In 2005, faced with meeting the challenge of ongoing change in the industry, international plastics manufacturers, Borealis, turned to Impact for help in preparing aspirant leaders to meet future challenges.

Solution

At the heart of Making a Difference, an intensive five day leadership development experience was designed, comprising of a combination of experiential learning, business projects, a community action project, leadership theory and in-depth feedback around participants’ Emotional Intelligence.

In keeping with Borealis’ core values of being a good corporate citizen, an important part of our modular programme features a challenging one day community action project. Working with Cumbria Business Education Consortium (CBEC), participants have to take on coaching and mentoring roles with young people at risk of exclusion from school in a unique leadership
development opportunity.

In spite of cultural and language differences, the participants have to rapidly establish a relationship of trust to provide the young people with a plan for re-entry to education or prepare them for work. The exercise provides a challenging practical summary of leadership learning, including coaching skills, listening, engaging and inspiring.

"To develop senior middle managers into real leaders requires a journey which takes them out of their personal comfort zone to unleash their potential. At Borealis we are convinced that the return on this investment is an important contribution to achieve our strategy more successfully."

Jaap de Vries 
Vice President, Human Resources

Result

Crucially, Borealis benefits from an organisation-wide enhancement of leadership capability, coupled with a significant impact to the bottom line.
 
"We believe that to take on leadership is as much to embark upon a challenging personal development journey as it is a formal career step; a sine qua non in the development of leadership  capabilities is therefore the individual’s hunger for personal challenge and development."

Mads Ingholt
Manager, Group Leadership Development

"The multi-cultural input from Borealis employees was welcome and made students behave in a more mature manner as well as raise their level of communication. The students were animated during their sessions with Impact. This event and the previous interview session with our less motivated young people have been a very positive experience for all involved."

Queen Katherine School, Cumbria

Read more about Impact's approach to Inspiring Leaders
Read more about Impact's approach to Community Action Learning

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