In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competencies:
Craft a communication strategy for internal and external audiences
Leverage internal and external intelligence to inform decision making
Develop an adaptable leadership mindset and skill set
Scenario
You work as a director of leadership and learning for an organization that makes prosthetics. The organization has been in business since 1999 and employs over 350 people in its Tampa, Florida, headquarters and three plant locations across the Southwest. While the business is currently based in the United States, the organization is exploring ways to move into Canadian markets within the next three years. This year’s employee engagement survey results for the organization show that some leadership practices are rated lower, while some practices were rated higher. The new chief human resources officer (CHRO) met with the team to discuss the general results. Everyone agrees that the company’s focus should be on both specific leadership development areas perceived as strengths and on those rated as areas for improvement, primarily regarding social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and the interpersonal skills of effective leaders.
To help this initiative, your manager, the vice president of leadership and learning, asked you to create an adaptive leadership toolkit that can be used throughout the organization. To begin this work, you conducted a personal leadership self-assessment and turned this into a personal development plan. Then you shared this artifact with your manager. Your manager was impressed with the thoroughness of the personal development plan and saw value in incorporating it as an exemplar within the adaptive leadership toolkit for use by all people leaders in the organization. After receiving such positive feedback, you moved forward with creating the rest of the adaptive leadership toolkit.
Your manager has shared the adaptive leadership toolkit that you created with the CHRO, and it was well received. The CHRO wants to distribute this toolkit to all leaders throughout the organization—supervisors and above—and asks you to create a communication strategy that will help in the rollout and implementation of the adaptive leadership toolkit. For this project, you will create that communication strategy.
Directions
Overview: In this part of the communication strategy, you will summarize the business problems the organization is currently experiencing and provide an overview of trends from your analysis. You will also explain how a personal development plan and adaptive leadership toolkit can provide solutions to these challenges.
Summarize the business problems the organization is currently facing and describe how the personal development plan and adaptive leadership toolkit will address them.
Why was the personal development plan created?
Why was the adaptive leadership toolkit developed?
Summarize trends in leadership strengths observed in your analysis of the employee satisfaction survey and describe how they relate to the leadership skills and behaviors included in the adaptive leadership toolkit.
In which areas did leadership score well?
How did your analysis help to inform skills and behaviors included in the adaptive leadership toolkit?
Summarize trends in leadership weaknesses observed in your analysis of the employee satisfaction survey and describe how they relate to the leadership skills and behaviors included in the adaptive leadership toolkit.
In which areas did leadership not score well?
How did your analysis help to inform skills and behaviors included in the adaptive leadership toolkit?
Personal Development Plan: In this part of the communication strategy, you will describe the personal development plan in further detail. You will include how the personal development plan supports the adaptive leadership toolkit and the value it will bring once the entire toolkit is rolled out.
Summarize the importance of including a personal development plan in the adaptive leadership toolkit and explain the value it will bring to the organization.
How does the personal development plan support the adaptive leadership toolkit?
How do the strategies within the personal development plan address the business problems the organization is currently facing?
Explain how the personal development plan and SMART goal setting could help develop the leadership styles of the leaders within the organization.
Adaptive Leadership Toolkit: In this part of the communication strategy, you will describe the adaptive leadership toolkit in further detail. You will include how and who the adaptive leadership toolkit brings value to within the organization.
Describe how the adaptive leadership toolkit will be used and who within the organization will manage it. Your response should address the following:
Who is the target audience for the adaptive leadership toolkit?
Who are the owners of the adaptive leadership toolkit?
Describe the specific leadership skills and behaviors that are included in the adaptive leadership toolkit and explain how developing these skills and behaviors will address the business problems the organization currently faces. Use trends from the employee satisfaction survey to support your response.
Rollout and Implementation: In this part of the communication strategy, you will provide more details around the rollout and implementation of the adaptive leadership toolkit throughout the organization.
Provide a timeframe for rollout and implementation of the adaptive leadership toolkit and justify how this strategy supports the organization’s goal of improving leadership skills and behaviors over the next two years.
Describe the metrics and deliverables associated with the rollout and implementation of the adaptive leadership toolkit. Your response should address the following:
How will the success of this rollout and implementation be measured?
What are some important milestones to consider for tracking progress?
Determine methods for communicating the relevance of the adaptive leadership toolkit to stakeholders within the organization. Your response should address the following:
How should this be communicated to leadership to help gain buy-in?
How should this be communicated to its intended users to help gain buy-in?
Describe the feedback and communication strategy associated with continuous improvements to the adaptive leadership toolkit. Your response should address the following:
How can employees provide feedback on any roadblocks, issues, or ideas for improvement?
How will updates to the adaptive leadership toolkit be communicated from leadership down to employees?
What to Submit
To complete this project, you must submit the following:
Communication Strategy
Submit a 10- to 12-page Word document using 12-point Times New Roman font, double spacing, and one-inch margins. Sources should be cited according to APA style. Consult the Shapiro Library APA Style Guide for more information on citations.
