As Thomas began to look for leadership curriculum that fit the goals of Somos and its employees, she thought of Interaction Associates (IA). Years earlier she had completed IA’s Facilitative Leadership program, an experience which led to her own certification as an in-house trainer of the content.

 “I attended IA’s Facilitative Leadership training 25 plus years ago and I remember it being an inspiring, I mean life-changing, event,” Thomas recalled. 

“I wanted that for the team. I wanted leadership training to not just be a ‘training’; I wanted it to be a transformative experience because we are trying to transform our organization."

“As I was looking at the Facilitative Leadership principles and the principles of Agile organizations, they matched,” she reiterated. “Even though the content itself has been around for quite a while, it reflected exactly where we wanted to go. It was a natural recommendation for me to suggest that we adopt Facilitative Leadership at Somos.”

In January 2020, the Somos executive leadership team introduced a new performance management process which encouraged a more practical approach to goal setting, meetings, commitments, coaching others, delivering and receiving feedback, and creating pathways to action. When Thomas went into conversation with IA to design the follow-on training, it was important to Somos that the learning be aligned with the Agile principles they were in the process of rolling out across the organization.

Somos and IA developed a plan which included one 90-minute training session each month to augment the skills employees had learned. Every follow-on session would focus on one of the Seven Practices of Facilitative Leadership, refreshing the original content while providing additional tools and applied practices to strengthen the learning. Everyone agreed that Thomas, who had been re-certified as a trainer during the course of the initial delivery, was uniquely positioned within the company to teach the follow-on sessions. 

Somos frequently conducts employee surveys to understand what their managers are doing well and where there’s opportunity for improvement. The responses they receive continue to highlight the success of the training.

“Twice a year, we survey our employees on their experiences with performance management. Each survey, and certainly at the end of the year after Facilitative Leadership was implemented, we saw a significant improvement in the co-ownership (leaders and employees) of performance discussions as reflected in the quality of feedback and performance management discussions,” Thomas said. “And that’s what we were hoping to accomplish, that there would actually be a dialogue – not a monologue – a dialogue.” 

Thomas has been left with a renewed sense of conviction in the quality of Facilitative Leadership training and how transformative the experience still is for people. 

“There are not many training courses I’ve gone through that continue to be relevant 25 years later. I think the success of Facilitative Leadership is due to the core principles upon which I believe it was built, which was to say that everyone has value in the organization, hearing their voices matter, and when all of those voices are heard, there will be improved productivity and engagement. All of that shows up in results.”