Six years of leadership development at Jobindex

The challenge

Jobindex was growing, and with growth came leaders appointed for their professional expertise rather than their leadership experience. At the same time, work cut across departments: value for the customer is only created when the whole process, from first enquiry to delivery, holds together.

The task therefore covered both personal leadership and process leadership — and it had to be solved without taking the leaders out of daily operations for long periods.

The assignment

The first programme started in 2013 as a team leader programme over roughly three months, focusing on cross-functional collaboration and a value-creating process flow. The experience from it became the foundation for the supervisor training that has since been delivered year after year — with several later programmes focusing on, among other things, the customer experience, production efficiency, communication and leadership in practice.

How the programme was built

• Four modules spread over several months, leaving time to try things out in between.
• A module on team understanding and cross-functional collaboration.
• A module on communication — including difficult conversations and feedback.
• A module on personal leadership, using JTI as a shared language.
• A module on leadership in practice: follow-up, prioritisation and process leadership.
• An outdoor-based residential as a changing learning arena.

Methods and learning arenas

The programme was delivered as action learning: the leaders worked on their own current tasks, not on textbook cases. The learning arena was deliberately changed along the way — from the meeting room to production and outdoors — because leadership behaviour becomes clearer when the setting changes.

Participants worked with a customer-focused Customer Deep Dive, discussion of leadership articles and the elements of the LeaderShop model.

Implementation in everyday work

Between modules the leaders received 1:1 coaching — often at their own workplace — and worked in a buddy system with assignments and a personal development plan that was followed up and evaluated.

It is this combination that moves a programme from a course to changed behaviour: something has to be practised in daily operations, and someone has to ask about it.

ROSE as a practical execution model

In the leadership development at Jobindex, the ROSE model was used as a practical execution model. Participants used ROSE as a concrete tool in their everyday leadership.

A collaboration at several levels

The collaboration went beyond the recurring team leader and supervisor programmes. Cronquist Consult has worked with Jobindex at several organisational levels: the individual leader, the team leaders and supervisors, the full leadership group and strategic sparring at director level.

• A one-day course in assertive communication for Jobindex's full leadership group.
• Training in stress management for the full leadership group.
• Approximately six months of 1:1 coaching with one Jobindex manager.
• Courses in teaching and presentation techniques.
• Strategic business sparring with the Sales Director and the Recruitment Director.

Documented learning

The fact that the programme has been repeated six years in a row is in itself the strongest statement of its value. Jobindex also reported along the way that several former participants have since advanced to more important leadership roles in the company.

An evaluation of one course programme gave the ‘Leadership in Practice’ module an overall score of 4.7 out of 5. The score applies to that single module in one programme — not to the collaboration as a whole.

We do not report our own impact measurements for the programme, so we only reproduce what the client has reported.