Seeing Dion Kostiuk’s official appointment notice in the Globe and Mail last month reminded me of the commitment he and Keyera’s senior leadership team made to invest in the development of their leaders.
Keyera is one of the largest independent natural gas and natural gas liquids midstream businesses in Western Canada. As a “midstream” business, Keyera focuses on providing essential services to producers and delivering natural gas liquids and other related products to key markets across North America.
The Challenges
In the fall of 2009, Keyera had completed an Employee Engagement Survey. From the results, they saw a priority to develop their mid-level managers and supervisors with the interpersonal skills that would help them become better communicators and great leaders.
They also wanted their mid-level managers and supervisors to better manage their priorities and work smarter, not harder, when juggling day-to-day responsibilities.
Keyera was experiencing rapid growth, and would be for the foreseeable future, therefore it was important that their leaders were feeling confident in their roles, had a strong sense of work/life balance, and were able to lead employees in a way that built trust and collaboration.
Quality leadership is critical to an organization’s success and finding the right business partner to deliver the training is key. We partnered with AchieveGlobal because their program aligned with our needs and their willingness to be flexible in customizing the approach.
Dion Kostiuk, Vice President, Human Resources and Corporate Services Keyera Corp.
Tools for Leadership
After evaluating what training resources were available in the market, Keyera turned to AchieveGlobal. Together, we designed the following leadership development curriculum for Keyera’s New Leaders, Mid-level Managers/Supervisors, and Directors:
Maximizing Your Supervisory Potential: This one-day program was offered to those being promoted into a leadership role, or were new to their role as a leader.
Coaching Others for Top Performance: This two-day program was offered to those in mid-level manager or supervisory roles. Some of the participants went through Maximizing Your Supervisory Potential before proceeding to this program.
Managing the Performance of Others: This two-day program was offered to those in mid-level manager or supervisory roles. Same as above, some of the participants had also run through Maximizing Your Supervisory Potential. All leaders who go through Coaching Others for Top Performance will also go through this program.
Bridging Strategies to Outcomes: This was condensed into a one-day program and was delivered to the Director level, a year after the training had started with the Mid-Level Managers and Supervisors. This program was used to help link the common language and skills being integrated into the Mid-Level Manager and Supervisor level to their managers – the Director level. It was also a program to help provide tools and skills to the Director level to help communicate strategy to the organization during a time of rapid growth and change.
Custom Full-Day Program: This one-day workshop was designed to help participants continue to use a consistent and common language across the leaders at Keyera Corp. It was a custom program that had the Executive level thinking about their part in leadership development, how to communicate effectively and consistently to all levels, and how to ensure the strategy and goals were clearly understood across the organization.
One-on-one Coaching: Each level of leaders was offered one-on-one coaching after they participated in a leadership development workshop. They were offered a monthly coaching session for four to six months with a professional AchieveGlobal coach . The purpose of coaching was to help support all level of leaders with work/life balance and to help reinforce and sustain the skills learned in the training, long-term.
The training and the coaching has made me change my approach over the past year. I am doing things differently and am perceived differently because of it.Manager, Keyera
Results
The AchieveGlobal program has delivered a focused and consistent approach to developing great leadership skills along with coaching support to reinforce and guide a leader’s development.
Keyera’s goal to improve employee engagement, bench strength and overall organizational performance is ongoing and AchieveGlobal is excited to continue to be a part of it.
As a testament to their hard-work and dedication to people development, Keyera was named one of Alberta’s Top 60 Employers for the second consecutive year. Among a list of criteria, Keyera was recognized for its engaged company culture and variety of HR programs such as ongoing professional development opportunities.