New members have joined the leadership team in Novo Nordisk China and in order to onboard the new members and to create stronger bonds between the existing members, we did a “Defining Moments” exercise where each member talks about an important moment in life that has made them who they are today as a person or leader.
Normally when I run this exercise, I give people 20 minutes to tell one or two stories but due to a tight agenda each person only had 5 minutes. I had never tried this before, and I was really nervous about if this would work. And how do I tell people that they are over time when they are telling something important from their life…..?
But no need to be nervous. The team was super disciplined, well prepared and managed at the same time to tell honest and touching stories. It was amazing how much you get to know people in 5 minutes – a fantastic learning!
Focused leadership behaviors needed to close gap
Competition is fierce in China and meeting this year’s targets is a tough challenge, so there was a need for the new leadership team to agree on what are the most important leadership behaviors that we need to focus on right now. Each leader selected the three most important and then we clustered, prioritized and agreed on these 3 most important leadership behaviors:
This was simple and actionable behaviors, and it was important for the new team to agree on that this is our focus.
Open and honest feedback
With the HR & Communications team I ran a workshop where we gave feedback to each other. The purpose of the workshop was to help each other grow and to glue the team more together by being open and giving honest feedback.
We were 10 people, and each member of the team had prepared one core quality and one development area per person, so each person received 9 pieces of feedback.
It is an intense moment when you are in the hot chair and receive feedback. You could think that each person receives 9 different pieces of feedback, but this is not the case. People observe more or less the same so strengths and development areas stand very clear and the path for development is there.
The openness about the team’s strengths and weaknesses gives a tremendous opportunity to help each other grow and the fact that we are all aware of the development areas makes it much easier to give feedback.
After two days with intense workshops Vice President of HR & Communication, Shuhong Wang, concluded:
“Carsten has done amazing work in the two days intensive workshop. I never thought that within 4 hours one could get into know each other quite deep and work out leadership behavior that is shared by the team. Carsten is very good in setting up a safe space that make the team open to give feedback to each other. “
