There are many programs on the market – very few report the results of the program. Does Sustainable Managers® produce a result or not, or rather, do the managers become better managers? Will they be more sustainable?

The effects we achieve

In the images below, you can follow the participants’ development workshop by workshop (image 1) as well as their manager’s evaluation of the development during the year they did the program (image 2).

The additional estimate

After each workshop, the chief participant makes an estimate of which new additions he has now adopted. The purpose of the additional assessment is to create a picture of the manager participant’s development process that also strengthens the manager participant’s responsibility for his own learning. The bonus estimate is based on the factors that the Stockholm School of Economics has identified as important for a manager’s sustainability.

The development in all areas is significant. Self-awareness and acting in change seem to be at the top. The balance between work and private life is somewhat lower. Is it because the stress in the labor market has become “normal”?

The starting point and the results

It is important to get a measure of what is achieved in a management development program. With the help of 29 questions within a number of aspects of management and leadership, both the manager participant and its closest manager assess the starting situation. This type of assessment is repeated after the completion of the program to get an indication of where the participant stands both before and after the program (the assessment of the closest managers helps to validate the result).

The results show that even good managers develop. The managers perceive their participants as more competent than they themselves do. This may reflect low self-confidence in the task as a manager or that the participant feels better about himself. The spread is relatively large behind these average values ​​as the bars show.

Previous participants’ perception of the program several years later

How do we achieve the results?

It is above all our pedagogy that produces achieved effects (the reflection), but also the building of an own platform of knowledge about how I myself work and what knowledge I have with me through everything I have been through (increased self-esteem and confidence in my own abilities ) as well as the supervised work at home with all parts of the manager’s job (the lead areas).

A. The pedagogy that we use

The pedagogy we use is effective. It is based on you making knowledge out of all the experience you already have and learning to, as your experience grows, modify and refine the knowledge with the help of reflection on the effects you achieve. We add theoretical reasoning to what you and the other participants bring up. You receive guidance from us and other participants in your development process, which you choose yourself, set goals for and take responsibility for. We drive the process, but with us you can’t sit back and think we’re doing the work for you. You interview the people you work with to understand how they cope with their work given the conditions you give them as a manager. This program is based on the Scandinavian working culture, which differs in essential parts from, for example, the hierarchical American one.

Your own platform as a manager

You also spend time on your own self-image. Do you have a sufficiently stable platform within you to stand on? How do you make it more stable? A manager’s self-esteem is important and not something any of us get for free. (Self-esteem, Masreliez-Steen, Modig, 2004)

C. Contents of the program

The group is a maximum of 10 people. We work vertically with management development, so that you learn the difference in work content at different management levels as well as handling organizational issues that are always present in all operations. We focus on how you:

• lead operations
• lead employees
• lead changes
• lead yourself (the Lead areas are based on research by Ekvall and Arvonen and others)
• lead your own belief in your ability as a manager, (Self-efficacy, Albert Bandura).

Upper-level executive participants learn what lower-level managers in the organization need in order to deliver. Lower-level participants learn how managers with strategic responsibility reason, so that they can better break down strategic goals to their own operations.

By working with all the areas that create sustainability in managers, we help participants deal with the changing situation in which they work.

What did the participants get from the program?

After the program, you have 60 new tools to continue to use in your daily life, a better understanding of your leadership style, its strengths and weaknesses, and your work group supports you in the implementation of what you are there for; the assignment to the customer (internal or external). You have learned how you can continue to run your own development process and the processes that will lead to your delivery given the assignment.

The leaders of the program

The presenters are either psychologists, behavioral scientists or economists. Everyone has their own experience of managing operations over time. Kontura has worked in many different working cultures around the world, which is why we have great respect for the cultural differences that exist in working life.