Future Leaders Experience

I have been the main designer leading this project since its inception in 2019. Since then we have hosted the Future Leaders Experience(FLE) three times in 2019, 2020, and 2022. I helped with early concepts, curriculum development, and facilitation of both completely in-person sessions (before COVID) and two virtual experiences through Miro and the Metaverse. I worked with an academic director, 2 product managers, recruiters, and 3 knowledge managers and presented designs to leadership regularly.

Project Overview

CHALLENGE

Helping the next generation of leadership along their leadership journey. Understand their leadership style and how they can influence the people around them.

SOLUTION

  • A program that brings together a cohort of some of the best up-and-coming leaders for the corporate environment and leading MBA programs.

  • Build a stronger relationship with the next generation of leadership. Introduce them to Spencer Stuart and Leadership Advisory.

  • Create a strong community of leaders that can learn and rely on one another throughout their careers.

ROLE

UX/ UI Designer / Experience Designer / Curriculum Development

TOOLS

Figma / Adobe Suite / Miro / Photography

METHODS

User Journey / Human-Centered Design / Workshop Development / Curriculum Development

Project Summary

As the pace of change increases around the globe due to emerging technologies and evolving circumstances, organizations need future leaders to develop even faster.

The Future Leader Experience (FLE) is a program that helps accelerate the next generation of leadership by providing goal-driven guidance, and action-based learning experiences that push the bounds of their emotional intelligence and connect that growth to leadership competencies like setting and communicating a vision, managing teams, and driving results with increasing scale and complexity.

The development of the Future Leaders Experience has been a combined effort between the Leadership Accelerator at NYU Stern School of Business and the Leadership Advisory Practice of Spencer Stuart. We are committed to improving the future workplace and developing the world’s best leaders. Emerging leaders can stay ahead of the curve if they know how to accelerate their learning and have access to a diverse community of peers to help them thrive.

Leadership Development Stages

Leading Self

Leading Others & Teams

Leading Functions & Groups

Leading the Enterprise

Problems & Goals

When approaching this project it was important for us to think about the problems and goals of both the user and the business side of Spencer Stuart.

User Problem

We’ve heard from both Spencer Stuart’s Leadership Advisory Practice and the Leadership Accelerator at NYU Stern that there is a gap between the time that leaders leave business school and when they eventually end up in leadership roles. This is normally in the first two development stages Leading Self and Leading Others & Teams.

Leaders are not confident that they will reach their leadership goals because they do not understand where they are on their leadership journey or they don’t feel supported by the organization they work for.

Business Problems

  1. How might we create an experience that helps the next generation of leaders along their leadership journey while creating a connection to these leaders for Spencer Stuart? Connecting and building these relationships will ensure that Spencer Stuart has a large, diverse, and highly skilled candidate pool to choose from for our clients.

  2. The landscape and skillsets are evolving faster than most organizations have the ability to keep up with. Employees are increasingly looking for employers that can offer them a space where they can learn and develop. Creating an internal leadership academy that remains up-to-date is hard for companies to accomplish on their own.

User Goals

We want to empower young leaders to take control of their leadership journey. Gain an understanding of how they work and what they are best at. Equip them with the tools to work better with their teams in their different organizations.

Business Goals

  1. Create an experience that can help bridge the gap between the leaders we serve today and the next generation.

  2. Help build the Spencer Stuart brand with the next generation of leaders.

  3. Build a service that we can offer to our clients as an in-house leadership development experience.

Design Principles

Emotional Intelligence

Diverse Peer Group

Through The Future Leaders Experience, we hand-picked and brought together 50 of the top next-generation leaders across functions and industries from some of the world’s most admired organizations. In an immersive virtual experience, participants will be taken through intentionally designed, action-based learning experiences that push the bounds of their emotional intelligence.

Partnered with WeWork to create a 3-day in-person leadership academy in New York City. This was the pilot year of the program focused on vision, growth, and culture. Participants came from a wide range of disciplines and industries including start-ups working within the WeWork community.

Covid sparked the introduction of a completely virtual program in Miro. This was also the beginning of our partnership with NYU Stern School of Business. They were a wonderful partner, bringing more academic rigor to the program. Students at Stern also participate as a part of the leadership accelerator.

The most recent iteration saw the continued partnership with NYU Stern. Building on many of the bright spots from the previous years with the addition of a section on the Metaverse and the role different technologies play in the future of leadership.

Future Leaders Learning Journey

Session Highlights

The Power of your Introduction - Academic study with NYU Stern

Study Participants

Participants listened for 40-45 sec. audio clip of a person ostensibly introducing themselves to a small group at a business conference.

After listening to the clip, participants answered questions about the person who introduced themselves.

‘What’ Condition Vs

‘Intrinsic Why’ Condition (Sample Excerpt)

Academic Measures -What do you think about the person?

Interfaces with the person -

  • High Ability (3 Questions)

  • Motivated at Work (2 Questions)

  • Warm (4 Questions)

  • EQ (4 Questions)

  • Group Motivated (2 Questions)

  • High Potential (2 Questions)

  • Benevolence (4 Questions)

  • Integrity (4 Questions)

Behavioral intentions-

  • Desire to network with them (3 Questions)

  • Would offer them career help (3 Questions)

  • Willingness to be led by them (3 Questions)

On average, people who listened to the “intrinsic why” based introduction rated the person giving the introduction 6.07% more favorably than the person giving the “what” based introduction.

Leading Yourself

To help participants gain insight into how they lead we helped them investigate how past experiences have shaped who they are today. Walking them through the Lifeline Activity while maintaining small groups to create an intimate space for sharing and listening.

Facilitator Example Lifeline -Ashley Zaslav

Participant Lifelines (Miro)

Participants creating their lifelines in Miro

Leading Others & Teams

After understanding your own leadership style and how you developed this style we helped translate this into the Spencer Stuart Leadership framework. It was important to give participants an introduction to the topic and insight into what that means for their teams back at their organizations. We brought on an Organizational Development Consultant to help facilitate this portion of the program. Leading the group through a combination of activities and breakouts that helped them understand the construction and dynamics of a high-performing team. This section served a dual purpose of giving our participants insight but also these were techniques that they could take away and use with the rest of their team. Below are some snippets of this part of the program at a high level. If you would like to see the full case study, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Spencer Stuart Individual Leadership Style Framework

We established a baseline understanding with participants through the Spencer Stuart Invidual Style Framework. Each participant received their own style and the knowledge to understand how they show up at work.

Past Speaker

An important part of the program over the years has been inviting other successful leaders to share their stories with the cohort. For a lot of our participants, this has been a highlight of the program and showcased how many leaders have different paths to get where they are today.

We hosted these speakers in a number of different ways including speaking, fireside chats, and presentations. These sessions had different levels of participant engagement but also focused on providing a learning environment for everyone involved.

What participants had to say…

"The FLE brought together a brilliant, diverse, supportive group of creative hustlers who entered the room with their hearts and minds wide open."

"The FLE gave me the tools to help me focus on how I see myself and what I need to work on as a leader."

"I loved how the content allowed for everyone to be incredibly open and honest about their life, plans, and feelings.”

“MIRO was by far the most engaging and collaborative virtual tool I have ever seen. It meaningfully enhanced the experience and added a level of transparency that helped with flow.”

"I feel that the impact of participating in the program will continue to be felt in new ways over time. However, my immediate feeling is that it has expanded not only my professional worldview but also opened up my network to people I may have otherwise never met or connected with."

“The program curation was excellent in terms of getting people to want to join and encouraging diversity of stage and experience.”

Results

The Future Leaders Experience had seen over 200 official participants over the years. The program has helped young leaders connect, grow, and advance in their respective careers. Across Spencer Stuart, the different iterations have been used on a number of different client projects across multiple industries. We are continuing to develop the offering to bring it to clients as an in-house Leadership Academy.

The second iteration of the program highlighted the use of the virtual collaboration tool Miro during the start of the pandemic. I used the program as a pilot to see how we might transition some of our in-person offerings to a virtual setting while maintaining the same experience for our clients. The pilot was a success and now the firm has adopted an enterprise Miro license and the software is being used throughout the firm when needed.

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