programme.  Expert coaching and feedback offered by NKD helped ensure BA’s in-house Training team felt confident in their ability to deliver the product to NKD’s standards.
 

Results

Whilst this development solution is relatively new, feedback results for events run to date have been extremely positive, with the average event score being 5 out of 6 in post event surveys.  Delegates also commented on the huge benefits they gained from their 360° feedback, attending with fellow managers and sharing best practice. BA reported that the follow up processes NKD put in place ensure the energy and passion created at the workshops is translating into tangible actions back in the workplace.