High-Potential Blended Leadership Program
Role: Instructional Design Leader & Program Manager
Emerging Leaders
Emerging Leaders was a legacy High-Potential Leadership program that had gone through several iterations in its history with the company. When this ask hit my desk it was just after COVID, and we had tapped our pipeline of future leaders. It was time to reinvest in high potential leadership training to prepare high-performing individual contributors for front-line field sales leadership.
My Role:
I was the lead instructional designer tasked with following the ADDIE process to move reimagine this legacy program, which had previously been outsourced by a consulting agency, and bring it in house to ensure it aligned with the experiences the future leaders would witness on the job.
As this program moved into the implementation stage, I took on the role of Program Manager to see this through implementation, evaluation and sustaining the program going forward.
The Ask:
The Ecolab Institutional Business wanted to develop a high-potential leadership program to prepare high-potential (7,8,9 box) individual contributors for sales leadership positions to strengthen the leadership pipeline.
The Process:
Analysis:
To begin I reviewed all assets from the previous program to fully understand what the legacy program was like, knowing that we had to maintain the presige while making it new.
Next I interviewed key stakeholders who could help me understand the needs in our pipeline. I spoke with HR at all levels, multiple Sales SVPs , Training Leaders from other divisions, current front-line field sales managers, high potential individual contributors who were our target audience, and others.
This helped me narrow down the clusters and competencies that should be the focus of the program, understand the audience and get the vision for what the program should look like. From there, I was able to dive into the design of the program.
Design
For the design of the program, the business wanted an in-person program with three 2-day sessions, which was one fewer in-person experience than the legacy program had, but one thing had changed drastically between 2020 and 2024: Digital Fluency. This program could bring the same, if not larger impact, with the ability to weave VILTs in between each in-person session to motivate learners and reinforce the learning.
The program started with a welcome VILT where they received the overview and expectations as well as instructions for their prework.
The first in-person session focused on Leading Self and Leading Business. During these two days, we led participants through
