The ability to lead with empathy, sensitivity, and insight has great potential to propel organizations, and the individuals within them, to success. Dallas College, one of the largest community colleges in Texas, serving more than 125,000 students and 6,000 employees, experienced significant change and change management as it unified seven distinct colleges into one unique institution. With this complex system transformation came the critical need for empathetic, insightful leaders to guide both student and employee communities toward achievement of the college’s mission of transforming lives and communities through higher education.

The Need

Gallup’s (n.d.) annual employee engagement poll shows that a crucial factor in engaged employees is the opportunity to learn and grow in their roles. This same poll indicates that engaged employees are more productive, experience improved overall wellness, and are retained at a higher rate. However, only 32 percent of American workers feel engaged at work (Gallup, n.d.). The recruiting firm Zippia (Kizer, 2023) reports that 83 percent of organizations believe leadership training is important, but only 5 percent of organizations have implemented any type of formal leadership training. Of the companies that do provide leadership development, nearly half (46 percent) only provide it to their most senior executives (Development Dimensions International, 2024). These statistics run counter to employees reporting a strong desire to invest in their professional growth, with 70 percent of frontline workers saying they want to improve their leadership skills within the next year (Belcher, 2023). Furthermore, Pew Research Center (Minkin, 2023) reports that 55 percent of Americans say their boss is either good or fair at helping them develop professionally.

An organization’s choice to encourage, support, and train leadership comprehensively throughout their employee ranks has broad impact on more than engagement. Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning (2023) published a report that showed organizations that failed to develop, emphasize, and focus on leadership characteristics such as empathy and integrity greatly underperform their competitors in revenue and customer experience.

The Plan

Dallas College knew that in order to advance its mission and support the economic viability of the Dallas-Fort Worth region, while also building a culture that is a certified Great Place to Work, it would need to prioritize and support leadership training at all levels of the organization. Of its approximately 6,000 employees, roughly 10 percent are direct supervisors. Thus, it was imperative that leadership competencies were taught comprehensively to support the needs of the managers while also preparing for growth as the college looked toward becoming an employer of choice and 22nd century global institution.

Dallas College also wanted to respond to the needs of its employees. As the institution was consolidated, annual employee engagement surveys were used to track the change management process and respond to opportunities identified by the internal college community. While employees supported their direct supervisors and enjoyed their immediate teams, communication and pathways for growth were identified as opportunities within the college framework.

The Solution

Dallas College has spent considerable time and resources developing pathways that meet students where they are and providing easy-to-access enrollment plans and career pathways to ensure that students are set up for success upon graduation. The college used that knowledge to design Leaders at all Levels (LaaL), a program to equip employees to upskill and evolve their abilities and advance to the next level in both their personal and professional lives. LaaL training pathways provide instruction on elements such as organizational leadership, cross-functional collaboration, self-awareness, and team empowerment. These offerings are designed to create a high-performance learning culture that equips managers to lead their teams, breaks down barriers, and supports institutional alignment across all departments.

To support this new focus on leadership training, Dallas College set a goal for 80 percent of its people leaders, or staff with direct reports, to complete 16 hours of leadership training a year to enhance accountability among managers and develop strong pipelines for the future. Gartner (2024) reports that only 23 percent of human resource leaders are confident their organization has rising leaders who can fulfill the future needs of the organization. Dallas College specifically designed LaaL with future needs in mind, providing four pathways that focus on different leadership elements: Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading Across, and Leading Organization. These development tracks address some of the greatest challenges in leadership development, such as change management and building trust (Gartner, 2024), setting Dallas College and its employees up to meet the challenges of the future with confidence.

Leading Self

Leading Self focuses on preparing future leaders by teaching essential principles, practices, and behaviors. Key topics include emotional intelligence, communication, time management, and leadership presence. This pathway is designed for high-potential individual contributors seeking future leadership roles. Research shows that 90 percent of high performers demonstrate high emotional intelligence, which accounts for 58 percent of job success across various roles (Linder, 2024). Dallas College prioritized holistic development, recognizing that today’s leaders need resilience and self-awareness to navigate challenges with composure in a constantly changing environment. Curriculum for this track was developed with the goal of creating perspective around leadership and the different expectations and pathways around management. It is taught by Dallas College’s Learning and Development staff and augmented by on-demand options through professional development companies such as Academic Impressions and LinkedIn Learning.

Leading Others

Leading Others focuses on management basics, including transitioning from a subject matter expert to a manager, setting performance expectations, and navigating difficult performance conversations with direct reports. This pathway is designed for new managers who are entering their first people leader position. The curriculum covers five key processes: recruiting, onboarding, managing, developing, and recognizing. Leaders who excel at these people processes have better teams, with employee productivity increasing by 25 percent according to the Corporate Executive Board (2005), now Gartner. Additionally, Leading Others equips Dallas College leaders with Situational Leadership model tools to maintain a high level of success and engagement within the organization. Research by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman (1999) suggests that good managers create and sustain employee satisfaction. This research reveals that the best managers treat every employee as an individual and choose to focus on employee strengths instead of weaknesses.

Leading Across

Leading Across was developed for supervisors leading large or multiple teams as they work through major college initiatives by connecting across the organization, breaking silos, and fostering collaboration. Topics range from building relationships, managing change, and planning effectively to prioritizing at multiple levels and motivating teams. Improving collaboration across Dallas College’s four functional areas of Operations, Academics, Student Success, and Advancement and Innovation is crucial to supporting the college’s 2030 strategic goals. When collaboration is ineffective, the results are detrimental to goals and objectives. As Gartner (2024) points out, when collaboration inflicts pain, the business is 37 percent less likely to exceed revenue and profit targets, defeating the whole point of the exercise.

Leading Organization

The cohort developed for our executive managers, Leading Organization, focuses on change management, community building, and mentorship. Leading Organization was provided in person and launched as a pilot prior to the other three functions of the program. Dallas College wants its executives to be equipped to develop strategic and systemic perspectives that empower others to reach their full potential. Forbes (Sonnenberg, 2023) reports that the highest impact on engagement is whether employees believe their leaders care about them, but that only 28 percent strongly believe their leaders genuinely care about their health and wellbeing. As Dallas College looks to the future, one of its key opportunities is to bridge the gap between its top leadership staff and its diverse, multi-faceted employee community. Many staff and faculty spend their working hours investing in student activity, community development, and maintenance of our grounds. Due to the lack of cohesive roles in the organization, it is crucial to find alternative ways to build community and vision among our employees to successfully advance our mission.

The Results

In academic year 2023-2024, 428 attendees participated in LaaL training sessions: 51 at Leading Self modules, 150 at Leading Others, 83 at Leading Across, 47 at Leading Organization, 58 at the Crucial Conversations workshop, and 39 at coaching and feedback workshops. Employees streamed 5,079 hours of our on-demand offerings on Academic Impressions and LinkedIn, while our designated professional development days added 10,393 professional development hours to employee transcripts. An average of 69 percent of Dallas College’s people leaders across the institution completed 16 hours of professional leadership training in the first year of LaaL.

The Future

Dallas College views Leaders at all Levels as a stepping-stone to greater impact in the community. As the strength of our employees’ leadership acumen expands, the college looks to scale the program to make it transferrable to other organizations and schools. LaaL represents just one of Dallas College’s efforts to stay true to its mission of providing ways to transform lives through higher education.

References

Belcher, D. (2023, March 31). Frontline leaders are hungry for development. Can organizations deliver? Leading the Way. Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/frontline-leaders-are-hungry-for-development-can-organizations-deliver

Buckingham, M., & Coffman, C. (1999). First, break all the rules: What the world's greatest managers do differently. Simon & Schuster.

Corporate Executive Board. (2005). Navigating leaders across critical upward transitions: A Quantitative Analysis of the Drivers of Transitioning-Leader Success. Learning and Development Roundtable® Leadership Transitions Series—Volume III.

Development Dimensions International. (2024). Global leadership forecast 2023. https://www.ddiworld.com/global-leadership-forecast-2023

Gallup. (n.d.). Employee engagement indicators. https://www.gallup.com/394373/indicator-employee-engagement.aspx

Gartner. (2024, July 25). 2023 Leadership Capability Benchmark Report.

Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. (2023). Leadership reframed for the workplace of the future: 10 capabilities and 7 superpowers. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Report_LeadershipCapabilities_Mar2023.pdf

Kizer, K. (2023, June 29). 35+ powerful leadership statistics [2023]: Things all aspiring leaders should know. Zippia. https://www.zippia.com/advice/leadership-statistics

Linder, K. (2024, August 6). Emotional intelligence statistics: Key driver of workplace success and satisfaction. WifiTalents. https://wifitalents.com/statistic/emotional-intelligence

Minkin, R. (2023, November 13). Most American workers say their boss is capable, confident and fair. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/13/most-american-workers-say-their-boss-is-capable-confident-and-fair

Sonnenberg, S. (2023, July 24). How leaders impact employee engagement. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/07/24/how-leaders-impact-employee-engagement

Louis Burrell is Chief Human Resource Officer at Dallas College in Dallas, Texas.

Opinions expressed in Leadership Abstracts are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the League for Innovation in the Community College.