Skills Cafe designed a two-day leadership development program for aspiring plant heads at one of the largest cement companies in India, focusing on building leadership and business skills beyond technical expertise.
The training featured customized real-world scenarios, gamified activities, role-playing, and case studies, based on an extensive needs analysis involving site visits and competency mapping.
The success of this initiative underscores the critical importance of contextualization in training programs. By grounding the learning experience in the specific challenges and realities of the participants’ daily work, the program ensured deeper engagement, practical application of concepts, and ultimately, a more significant and lasting impact on their leadership capabilities.
Business Need
In a rapidly evolving industrial landscape, the success of any organization hinges not only on technical prowess but also on effective leadership.
For technical experts, particularly those aspiring to leadership roles like plant heads in a major cement manufacturing company, the ability to navigate complex business challenges, lead teams, and engage with stakeholders is paramount.
Recognizing this critical need, one of India’s largest cement producers collaborated with Skills Cafe to design and deliver a highly customized experiential training program focused on developing essential leadership and business skills.
The organization approached Skills Cafe with a clear objective: to empower their plant heads with crucial leadership and business acumen. While these individuals possessed strong technical expertise, the company identified opportunities for development in behavioural and soft skills.
Operating within a fast-paced environment, the need was for a highly contextual and interactive learning experience that mirrored the real challenges faced in their day-to-day roles. This approach was deemed essential to ensure deeper engagement and immediate relevance of the training to their responsibilities.
Need Analysis
To truly address the organization’s unique needs, Skills Cafe embarked on an extensive discovery process. This involved engaging directly with the plant heads through online focus group discussions (FGDs) to understand their daily operations and the specific challenges they encountered.
Furthermore, a member of the Instructional Design team conducted an on-site visit to observe plant operations and hold in-depth discussions with a plant head. The insights gathered from the FGDs and the plant visit formed the basis for a detailed competency mapping exercise. This involved creating a job analysis sheet that identified the necessary competencies for aspiring plant heads and aligned them directly with the training agenda.
Program Design
The design of the training program placed a strong emphasis on contextualized content and domain-specific examples and case studies. Each negotiation, problem-solving, and conflict resolution scenario was meticulously crafted and rooted in actual operational challenges within the cement industry. This ensured maximum relevance for the participants. The program incorporated a variety of interactive methodologies to facilitate learning, including:
· Connect to Solve: A collaborative problem-solving process designed to kickstart engagement.
· Theatrical drama and improvisation: Scenarios that mirrored typical communication challenges encountered at the plant level.
· Day in the Life of – Case studies: Encouraging strategic decision-making in pressure situations. Simulating challenging negotiations and interactions with customers.
· Gamified learning: Utilizing a card game to reinforce customer centricity principles.
Content Testing
To ensure the accuracy and relevance of the training content, multiple discussions were held with the organization’s business team to incorporate specific industry dynamics and complexities.
The finalized content also underwent a dry run with the client to guarantee alignment with their expectations. The two-day in-person training in Mumbai was led by an experienced facilitator, and the participants remained highly engaged throughout, driven by the realistic scenarios, gamified interactions, and immediate opportunities for reflection and feedback.
Impact
The impact of the program was clearly demonstrated in the participant feedback, with impressive Net Promoter Scores (NPS) of 9.47 on Day 1 and 9.73 on Day 2.
Key takeaways from the participants highlighted the practical relevance of the custom-built cases, with many expressing increased confidence in their ability to handle real-life negotiations and customer interactions.
