The past few years have been filled with unprecedented challenges. The pandemic and global recovery fundamentally changed the way we work, and many companies are still struggling to navigate the new normal.
Burberry is meeting these challenges head-on, by doing what it does best: innovate.
As well as pioneering new experiences for their customers, the luxury brand is also using a trailblazing approach to nurturing leaders through science-based learning and development.
A close-knit industry stretched to its limits
Leadership has always been critical to a company’s success, but it is getting harder as the pace of change accelerates. That’s why 70 percent of managers across different industries say they feel overworked and overstressed.
For leaders in fashion, the shift to remote working posed a unique and profound challenge.
Behind every fashion show, launch or event, there is a global team of event managers, marketers, logistics experts, legal specialists, designers, stylists and other creatives who work, hand-in-hand for weeks at a time, to transform ideas into masterpieces.
As lockdowns swept across the world, closing offices, shops and studios, once close-knit teams were now far apart, and luxury retailers were forced to accelerate the growth of their ecommerce channels.
With hard deadlines still to hit, managers were tasked with sparking the same magical energy of face-to-face teamwork through Zoom chats and Slack messages — during a growing public health crisis.
Give leaders the freedom to flourish
Amid the uncertainty sparked by the pandemic and the fluid changes to the business landscape, Burberry launched its purpose and values inspired by its illustrious history and pioneering founder Thomas Burberry.
Thomas founded Burberry at just 21 years old in 1856, designing clothes to protect people from the British weather. For over 160 years, the brand has empowered pioneers and explorers to discover new spaces.
Whether designing trench coats or building L&D programs, Burberry aims to empower others through abundant creativity to grow beyond their boundaries and expectations.
Empowering leaders’ growth and development
The onset of COVID and the launch of Burberry’s new purpose and values presented an opportunity for the company to provide a more consistent leadership development experience.
To equip their senior leaders with the critical skills to help them thrive, Burberry joined forces with behavioral science specialists MindGym to enhance their Executive Development Program this year.
Together, the global cohort of emerging executives discover science-backed ideas, tools and concepts through a series of live, digital and personalized learning experiences — to provide a consistent, impactful experience that could slip smoothly into the hectic schedules of the modern leader.
Catherine Finley, vice president of talent and learning at Burberry, says the flexible, bite-size nature of the sessions allows leaders to learn within the flow of their working day.
“Our product is our lifeblood, so we have to be flexible around our show calendar. We also want to ensure learning grounds us in our values to achieve our strategic ambition while being practical and accessible to our leadership community,” Finley says. “I think the learning experience for us is well-balanced. It gets into the depth of the science behind leadership and learning with dynamic facilitators — with practical, impactful actions that participants could do in between.”
Beyond just teaching the core competencies of leadership, the program goes a step further by helping leaders to unlock the power of “attunement” — the critical meta-skill the world’s most successful leaders use to consistently get the big decisions right in difficult, ever-evolving circumstances.
Kristin Bagnetto, director of global learning and development at Burberry, says it has offered a valuable opportunity for executives to reflect together on how they can grow. To date, 90 percent of participants rated the EDP workshops from “Very good” to ‘Excellent.”
“It’s been beneficial for the leaders to have this unique, productive space to openly discuss their leadership challenges. I have heard from several in the cohort that it’s been an enlightening and validating experience, as they’ve learned that many share the same goals and challenges,” Bagnetto says.
“It also encourages leaders to think, ‘OK, given the circumstances, what do we do about these challenges? How do we move past them?’ They feel empowered as a group, and then they turn collective ideas into individual action through coaching — which has been extremely exciting to see.”
Science-backed coaching turns learning into action
Dedicated one-to-one coaching is a crucial part of EDP that makes the learning truly stick.
Using MindGym’s Performa platform, each person works with their own “precision” coach to address specific leadership challenges they are experiencing — from improving communication to making more inclusive decisions — and master the art of attunement to steer their teams to success.
The Performa platform is based on a science-based precision coaching methodology that combines solution-focused coaching, mastery-oriented learning and behavior enablement to set up leaders to hit their goals quickly and unblock the pathway to sustainable behavior change.
Through precision coaching, Burberry’s participants report a 70 percent increase in their ability to attain their goals.
“The formula for this new approach to EDP is working successfully because it follows up the live virtual learning with one-to-one coaching, where you can practically apply what you’ve learned with an added layer of guidance and accountability,” Bagnetto says. “We have heard delightful stories from the cohort, who have made great strides in just three or four sessions. They’ve quickly identified their leadership challenge, made and executed a game plan with their coach and are seeing real-time results.”
EDP is the first of a growing pipeline of new, science-backed L&D initiatives at Burberry, with more programs in the works.
Combining creativity and science, Burberry is leading the way for developing world class leaders equipped for today’s volatile business world.
