This is part of our ongoing series, Interviews with Learning Leaders.
Lori Muehling is director of organization effectiveness and talent management for energy services provider Exelon Corp., a position she has held since 2010. She previously served in similar roles with Zurich Insurance and Motorola. She has a Ph.D. in organizational development from Benedictine University and a master's in labor and industrial relations from the University of Rhode Island.
What's a lesson you've learned that other L&D professionals can benefit from?
If you need or want the credit, this may not be the right place or field for you. Humility and humbleness, and the ability to take a back seat to others, can be a key to success. That is particularly true in the area of leadership development and organization change. Sometimes, in order for the voice to be heard, the voice needs to be someone else’s. It may be your idea, but it doesn’t matter. You have to be OK with it. It is exciting to see executives excited and see their passion.
What advice would you give to a learning professional who wants to improve the company's leadership?
Get buy-in and ownership from executives. It is best if they are not sitting next to you in rolling out an initiative—you want them out in front and leading the charge, with you behind the scenes orchestrating. At the C level, they should be able to speak about topics as well as or better than the talent management/learning team. And they should have the same or more passion for the topics.
Also, timing is everything. Make sure you have the right learning platform and organization readiness. If you are going to be truly pushing a boulder up a hill, you have to be mindful of timing and readiness; you may need to attack it in a different way.
Tell us about an organizational initiative that you consider successful.
It is leadership development focused on the executive level—key managers and above. We targeted leadership areas and included linking back to practical application at their work site. Not technical training, it was a leadership training focused on specific topics. It included walkaway actions and an action plan integrated into work they would be doing at locations. Leadership could check and ensure follow-through. Executives had something tangible to check in on and touch base with the leaders that attended. It is held at a face-to-face conference, with attention on panel reviews. Small groups did a challenge board that they present back to an executive panel... they present it to a group, are challenged by panel participants, and given a chance to revise it. This gives ownership over the completed product. Part of the process is other participants listening in on the panel presentations, which gives the opportunity to share practices and make improvements. The process has received very positive feedback. We have continued over the last four years to develop new content, but the challenge boards continue to be part of it. It continues to be a good vehicle for sharing and enhancing ideas, and we publish outcomes.
We find this has helped with application of the ideas back at work and best-practice sharing. And we even have received external validation. Every two years in the nuclear business we get evaluated by an external body called INPO. In the talent management and organization development space, we had a significant increase in our scores in the areas of leadership/management, organizational strengths, and team strength for many of our sites over the course of the last four years. This shows a positive impact of the work the team did and the leadership education practices.
Can you tell us about an initiative that didn't quite go as planned?
Yes <chuckle>. We had a training initiative on an “urgent and important” 4-by-4 grid. The concept worked well to demonstrate and differentiate between urgent and important tasks people are faced with every day. What we are finding is that too many tasks are going into the urgent bucket. It is still difficult for leaders to differentiate between truly critically urgent versus important tasks. We continue to use it as a means to planning and prioritization. It is clearly a concept that has practical application, and we just have to continue to work it.
What was the process for implementing core and team competencies?
We started with identifying values. At that point, we didn’t spend a lot of time on individual, critical competencies to ensure performance at an individual level or for teams. We started working with executives to start thinking about implications of talent management, a vision for the organization, and what they wanted out of leadership. Then we evaluated current talent management practices against that vision. We agreed we needed competencies to evaluate individuals and to evaluate how teams were operating. We created executive-level, manager-level, and individual-contributor core competencies that are critical to performance. It is integrated in performance management, selection, and development activities. We are seeing a relationship to improved business performance, and it continues to evolve as we learn and apply.
Any final thoughts?
The people you surround yourself with have a direct impact on your successes. I have had the pleasure to work with a great and talented team. They bring a lot of different experiences and background. It is easy to lose sight of the advantage of having a diverse group of individuals working together—different background and styles. Surrounding yourself with that kind of team brings out the best in them and you. It creates a great aura. I’m not sure we are always as thoughtful as we can be in making these hiring decisions. Sometimes we can be too speedy at hiring people and end up having too many people like us. It is not always expeditious to take the time and think it through, but it is important.
My team now is awesome, and is made up of very diverse and different people. We would not have been able to accomplish what we did over the last four years without this dedicated, focused, and strong team.
Topics: Interviews with Learning Leaders