The client

The central Human Resource team in Deutsche Telekom is organized in different chapters as part of an agile organizational structure. The Chapter Future Leadership Offerings is led by Sabine Weishaupt and encompasses all leading experts responsible for strategic, global and scaled up solutions in leadership development, diversity, equity and inclusion as well as employee well-being.

The challenge

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As HR, we have been supporting and educating the organization throughout the pandemic, constantly fostering transformation activities and teaching our people and business leaders to stay resilient in a world of exponential change and pressures. To maintain the strength to persevere and the energy to keep giving, investing in ourselves through the Resilient Leadership Program was essential. We cannot give what we do not have, which is why resilience became one of our strategic pillars for 2023. By learning and practicing new habits, recharging, and staying up to date with the latest trends and insights on resilience, we sought to integrate these insights into our products and workflows. Our goal was to achieve a win-win for everyone involved.

/ Sabine Weishaupt, Head of Future Leadership Design

Our solution

LeadUp and the Chapter co-created a Resilient Leadership Program centered around The Resilience Model and its 12 holistic journeys. Initially an in-depths questionnaire was sent out to all 35 HR-leaders to get an overview of their current challenges. Based on the results, the following program was designed, with a focus on Self-Care and building Resilience for the HR-leaders over a period of 5 months:

The journey started with having all the HR leaders signed up to LeadUp Platform, accessing +100 resilience activities covering Body, Heart, Mind and Spirit.

We started a competition dividing the chapter members into 7 different teams where they individually worked on the activities and collectively scored points and shared their progress with pictures, text and likes on their internal Teams Channel.

The first competition was launched in April and lasted till the in-person Resilience Training in June. The second started from June and ended in September, where the top 3 team winners were announced.

The impact

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The journey has been transformative for our chapter on many levels. The concept and guidance throughout the journey have provided an exceptional experience. The process has been state-of-the-art, beginning with a light and fun approach that allowed for discovery and exploration of the abundant opportunities on the LeadUp platform. This ensured consistency through regular engagement in our chapter calls. The platform offers small, high-quality interventions and hands-on, easy-to-try practices that cater to individual needs, encouraging regularity and the development of small habits. Enriching the platform with specific challenges for our team has fostered team spirit and targeted our most common needs.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              A highlight of the journey was the onsite Resilient Leadership Training. Ole Hoyer from LeadUp professionally moderated the workshop with an extraordinary ability to read the room, offering support and knowledge while also courageously leading the team outside their comfort zones. The workshop had a unique dynamic – both heavy and light, serious and funny, with general and very personal insights at the same time. Conversations, whether on the floor or during regular check-ins, have shifted, often starting with the sharing of new insights or successes in new practices. The team is now more aware of the many facets of resilience. Development talks almost always include goals derived from the program, and product design is increasingly influenced by strategies to implement and integrate insights from the resilience program into the customer experience. The intervention has been highly successful, with seamless collaboration with LeadUp both virtually and onsite. The learning experience and its impact have surpassed our expectations.

 

/ Sabine Weishaupt, Head of Future Leadership Design