Leading for Impact:

Empowering Senior Leaders to Define, Create, Expand, and Sustain Leadership

Abstract

Faced with the need to enhance leadership capabilities, a major medical device company sought to help leaders set direction, shift from managing to leading, develop teams, and improve cross-organizational collaboration. Insight Experience’s award-winning Leading for Impact, a three-day experiential program, delivered these outcomes for over 160 Directors, including the CEO and executive team. The program’s strategy, team development, and collaboration focus, reinforced by a tailored business simulation, earned high praise for its real-world relevance and networking opportunities.

Challenge

A leading medical device company needed a leadership development program that would empower leaders to set clear direction, transition from managing to leading, and develop their direct reports to scale leadership across the organization. Additionally, the program needed to emphasize the importance of cross-functional collaboration. To meet these goals, it was essential that the program be experiential, scalable, and applicable across diverse business units, ensuring that leadership growth was consistent and aligned with the company’s broader objectives.

Solution

Insight Experience developed Leading for Impact as an immersive three-day, in-person leadership development program tailored for senior leaders at the VP level and above. Day 1, titled “Define,” centers on setting and effectively communicating strategy. Day 2, “Create,” emphasizes the importance of intentional team development through coaching and strategic delegation, which equips leaders to build high-performing teams. Day 3, “Expand and Sustain,” addresses the critical skills needed for successful cross-organizational collaboration, while also focusing on leadership sustainability—helping leaders manage their energy and cascade essential learnings throughout the organization.

Each day, participants engage in a dynamic, tailored business simulation, stepping into the role of a General Manager in a fictional business to apply their decision-making skills in real time, reinforcing the program’s core lessons through practical, hands-on experience.

Learning Objectives

As a result of the Leading for Impact program, participants develop and learn skills to:

Design Highlights

Insight Experience customized the Leading Organizations business simulation experience so that each round aligns with the day’s focus. Additionally, the program features six opportunities for participants to engage in practice conversations within the simulation context. This design ensures that every team member has the chance to lead a conversation and receive feedback from their peers and an Insight Experience facilitator.

During the “Define” stage, a significant portion of the afternoon is dedicated to participants creating a “Strategy Snapshot” for their teams. Leaders are provided with time and a template to articulate their team’s goals and what those goals mean for each team member. Participants draft a statement, record themselves presenting it, and then workshop their statement with a peer outside their team. They are expected to refine their Strategy Snapshot, share it with their manager, and eventually cascade it throughout their teams.

During the “Create” stage, the focus shifts to Leadership Mindset—examining the mindset and intentions leaders bring to their interactions. Using the Leadership Mindset Model™, participants self-select the quadrant that feels most natural to them. This exercise reveals patterns that spark rich discussions about company culture, hiring practices, and potential needs for a particular leadership style, such as inspirational leadership, across the organization.

Program Agenda

Simulation Overview

The three-day intensive is designed to intentionally blend large-group activities with small-group discussions, fostering a highly interactive and engaging learning experience:

Participants in the Leading for Impact program are assigned a peer learning partner, carefully selected from a different team to enhance networking and collaboration. These peer partners serve as thought partners throughout the program, providing critical input and feedback on application and reflection activities.

A key aspect of the experience involves addressing an urgent issue where a direct report makes a mistake. Five minutes after receiving this urgent issue, teams must conduct a conversation with the direct report. This scenario sets the stage for a rich discussion on psychological safety, a leader’s role in fostering it within their teams, and how to frame failure constructively. This scenario is further enriched with content from Amy Edmondson on the spectrum of failures.

History and Results 

To date, this program has been rolled out to more than 160 Directors, representing 40% of the total target population, with plans to further expand its reach. The CEO and the entire executive team at this medical device company even participated in an abbreviated version of the program, underscoring its importance and fostering a shared language across the organization.

Participants reported several benefits, including cross-functional representation and networking during the in-person intensive, the program’s overall facilitation, its relevance to real business situations, and the establishment of a strategic communication model. Specifically, participants shared the following feedback:

• 100% agree or strongly agree that the program improved their ability to manage change.
• 100% agree or strongly agree that the program improved their ability to support and develop their teams.
• 98% agree or strongly agree that the program improved their ability to scale their leadership.

Here is what some participants have said about this program:

• “One of the best programs I’ve been part of in my career.”
• "All of the different modalities you use are really engaging. These three days flew by!” 
• “The simulation was the most impactful for me. It was great to see the team pull together, collaborate and leverage lessons learned from the prior discussions to move forward on business decisions. It was both fun and educational!”
• “In addition to advancing my leadership skills, a big benefit of the program was working closely with and getting to know other leaders in the division who I don't regularly work with.”

Leading for Impact won a 2024 Silver award from the Brandon Hall Group in the category of Best Leadership Development Program.