Caesars Entertainment is the world’s largest casino entertainment company and is the global leader in gaming and hospitality. It has 8 casinos across the UK.
Caesars approached Beyond the Barriers to help them develop a leadership development programme for their 25 middle management Casino managers.
The need to develop this management population was highlighted following the introduction of a new competency framework which focused on leadership rather than management.
In order to meet growing customer expectations this population needed to move from being day to-day operational managers to leaders whose role it would be to inspire, develop their people and be future focused.
The business needed this management population to become competent leaders and to adopt a mind-set shift which would enable their people to take ownership and engage with the goals of the organisation.
The Requirement
Working with Caesar’s HR Director, we designed a four module leadership programme that would align employee engagement, customer engagement and bottom line performance.
The four, one day modules focused on the need identified by the business and also as a result of ‘discovery’ visits performed by Beyond the Barriers where we spoke with target audience members to understand the challenges they were facing in their new roles.
The four modules we delivered were:
1. The Role of a Leader
- Employee and Customer Engagement
- Feedback and Experiential Learning
- Leading vs Managing
- Storytelling
2. Leadership Style
- Leadership Style and its impact
- Managing unhelpful behaviours
- Motivational drivers
- Creating High Performing Teams
3. Influencing as a Leader
- Developing a Highly Functional Team
- Communication Styles
- Influencing Styles
- Preparing a Business Case
4. The Innovative Leader
- Innovative Problem Solving Framework
- Lateral Thinking activities
- Problem Solving in the business
There were projects for the delegates to complete between the modules so that they could apply what they had learnt in their working environment. Following module 4, the delegates were asked to present back to their Venue Director all the learnings they took from the 4 Modules, what actions they had taken and how they thought the changes would drive employee engagement, customer engagement, growth and profitability in the business.
The entire programme was delivered to all 25 Casino managers who were divided into two Cohorts, within an eight month period.
The programme is being delivered again with a new cohort of managers.
The impact
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“The experiential activities showed how much we dive into a task without thinking about the purpose of it and what we really need to do. It gave me a new perspective that I don’t have to fight fires, I need to take a step back and develop a strategy before I dive in.”
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“The storytelling was helpful to get me to think about how I can create a story that is related to the situation I need to discuss – it got me to think about how I come across as a human being. This helps me during one to ones.”
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“The project we did after Module 1 really made me focus on specific things I could do to increase employee engagement. I generated ideas and introduced a reward system.”
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“The Service Profit Chain got us to think about the lifetime value of a customer so I got my team to think about our customers in that way.”
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“I converted some people from ‘cynics’ to ‘players’ in the Employee Forum I look after. The cynics were challenging but they are now much more productive.”
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“I have spent time identifying areas that our team needed to work on and how to bond better as a team – using the characteristics of effective teams checklist.”