Case Study

BL Companies

Customized Leadership Development Gets Results

Following a significant leadership transition, BL Companies retained Praxis for a multi-year engagement to: strengthen the team of employee-owners leading the company; develop leadership capacity at multiple levels of the company; surface a strategic vision for the business; and develop a culture of ownership, employee participation and accountability

BL Companies is a leader in delivering high-quality, integrated architecture, engineering and environmental services to public and private clients for land development, building design and infrastructure projects.

Goals of Engagement

Define the knowledge and skills the company needed to excel financially and to create a culture of open communication, accountability, responsibility and ownership

Design and conduct a series of educational retreats, which offered high-relevance training on styles of leadership, effective communication, and goal-setting

Develop the team of top leaders into a high-performing, strategically oriented group

Deliver one-on-one coaching for key leaders to learn more about their leadership style, the impact of their behavior on others, and concrete means to improve their leadership performance

Create continuing learning groups, where participants can have ongoing interaction with top leaders and learn about ways to deepen their leadership effectiveness

Design and conduct annual planning retreats to develop and implement BL’s business strategy

Design and deliver a communications program on the ESOP and how to create an ownership culture

Results

Created a clearly articulated and widely understood competency model that defines leadership success behaviors for BL Companies

Realized measurable improvement of knowledge and skill among top leaders on key leadership competencies that enabled the company to achieve strategic goals

Established an effective and resilient leadership team able to successfully navigate the company through the economic downturn

Developed a strategic plan to guide the company’s internal operations and external business development

Generated broad understanding across the company of the ESOP and each employee’s role in creating an ownership culture