Why MSD Invested in Leadership Training—And How It’s Paying Off
How does investing in leadership development drive organizational performance?
For MSD, it meant fostering stronger teams, enhancing communication, and equipping nearly 150 leaders with the tools to navigate growth and change. In this Q&A, Lynne Fleming, Chief Human Resources Officer at MSD, shares how the partnership with LeadingBetter is helping build a resilient, high-performing workforce.
Q+A with Lynne Fleming, Chief Human Resources Officer at MSD
Originally published in September 2023
Improving Louisville’s quality of life through innovation, technology, and a commitment to waterway protection takes leadership. After consecutive years of rapid growth and organizational restructuring, MSD turned its focus inward to help its team build resilience, achieve peak performance, and grow a more unified leadership structure.
We spoke with MSD’s Chief Human Resources Officer, Lynne Fleming, to learn more about why MSD views leadership development as a competitive advantage, and how LeadingBetter training is helping their workforce drive company performance.
LeadingBetter: Why leadership training or upskilling, and why now?
Lynne:
At MSD, we believe our work environment must be respectful, collaborative, safe, and promote high-quality work. To accomplish this, we also believe in a culture of continuous learning. As a technical trade company, most of our professional development has been focused on technical skills and industry-focused continuing education. Recently, we adopted a different approach to professional development, one that focused on management and leadership training.
As we’ve grown to nearly 700 employees across multiple locations and reorganized our teams, we promoted a large number of employees into supervisor and managerial roles, which requires new and different skill sets. While we’ve developed an internal training and development program that provides a great foundation for leaders at all experience levels, we knew we didn’t have the bandwidth to fulfill this need internally with our growth. That’s when we brought in the Leadership Louisville Center and the LeadingBetter training.
LB: What brought MSD to the Leadership Louisville Center and the LeadingBetter program?
Lynne:
As a graduate of Focus Louisville and Leadership Louisville, I was already familiar with the high-quality training programs the Leadership Louisville Center provided to the region. In my personal experience, the training I received didn’t spoon-feed me tons of data, but it was a real-world application of skills that addressed leadership problems. Additionally, we knew that we weren’t going to be able to create and lead the training by ourselves. So, the idea of the Center supplementing what we were doing in-house encouraged us to move forward.
LB: What LeadingBetter courses or programs did MSD use?
Lynne:
With the high volume of promotions across the organization, there were several key leadership topics that MSD wanted to address: effective communication, leading teams, collaboration, and conflict management. Knowing that LeadingBetter offered private training allowed us to identify a course that we could bring in-house and roll out across the organization. After reviewing the LeadingBetter offerings, we decided the Developing and Leading High-Performance Teams course curriculum fit our organization’s needs.
To accommodate the needs of our workforce, we brought LeadingBetter to our team during different days and times of the week. Ultimately, we were able to help over 140 supervisors, managers, and directors completed the Developing and Leading High-Performance course over several months.
In addition to this private training for a large number of leaders, we used the open-enrollment course catalog to target specific skill development for individual leaders, as well as the Center’s cohort programs for our executives and high-potential talent.
LB: What changes has the company experienced since completing the program?
Lynne:
More than anything, I notice the way people in management talk about their jobs and the challenges they bring. The level of conversations our management team is having is so much more insightful and intentional.
As a group, I believe we’ve all realized that soft skills are the skills that need the most work. I had one construction supervisor say that emotional intelligence was key to being able to effectively supervise his crews. He knows we can always teach someone how to lay a pipe, but real growth comes from talking to an employee that may be having problems at home. It seems so simple, almost common sense when you say it out loud, but providing these employees with these tools has given our team a deeper connection across the company.
LB: It sounds like the company is really embracing management and leadership training. Looking to the future, how do you see your continued partnership with LeadingBetter and the Leadership Louisville Center contributing to MSD’s growth trajectory?
Lynne:
Our company has already witnessed the benefits of the LeadingBetter program. As MSD continues to grow, we believe it’s crucial to empower our employees to be the best and brightest so that we can better serve our community. By partnering with LeadingBetter, we are increasing our organization’s effectiveness with confident and well-equipped employees, who are ready to face any leadership challenges.
CreatING WORKPLACES THAT WORK.
Your company needs leaders trained in the fundamentals. Let us help design a talent development program that fits your unique needs. Our programs are modeled to help people focused companies – regardless of industry, sector, or level of experience. Whether you’re just starting a workforce development program, or you’re looking to fill any gaps, we’re here to propel your people forward.
Developing & Leading High-Performance Teams is just one of the courses available as group training for your organization; which can be delivered as virtual sessions, on-site at your company, or at our state-of-the-art training facility. This course and others is also offered on our open-enrollment course calendar.