As a Fortune 500 company, this organization is one of the largest global distributors of electronic parts, computer products, and embedded technology, serving in more than 70 countries. The organization uses an annual survey to collect feedback on important issues to help identify and prioritize actions with the goal of making the organization a better place to work.

Through this process they learned that while employee engagement scores had improved year after year they were below the norm for other high performing organizations that they benchmark against. Employees provided feedback around opportunities for improvement related to development coaching, ongoing feedback, and improved performance management.

Strategically, in their American offices, this was targeted as an area of opportunity with a goal to improve employee engagement to the high performing level. The organization’s senior leaders supported an extensive organization-wide leadership development initiative designed to increase employee engagement.

The organization partnered with The Ken Blanchard Companies^® to train all levels of the organization including individual contributors, managers, and executives using Blanchard’s Situational Leadership^® II (SLII^®), Coaching Essentials^® for Leaders, and Situational Self Leadership (SSL) to improve performance management, developmental coaching, empowerment, and engagement within the organization.

The results include a common language being used by all managers and employees, more managers communicating with their people to increase collaboration and engagement, more development discussions taking place, and more employees taking the initiative to ask for the specific leadership support they need to succeed.

Of the employees who completed Situational Self Leadership, 76% reported that they use the SSL language and tools to further their development and communicate their leadership needs to their manager. Some other results from the SSL survey were:

• 59% of respondents indicated their manager is actively using the SLII^® language and tools to help with their development
• 49% reported that the quality of the communication with their manager improved significantly or moderately
• 43% indicated that the frequency of communication improved significantly or moderately
• 79% either strongly agreed or agreed that SSL propelled them through the development cycle with a new goal or task
• 53% reported that they feel more engaged in their job

As one participant stated, “The overall experience has been very beneficial in the sense that I am now able to diagnose my development level for each of my tasks and ask my manager for the most appropriate leadership style for each of them. This is helping me overcome roadblocks, and get to the next level on the tasks.”