Cases · Leadership development at two levels · Christiansen & Essenbæk
Christiansen & Essenbæk: leadership development at two levels
Christiansen & Essenbæk is a contractor where results are created on site. The collaboration with Cronquist Consult included two documented leadership-development tracks at different levels: Foundational Leadership for hourly-paid foremen and frontline supervisors, and Advanced Leadership for salaried managers and middle managers. Together, they connected people leadership with the organisation, the business, customers and execution.
A long-standing development partnership
Over a number of years, Cronquist Consult has worked with Christiansen & Essenbæk on leadership, leadership-team, organisational, strategy and business development across management levels and target groups – both as longer, coherent development programmes and as standalone courses and interventions.
This case focuses on two extensive, parallel leadership-development programmes: Foundational Leadership for foremen and frontline supervisors, and Advanced Leadership for middle managers. They are two examples from a much broader development partnership.
The challenge
In a contracting business, leaders are rarely hired as leaders. They are appointed because they are highly skilled at the work — and then have to create results through other people, under time pressure and with changing teams.
Leadership development was therefore needed at two levels at the same time: foremen and frontline supervisors close to operations, and salaried managers and middle managers with broader responsibility for processes, business and customers.
Foundational Leadership — foremen and frontline supervisors
A longer development programme for hourly-paid foremen and frontline supervisors, focused on the transition from technical leadership to people leadership.
- Leadership in Practice and JTI as a shared language.
- Personal leadership.
- Communication.
- Personal impact.
- High Performance Team Leadership.
- Strategic execution under pressure.
- Process leadership.
- Presentation and teaching skills.
Advanced Leadership — salaried managers and middle managers
A two-year, 12-module programme for salaried managers and middle managers. In addition to the classic leadership disciplines, it covered business, customers and execution.
- Personal leadership and communication.
- Process leadership.
- Business Model Canvas.
- Sales and change leadership.
- Teaching skills.
- High Performance Team Leadership.
- Strategic execution under pressure.
- Customer workshops and customer-oriented work.
How we worked
Both tracks used action learning: participants worked on their own assignments between modules rather than generic textbook cases.
- Action learning based on participants’ own work.
- Buddy work between modules.
- Feedback as a recurring part of the programme.
- Practical assignments between modules.
- 1:1 coaching.
Leadership trained beyond the classroom
The partnership also included intensive four-day OLTC training expeditions in Bosnia, France and Sweden:
- Bosnia — High Performance Team Leadership.
- France — a Mont Ventoux cycling team.
- Sweden — winter survival training in collaboration with WEISS, where Mads Cronquist is also trained.
The breadth of the partnership
The two leadership programmes are part of a broader partnership. Selected examples:
BygOp! — competence development close to practice
A systematic competence-development project involving Christiansen & Essenbæk and Tscherning, with Cronquist Consult responsible for project management. It combined practical competence development, foreman training, AMU vocational training, communication, JTI and action learning – with learning close to the realities of the construction site.
CE Way — values translated into behaviour
“Sådan arbejder vi i C&E” (“How we work at C&E”) was a practice-based action-learning initiative in which the company’s values were translated into concrete behaviour through exercises, reflection and training in collaboration and communication.
Leadership and foreman development
Alongside the longer, coherent leadership-development programmes, the partnership also included standalone foreman courses and standalone Leadership in Practice courses.
Strategy, organisation and business
Leadership-team development, High Performance Team Leadership, strategy development and execution, organisational development and business development.
Teams and Company Days
Team days, teambuilding on the Oslo ferry and teambuilding activities at Company Days and summer parties.
Teaching and knowledge sharing
Teaching and presentation technique, and developing and sharing learning across the organisation.
A development project with national recognition
As project manager for Christiansen & Essenbæk’s multi-year ‘Trivsel – 360 grader’ project, Mads Cronquist wrote ‘Lederens inspirationsguide’ (The Leader’s Inspiration Guide), which shares the project’s methods, experience and results. The project was honoured with both the Danish Working Environment Award and Børsen’s CSR Communication Award – the latter particularly because of the book and the extensive communication of the project’s experience.
Why the two tracks belong together
When both frontline and middle managers are developed in the same company, the organisation gains a shared leadership language across levels. That is what allows a decision made by management to be carried out on site.
The two-year, 12-module programme is a historical description of this specific engagement. Cronquist Consult always designs programmes for the individual organisation; it is not a fixed programme format.
Caveat
We describe the content and working method of the two documented leadership tracks. We do not report our own impact measurements for the programmes and do not attribute the company’s results to the development work alone.
The company’s separate programme for crew representatives — VITEK, on-the-job training and the working environment — is described in its own case.
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