Alexandra North

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(Alexandria, VA), October 4, 2019 – The Association for Talent Development (ATD) honored 59 organizations from Australia, Canada, China, India, Korea, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States as winners of the 2019 BEST Awards. Rosendin, headquartered in San Jose, California, won the first-place ranking. IBM, Tata Consultancy Services, TELUS, and Wipro Limited received ATD’s Best of the BEST Award, which goes to organizations that have won the BEST Award 10 or more times. Companies were recognized during a ceremony held at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on October 3, 2019.“These 59 organizations are driving impact and solving business challenges through talent development practices, and they are doing it in innovative ways,” said Tony Bingham, ATD president and CEO. “Senior leaders in these organizations understand the critical strategic role learning has, and they are committed to investing in the growth and development of their people.”ATD’s BEST Award is the talent development industry’s most rigorous and coveted recognition. The global program acknowledges organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success through talent development.The 2019 BEST Award winners shared their winning strategies at the Learn From the BEST conference preceding the ceremony and are profiled in a special section of the October issue of TD, ATD’s flagship magazine.ATD received entries for the BEST Award from 142 organizations. These organizations submitted quantitative and qualitative information about their talent development practices and programs. Applications were assessed in a rigorous blind review by members of the BEST Awards advisory committee comprised of experts in the field.The 2019 BEST Award WinnersBest of the BEST:14-Year Winner: TELUS—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada13-Year Winner: Wipro Limited—Bangalore, India10-Year Winner: IBM—Armonk, New York10-Year Winner: Tata Consultancy Services—Mumbai, India2019 Rankings1. Rosendin—San Jose, California2. BMO Financial Group—Toronto, Canada3. Consumers Energy—Jackson, Michigan4. Valvoline Instant Oil Change—Lexington, Kentucky5. Tan Tock Seng Hospital—Singapore6. Samsung Electronics—Suwon, South Korea7. Optum Global Solutions India—Gurugram, India8. Persistent Systems—Pune, India9. Florida Blue—Jacksonville, Florida10. Black Knight—Jacksonville, Florida11. Verizon—New York, New York12. Aditya Birla Capital—Mumbai, India13. DISH Network—Englewood, Colorado14. Tata Consultancy Services—Mumbai, India15. Haier Group—Qingdao, China16. AARP—Washington, D.C.17. First Hawaiian Bank—Honolulu, Hawaii18. NTPC Limited—New Delhi, India19. Hilton—McLean, Virginia20. Paycor—Cincinnati, Ohio21. Asurion—Nashville, Tennessee22. NTT (formerly Dimension Data) —London, United Kingdom23. Busey—Champaign, Illinois24. Danone Academy Turkey—Istanbul, Turkey25. Gilbane Building Company—Providence, Rhode Island26. Ryan—Dallas, Texas27. Memorial Health System—Springfield, Illinois28. Procore—Carpinteria, California29. C&A Industries—Omaha, Nebraska30. Sberbank—Moscow, Russia31. UST Global—Aliso Viejo, California32. Infosys BPM—Bengaluru, India33. Cochlear—Sydney, Australia34. Deltek—Herndon, Virginia35. Fisher Investments—Camas, Washington36. Jindal Power—Gurgaon, India37. Papa Murphy’s International—Vancouver, Washington38. Signature Consultants—Fort Lauderdale, Florida39. Navy Federal Credit Union—Vienna, Virginia40. iCIMS—Holmdel, New Jersey41. Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Company—Columbia, South Carolina42. Rapid7—Boston, Massachusetts43. UL—Northbrook, Illinois44. IBM—Armonk, New York45. Lupin Limited—Mumbai, India46. Booz Allen Hamilton—McLean, Virginia47. ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company—Mumbai, India48. Hitachi Vantara—Santa Clara, California49. North Highland—Atlanta, Georgia50. Aimco—Denver, Colorado51. Medidata Solutions—New York, New York52. Krystal—Atlanta, Georgia53. Western & Southern Financial Group—Cincinnati, Ohio54. Walmart—Bentonville, Arkansas55. Plante Moran—Southfield, Michigan56. University Health System—San Antonio, Texas57. Gap—San Francisco, CaliforniaTwenty-two companies on this list have been BEST Award winners for three or more years:BMO Financial Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, Busey, Consumers Energy, Florida Blue, Haier Group, Hilton, Hitachi Vantara, IBM, ICICI, Infosys, Lupin Limited, NTPC Limited, Persistent Systems, Ryan, Samsung Electronics, Tata, TELUS, University Health System, Valvoline Instant Oil Change, Verizon, and Wipro.More information about the 2019 BEST Award winners may be found in the October 2019 issue of TD magazine. Details about the 2020 program will be available in January 2020.ATD thanks program sponsors GP Strategies and Artisan E-Learning for supporting excellence in talent development.About ATDThe Association for Talent Development (ATD) is the world’s largest professional membership organization supporting those who develop the knowledge and skills of employees, improve performance, and help to achieve results for the organizations they serve. Originally established in 1943, the association was previously known as the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). ATD’s members come from more than 120 countries and work in public and private organizations in every industry sector. ATD supports talent development professionals who gather locally in volunteer-led U.S. chapters and international member networks and with international strategic partners. For more information, visit TD.org.###

59 Organizations Win Prestigious ATD BEST Award

This is the second post in a three-part series examining leadership.  (See post 1 and post 3.) In the present business climate, the leaders need to become champions of the “learning organization” as designers, teachers, and stewards (Senge 1990), rather than position themselves as the traditional charismatic hero (Steyrer 1998).  With that in mind, leading others requires constant learning and development (L&D) and designing of knowledge-creative workplaces that foster growth. Agile Skills Required Enter “design thinking.” Research reveals that design-driven companies, such as Apple, Coca-Cola, Ford, IBM, Intuit, Nike, P&G, Starbucks, Starwood, Target, Walt Disney, or Whirlpool, have outperformed America’s S&P 500 large companies by an extraordinary 228 percent over 10 years (DMI 2014). Likewise, being smart about agile working, agile workforce, and agile environments and cultures should be on every leader’s list of priorities. In fact, a 2014 CIPD survey of HR leaders and employees found that improving “leadership and management capability” (64 percent of respondents) and “learning and development” (54 percent of respondents) are top tactics to deliver organizational agility. Meanwhile, respondents in the CIPD research ranked “reward management” (15 percent of respondents) and “increasing workforce diversity” (17 percent of respondents) much lower. In the 2014 report, Change Agents: The Role of Organizational Learning in Change Management, ATD Research concurred that organizations and their leaders should be more adaptive to change. Indeed, the research study found that 61 percent of organizations experience three or more changes per year, but they are not prepared to manage that change. Only 17 percent of respondents rate their enterprises as highly effective at managing change, and a mere 30 percent of organizations have change management teams. The good news is that there is clear evidence that an adaptive, generative, and knowledge-productive learning and development (L&D) approach to leadership development can provide the infrastructure for numerous progressive methods designed to produce adaptive leaders. Coaching and self-managed learning are clear examples of this approach. Why Coaching Works Through my own research into leadership development, I have found that coaching is about building and sustaining high-quality links with others. Extremely good coaches energize, ask, listen, invite, and equip others to develop themselves and achieve their personal and professional best. How does this work? The coach energizes the relationship, while the coachee empowers it. As a result, the link re-energizes the coachee, so that he or she is better able to discern, ideate, transform, and deliver (Tkaczyk 2014). More importantly, numerous coaching skills can be applied routinely with clients, peers, or direct reports. They include setting the stage, bringing forth positive leadership presence, tracking information, identifying issues and key factors, playing back exchanges and checking-in, giving and receiving constructive feedback. In addition, one of the most important tools when working with others is the skill of positive inquiry (Tkaczyk 2014). Meanwhile, Stanford’s 2013 Executive Coaching Survey revealed that nearly 100 percent of CEOs enjoy the process of coaching and receiving leadership advice from professional coaches and outside advisors. Although CEOs are receptive to making changes based on these interventions, the Stanford study found that a majority (66 percent) do not receive leadership advice or coaching. To be sure, the benefits of coaching for developing leadership skills are tangible. ATD Research’s report, The Coaching Approach: A Key Tool for Successful Managers, concluded that, in reality, coaching improves communication (69 percent), raises engagement (65 percent), improves skills-to-performance transfer (63 percent), and stimulates productivity (61 percent). Becoming Self-Managed Learning Leaders As leaders grow, they need to become “L&D crafters” (Tkaczyk 2014). To maximize their leadership presence and learning agility, rooted in design thinking (Austin and Devin 2003, Martin 2009) and positive organizational scholarship (Cameron at el_._ 2003, Cameron and Spreitzer 2012), such L&D crafters may routinely use a “continuing developmental portfolio” comprised of two components: Continuing Executive Development Check-In: A disciplined L&D system, self-managed by an individual who constantly “checks in” with themselves by asking reflective questions regarding any critical and opportunistic incidents that happened in the workplace or outside, daily or in the past week.Design: A natural and drilled L&D mechanism that is self-guided by the leader, in which they constantly “design” their own L&D by asking developmental inquiries regarding what it is that they still want to learn and develop, and how exactly they will execute their development plan. International research conducted by the Learning Entrepreneurs project from September 2011 through September 2013 found that such self-managed learning produces personal gains: upgrades your skills and helps monitor your learning in an evidence-based way (91 percent) and boosts your credibility as a reflective and creative leader (90 percent). It also offers organizational benefits: unlocks HR potential (80 percent) and builds “knowledge-creative” workplaces (73 percent). Interestingly, participants in this global research project represented diverse geographies, including Africa, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and North America. Still, more scientific research is needed, especially as Asia/Pacific leaders were not represented in the study (Tkaczyk 2014). For more on “self-coaching” as a self-managed leadership development method, see my August 2014 TD article, “Daily Check-Ins Stimulate Self-Improvement.” Finally, other approaches for developing leaders for future success can include:cognitive or relational job re-designjob enlargementsposition transfersjob rotationssabbaticalsexternships—professional development through a full-time temporary position at another organizationself-assessment inventories360-degree feedbackpsychological profiling and strengths-findingleaderless group discussions in which a team of multiple leaders is assigned a complex challenge and must work together to work it out within a certain time periodacting and storytellingconcept mappingrepertory gridscritical incident technique, as utilized in job analysis,mentoring·one-on-one Personal Management Interview (PMI) programs, namely purpose-finding and role-negotiation sessions—approximately 60-120 minute each, and preferably twice per month, depending on life cycle rhythm of work. The final installment in this leadership series will address future vistas in leadership.References ATD Research, 2014. Change Agents: The Role of Organizational Learning in Change Management, Association for Talent Development (ATD), Alexandria, VA.  ATD Research, 2014. The Coaching Approach: The Key Tool for Successful Managers, Association for Talent Development (ATD), Alexandria, VA.  Austin, R. and Devin, L., 2003. Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.  Cameron, K., Dutton, J., and Quinn, R. (eds.), 2003. Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.  Cameron, K. and Spreitzer, G. (eds.), 2012. Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.  CIPD, 2014. HR: Getting Smart About Agile Working, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London.  DMI, 2014. “Design-Driven Companies Outperform S&P by 228% Over Ten Years—The DMI Design Value Index,” Dialog, Design Management Institute (DMI), Boston, MA.  Martin, R., 2009. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.  Senge, P., 1990. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Century Business, Random House, London.  Stanford, 2013. 2013 Executive Coaching Survey, Stanford University/The Miles Group.  Steyrer, J., 1998. “Charisma and the Archetypes of Leadership,” Organization Studies, Vol. 19, No. 5, pp. 807-828.  Tkaczyk, B., 2014. “Critical Clarification on Coaching,” International Coach Federation (ICF).   Tkaczyk, B., 2014. “Positive Inquiry Skills: Crafting Vital Coaching Questions," Association for Talent Development (ATD).  Tkaczyk, B., 2014. “Crafting Continuing Learning and Development: A Positive Design Tool for Leadership Development,” Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 5-8.  Tkaczyk, B., 2014. “Daily Check-Ins Stimulate Self-Improvement,” TD, Vol. 68 No. 8, pp. 72-73.