A Fresh Approach to Employee Education
Berry company Driscoll’s turns to the Leavey Executive Center to train new managers in essential skills to the Leavey Executive Center
Becoming a manager for the first time requires significant shifts. Simply doing your assigned tasks and being a team member is no longer enough. A manager needs to know how to lead other team members and adapt to evolving situations.
“It requires a change in thinking,” says Natasha Guaracha, manager of learning and development for the global fresh berry company Driscoll’s. “They are now leading through others and will need to shift their mindset. My team is here to support them through this transition.”
That’s why Driscoll’s offers newly hired or promoted managers the Manager Essentials training program, designed and delivered in partnership with the Leavey Executive Center. During the 5-month program, rising managers get the chance to study on campus with Leavey School of Business professors, share challenges they face as a cohort of learners, and dive into topics ranging from emotional intelligence to conflict resolution.
“We had developed this in house at first, but we really wanted to elevate the program and looked for a partner that could help us do that,” Guaracha says. “The Leavey School of Business stood out to us.”
Investment in Learning
According to Guaracha, Driscoll’s approach to employee education sets the company apart. All employees have learning and development opportunities, whether they’re in an office job or in an operations role, whether they’re seasonal or full-time, and regardless of their geographic location within the global company.
“I think those opportunities are part of why it’s very common for people to stay at Driscoll’s for a long time and to grow their career with the company,” Guaracha says. “I’ve been here nine years, and that is really not a lot when you hear stories of people who have been here 10, 20, even 40 years. Investing in people makes a difference.”
The custom-designed Manager Essentials program is an investment in people at an important career turning point. This spring has marked the first cohort of nearly 30 employees — from California, Florida and Mexico — going through the program in partnership with the Leavey Executive Center. Upon the completion of the program, Driscoll’s and the Leavey Executive Center will perform assessments, getting feedback not only from participants but also from their managers and direct reports. Anecdotally, though, Guaracha already sees an improvement in terms of engagement when she reviews recordings of class sessions.
She credits both the initial on-campus experience and the ongoing interaction with Leavey professors for that improvement. “There are so many opportunities for learning and development out there,” she notes. “You could watch a Ted Talk. There are YouTube videos and LinkedIn learning. So what's the added value for employees to be on campus for a session or to take those two hours to learn each month? It’s spending time with the professors. It’s the networking. It’s the expertise of these faculty and the way the content is delivered.”
Modern Needs and Topics
The Leavey Executive Center and Driscoll’s also have worked to ensure that the training meets modern managerial needs. For instance, one of the main themes for the on-campus kickoff session is emotional intelligence — an of-the-moment managerial topic that sets the scene for all other learning. The hope is that new managers gain self-awareness about their own emotions, and also learn how to identify and relate to those emotions in their team members. That discussion dovetails nicely with exercises about situational leadership, or how to adjust your leadership style based on different employees or varied contexts.
After the first scene-setting session on campus in Santa Clara, Manager Essentials participants meet virtually for monthly webinars, discussions and practical exercises with Leavey professors. One month they dive into best practices in conflict resolution. Another month, they focus on a common challenge for new managers: why, when and how to delegate tasks effectively. The program finishes with a session on coaching and inspiring others.
The program also includes the Clifton Strengths assessment, designed to gauge each individual’s strengths and weaknesses. Guaracha notes how well that assessment fits in with the other themes covered during training - from situational leadership to emotional intelligence.
“One of my strengths from the Clifton assessment is positivity,” she says. “That positivity got me through the challenging times. But it’s situational, and it doesn’t always work so great as a manager. If one of my employees feels like they are struggling, and my response is just a very positive, ‘You’ll get through it,’ they may feel like I’m simply not hearing them. Or worse, I’m ignoring them.”
To Guaracha, practical examples like this show how on-target the elements of Manager Essentials are. New managers don’t just learn. They have chances to practice, then return to the virtual classroom and share their experience with a cohort of colleagues likely going through the same challenges.
“We like to say it's the fundamentals,” Guaracha says. “If you know these skills, you're not going to know everything about being a manager, but you are going to be set up for success.