Developing First-Line and Experienced Managers at Sunstar

Case Study

The Challenge The Sunstar Group operates in the business sectors of oral care, health and beauty, motorcycle parts, and chemicals, with more than 4,000 employees in 20 countries. While maintaining steady growth of their existing business, they continually strive for exponential growth with their innovations.

In 2015, after making recent acquisitions, Sunstar strove to enhance collaboration across their � rst-line manager population in Europe, and moved from a 5-day stand-alone workshop to a blended learning journey. After the success of this journey, in 2017, they then looked to develop a program aimed at senior managers, to continue to encourage collaboration across cultures and to strengthen team spirit and relationships.

The SolutionFirst-Line Manager Development In collaboration with Sunstar, we designed a 9-month learning journey for � rst-line managers, combining face-to-face workshops, webinars, and individual work. It began with a virtual program launch to engage participants and

to give them an opportunity to explore what they could expect from the journey.

We continued with a 2-day face-to-face workshop, First-Line Essentials, which focused on building core management skills, centered on four practices: Think Like a Leader, Coach Your Team, Get Results Through Others, and Engage People.

As it was important for participants to use non-positional leadership to influence and work in a cross-matrix organization, the next 2-day workshop in the journey was Leading with In� uence.

The morning of the journey’s last 1-day workshop focused on Facilitating Team Development, and the afternoon on Dilemma Management.

In between the face-to-face workshops, we delivered three webinars to connect with participants over the months and to cover new topics on remote management, leading in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world, and peer relationships.

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First Line: Learning Solution

Program Launch

Pre-Workshop Assignments First-Line Essentials

Reconnect Webinar:

Leading Remotely

Reconnect Webinar: Managing Peer Relationships

Facilitating Team Development/

Dilemma Management

Leading with Influence

Reconnect Webinar: Leading in

a VUCA Environment

First-Line Manager Development Learning Journey

For the Advanced Manager program, we focused on building trust and collaborative relationships, creating and executing strategy, and working in a VUCA environment.

Again, a learning journey was the preferred route, to ensure that the learning would be sustained over a number of months. It featured opportunities for participants to apply what they had learned back in the workplace.

We began again with a virtual program launch, and included a webinar on DiSC, which was used as a lens throughout the program for interpreting and understanding different communication styles.

Two face-to-face 1.5-day workshops covered three focus areas: Communicating Vision and Strategy, Enabling Change, and Leading Self and Others.

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Advanced Management: Learning Solution

Program Launch

Pre-Workshop Assignments Communicating Vision and Strategy, and Enabling

Change

DiSC Assessment

Enabling Change, and Leading Self and Others

Personal Development

Planning

Understanding Your DiSCProfile Webinar

Advanced Manager Development

Eight months after the

start of the First-Line

Managers learning

journey, managers

rated return on

investment an average

4 out of 5.

Advanced Manager Development Learning Journey

At AchieveForum, we empower people to lead successfully in turbulent business landscapes. From in-person instruction to digitally enabled experiences, we are the human touch that drives leadership success, not just leadership

know-how.

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“The relationship with my boss has become more open

and my objectives for the next period more realistic and set

in common agreement.”―First-Line Manager training participant

“The training was excellent.”

―Advanced Manager training participant

“The programs we developed together have addressed the speci� c needs of our company very well. I received not only excellent feedback from participants, but could see how they were able to apply the learning in their individual roles and achieve great results as a team.”

—Julia Linz, Senior Director, European Human Resources

The Impact