Building Support for Leaders of Leaders
Discovering what senior leaders really need and building cross-function collaboration at Maersk
Client
Maersk
Company Size
110,000+ employees
Project Structure
Retainer
Decision Maker
Head of People Solutions
Function
Leadership Institute
Challenge
New leaders of leaders at Maersk, both internal promotions and external hires, were taking longer than expected to become effective in their new roles. ​
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Outcome
A product for leaders of leaders to get crucial support along three axes early in their tenure: peer support, self-care, and communication with their managers.
Background
Maersk promotes or hires hundreds of leaders into first-time "leader of leaders" position each year. Many of these leaders struggle to become effective in their role in the first 6 months of their tenure. The Maersk Leadership Institute and other teams initially hypothesized that this was primarily due to a skill gap.
Approach
We joined a team comprised of senior members of the Maersk Leadership Institute, operational team members from different regions, a member of the leadership consultancy RBL, and a Scrum Master. Our Anglemap team led the overall approach and design process of the project, with RBL lending its leadership expertise and the Scrum Master helping to structure the work.
By involving everyone on the wider team, including the operational team members and senior Maersk employees, in all major phases of the design process, such as research interviews, synthesis, and concept development, we were able to build cross-functional ownership of the insights the team extracted as well as the concepts it developed.
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In a crucial moment, we gathered the heads of all the functions that deal with the leader of leaders population early in their tenure, and constructed the first joint journey map of the first parts of the leadership experience. This revealed that new leaders of leaders were being inundated with requirements from all sides that had until that point not fully coordinated their approaches.
Solution
From the insights gathered from in-depth interviews with both new and experienced leaders of leaders from a wide range of regions and functions, it became clear that rather than a skill gap, new leaders were facing three main issues, each of which the team addressed with a specific intervention.
First, many leaders felt overwhelmed by the expectations and requirements made of them, and due to their senior position received very little personal support. We found many leaders to be neglecting their own well-being in the first several months of their tenure, which often led to burnout. The team addressed this issue by creating a self-reflection journal and space for leaders to take a step back.
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Second, many new leaders felt alone and without a strong support network. The team addressed this with peer coaching groups that integrated the self-reflection journals and offered leaders an opportunity to support each other and to develop a peer network, which was cited as one of the most impactful factors for successful leaders.
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Finally, given their very senior positions, many leaders struggled with facing unclear expectations, and managers that either did not have the time to support them or expected them to hit the ground running without much direction. Inspired by a single leader we interviewed, the team created a structure for a "transition letter" authored by the leader's manager that laid out expectations, priorities, important contacts, and logistical basics. This extremely simple solution turned out to be particularly impactful despite costing virtually no resources and involving neither technology nor a learning intervention.