Case Study: Joel Laventure
The transition from manager to leader is about fulfilling your individual potential.
It is a personal journey that challenges you to work on your weaknesses as much as your strengths. So how do you accurately pinpoint gaps in your management skills and what do you really need to do to improve?
For most of us, setting out on this path of self discovery can be daunting. But as Joel Laventure, Distribution Manager for QBE Insurance - International Brokers (Singapore), found, it doesn't have to be that way.
With the right executive development program, and in expert hands, the experience can be both empowering and inspiring.
Leadership In Action: The Looking Glass Experience, he says, allowed him to reach a new vantage point where he could clearly see what he needed to do to further develop and grow and, importantly, how to get there.
Other (independently delivered) executive development programs which he completed in the past provided him with useful information about himself, but never really took him as far, he explains.
He credits the expert facilitation, highly detailed nature of the program and its analytical focus with being the key factors behind the program's success .
In particular, Joel praises program director, Edmund King, for the way he facilitates the learning and his positive influence on participants.
"Edmund is possibly the best facilitator and coach I have ever worked with. His style is perfect for this course and brings out the best in people."
At QBE, Joel is responsible for strategic business development in all areas of the company's Asian insurance market. Working primarily with teams within QBE's Singapore Operation, his focus is on driving profitable growth and expanding the company's presence within the region. Professional development, he says, is important to him and to his company.
Joel chose Mt Eliza Executive Education because of its "excellent reputation" and on the recommendation of his QBE supervisor who had previously undertaken the Leadership in Action program.
"My manager attended the course and highly recommended it. His feedback was that it was an excellent program to highlight aspects of your management style that are often left unattended to, creating bad habits."
Leadership in Action uses a range of diagnostic instruments to provide participants with meaningful information on how they are traveling at work.
Some instruments explain individual management approaches and preferences as well as personality and behaviours, while others capture and explain how you are perceived by people at work. The program facilitators help participants make sense of the information so that they can start putting together a personal action plan. Participants benefit from individual and group feedback sessions throughout the duration of the five-day residential program.
A feature of the program is its challenging business simulation. The experience, set in a company in major transition, allows participants to test and review their leadership capability in a real-time, high pressure business scenario.
Joel says the program confirmed overall "what I had already suspected about myself in terms of self development".
"But the difference with this program compared with others is that more than half the course is spent analysing and providing tangible methods to address your developmental gaps and goals.
"The number and variety of tools used for personal analysis reinforced common areas for improvement and did so in a way that gave you a number of different perspectives," he adds.
Joel says he was most impressed by the "specific and intense feedback provided to each individual toward the end of the course".
"The level of detail was exactly what I needed. It was obvious that the facilitators were taking note of your every move, which only serves as a benefit to your self improvement. It would have been easier for them to provide generic answers to the whole group and gloss over anything specific with individuals."
Joel says that while outnumbered by more senior managers during the program (in terms of job title/descriptions), he never felt disadvantaged, as everyone was there to learn.
He believes that a Leadership in Action experience should be a rite of passage to senior management for all managers, and he says he would have no hesitation in recommending the program to others.
