Covenant College Cabinet Enhances Leadership Skills to Improve Efficacy
Industry: College
Location: Lookout Mountain, GA
Service: Team Development & Leadership Coaching
Results:
Identified personal and collective leadership strengths and weaknesses
Increased understanding of The Leadership Challenge® concepts by nearly 110%
Left with applicable action insights to improve personal leadership skills, as well as shared vision plans for the Cabinet team
About Covenant College
Covenant College is a liberal arts institution located in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, known for its commitment to academic excellence and a holistic approach to education. Offering a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs, the college emphasizes critical thinking, leadership, and community engagement, preparing students for success in their chosen fields and meaningful contributions to society.
The Challenge
The Covenant College Cabinet was looking to strengthen as a leadership team in two key areas: communication and decision-making. They believed clarifying expectations and developing a shared understanding between the team would greatly improve their efficacy and efficiency as a team.
The College President approached Bridge Innovate to explore a customized leadership workshop. Bridge designed a custom version of The Exemplary Leaders Program to help the group align on a common set of leadership behaviors and to provide time for individuals to deeply explore their personal Leadership Practices Inventory 360 results. This level of exploration provided the team with a common set of leadership expectations and identified opportunities for maturing their teaming approach.
The Solution
ABOUT THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE®
Bridge Innovate understands that leadership is about behavior — it’s a set of skills and abilities that can actually be mastered over time. Bridge Innovate’s The Exemplary Leaders Program, using tools established by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner in The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations approaches leadership as a measurable and masterable set of behaviors.
Kouzes and Posner, using global data from 100 countries, over 5,000 individual case studies, 30+ years of data, 800+ independent research studies, and rigorous testing of reliability and validity, created a survey that identified what happened when a leader performed at their best. From there, they created a 360-degree feedback assessment that has since been taken by more than 5 million users called the Leadership Practices Inventory® (LPI). Then, they detailed five common practices they saw in the highest-performing leaders:
Model the Way: Clarify your values and set an example by aligning actions with values.
Inspire a Shared Vision: Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. Enlist others in a common vision and shared aspirations.
Challenge the Process: Search for innovative opportunities to improve and experiment to generate small wins and learnings.
Enable Others to Act: Foster collaboration through trust and strengthen others through self-determination and developing competence.
Encourage the Heart: Recognize contributions by showing appreciation. Celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.
By utilizing these five practices and the LPI® 360 assessment, leaders are able to broaden self-awareness and explore possibilities for growth. In The Exemplary Leaders Program, Bridge divides efforts into three primary steps:
Explanation of the content
Reinforcing concepts through activity and with community
Reviewing concepts and establishing commitments and accountability
With this structure, Bridge Innovate helped the client’s team of 12 participants enhance their leadership skills.
The Process
Before the training, the participants completed pre-program work, including the LPI assessment and documenting personal reflections on their leadership challenges and skills.
Then, through two 5-hour sessions, Bridge facilitated an exploration of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®. Within the executive session, participants used the data gained from the LPI assessment to identify leadership insights, explore the exemplary practices, and then discuss how they have exhibited these practices or have failed to exhibit them in their team’s meetings and interactions.
After some instruction on each practice, topics and skills were also reinforced through interactive exercises, discussion, reflections, and case studies. In the final session, participants laid out leadership development vision stories, outlining with the group how the Cabinet will look and behave with these renewed leadership practices and commitments.
Result
Through the program, participants enhanced their understanding of the five practices, identified their personal leadership strengths and weaknesses, and left with reflections and actionable steps toward improving the team’s cohesiveness and effectiveness through their own leadership skills.
The Exemplary Leaders Program Growth Scores:
Overall Satisfaction Score: 9.4 / 10
Average Pre-Program Understanding: 4.1 / 10
Average Post-Program Understanding: 8.6 / 10
Average Participant Growth in Understanding: 110.78%
*self-reported score by participants on 01.28.25
Prepare the future leaders of your organization with intentional leadership development training. Contact us to create your custom leadership development workshop.