The art of shaping leaders
emlyon business school transforms executive education into a strategic lever with tailor-made programs to support companies in their evolution and the maturation of their leadership, like Capgemini with the Making Leaders program.
"Training is suitable for an individual, but when a company, with all its management, comes to see us, we can't do training, we have to support a transformation." These words of Professor Thierry Nadisic, Doctor of Management, researcher in organizational behavior at emlyon and academic director of custom programs, are of paramount importance. They mean that to meet the needs of companies, executive education cannot be satisfied with the training courses in its catalogue. The school's continuing education offer has the capacity to respond to the specific needs and contexts of companies to help them, as Thierry Nadisic puts it, to transform.
Tailor-made programs at emlyon
In total, more than 100 tailor-made training programs are carried out each year by emlyon. To create them, the usual transmission of knowledge by a teacher, or peer learning, is not enough. Thomas Misslin, project manager of tailor-made programs at emlyon, and Thierry Picq, academic director of emlyon, director of innovation and professor of management and human resources, explain in an article for the Harvard Business Review: "While the practice of mentoring and the more or less formalized exchange of experiences between peers certainly contributes to the development of leaders, They do not exhaust the subject of acquiring one's famous soft leadership skills [...]. The environment is indeed marked by such unpredictable and accelerated changes that it is unwise to develop business leaders exclusively on the basis of proven recipes or practices in a context that is often already outdated." In other words, a changing context leads to the need for ad hoc training. "A tailor-made program is like haute couture, co-designed between the school and the company. We start with a strategic diagnosis in order to understand the company's positioning and strategy. Then, we determine the objectives of the program, its target and the expected impact. During the design phase, we define together the educational objectives, the content and the speakers. After specifying the process for selecting participants, the company validates the model," says Dr. Christine Baldy-Ngayo, Associate Dean of Executive Education. Very often, tailor-made programs are based on an experiential logic: you learn by doing.
Capgemini : transforming managers into leaders
This stance has attracted more than one company, including the consulting and IT services company Capgemini. In 2018, it had begun a major internal transformation process aimed at developing the leadership of its managers in uncertain and changing contexts. As soon as emlyon was chosen by Capgemini, Thomas Misslin called on Claire Moreau, affiliate professor in management and leadership development, consultant and coach at Humans Matter. "Originally, Capgemini had a leadership model but had the objective, for people with a high level of experience, to develop skills centered around the three dimensions of the leadership model: developing talent, undertaking and sparking creativity and innovation, and inspiring and creating value in its ecosystem." Armed with these requirements, they worked hand in hand with Capgemini to develop a new specific training program: Making Leaders. "It's a real team effort, it's hard to distinguish what comes from emlyon or Capgemini," insists Claire Moreau. The emlyon and Capgemini teams are in two bodies: "the project team, which meets every four to six weeks to provide continuous management, and the strategic steering committee, led by Capgemini's Learning & Development division, which includes the HR departments of Capgemini France's entities as well as alumni of the program." and allows the program to evolve from year to year, learning each time from previous classes.
Learning by doing: a striking approach
These different sessions, led by a team of coaches and affiliated teachers, develop skills, but also "confidence, openness to others and an ability to share which are very important". The experiential approach adopted is richer in lessons and allows us to learn from the real situations of the learners. Between sessions, regular video conferences and weekly action tips facilitate the application of learnings and keep participants engaged. For Nicolas Dignoire, Director of Security and Head of the Cyber Defense Unit at Capgemini, who is one of the more than 800 alumni who have followed the Making Leaders program, "one of the strengths of the program is the hands-on approach: you do, you try, you fail, you give back, you start again. During the practical workshops, we realize the effectiveness of what is taught. We see it on ourselves, on others, we can test it every day." Other strengths for Nicolas Dignoire are "the finesse of the supervision", and the last stage of the programme, namely the flight agreement which gives the certification and encourages evaluation by peers rather than by the trainers. Johan Bailleul, Group Employee Relations Lead at Capgemini, from the sixth Making Leaders class, agrees: "It was the take-off convention, on the last day, that made the biggest impression on me. We find ourselves with more than 150 leaders and we can see the path taken by each one, the work of their cohort and how others react to what we have to offer them. The sum of all this means that you feel a level of positive energy on this day that I have rarely experienced anywhere else." After the program, Nicolas felt better self-confidence: "You put your instincts into words, you assume who you are. What was different is no longer incomprehensible or illegible, it becomes logical, and we have practical tools to refocus, channel our energy and adapt our posture." For his part, Johan also felt that he had changed: "I have changed a lot of things in the way I manage and interact. I have adapted my communication and am also more attentive to emotions, to others as well as to my own: I verbalize what I may feel. I'm a little bit of an improved version of myself, and we're still learning, it's not over!"
A method made in emlyon
Making Leaders is an award-winning achievement. The training co-constructed with Capgemini teams is based on a very specific method, developed by emlyon researchers, developed in the book Transforming Management: The Grand 8 Approach. "For a transformation, an active approach is necessary. So I was inspired by existing practices and research, but also by the state of the art in coaching. With my colleagues, we made a synthesis of it," explains Thierry Nadisic, who directed the book. The foundations of the Grand 8 were laid, with three key dimensions: pedagogy is done through action, as is the case for Making Leaders, by decentring oneself to learn to focus on the employee's power to act, and "one does not learn alone, but relationally, with a group of peers": the cohorts at Capgemini. "We are not consultants but experts in behavioral transformation. Intervening on behaviors, in particular on management and leadership, requires the pre-existence of a vision of the company, a strategy," adds Thierry Nadisic, for whom the Grand 8 method has an impact on cultural transformation, i.e. skills and behaviors "Every company has a culture, especially managerial culture. We help them to become aware of it and to formalize it. To transform and evolve, it is important to know where you come from. Once you have become aware of your culture, you develop a managerial model, with your key skills," says Thierry Nadisic. Achieving the desired transformation will mean achieving this leadership model, in idea and in action. With the Big 8, the skills sought in a leader will translate into concrete behaviors.
A proven model
The managerial model defined in this way is one of the four main axes of the Grand 8, each of which is divided into eight components, hence the name of this method which also refers to the ups and downs of the thrill ride. Another axis is that of the cooperation of all the stakeholders in the programme, and yet another is what Thierry Nadisic calls "the active ingredients", for example the principle of autonomy of the participants. Finally, the last axis, pedagogical, helps to give a program its shape. It is to this axis, at the heart of the Grand 8 approach, that Making Leaders owes its initial kick-off, the practical workshops, the peer groups, the collective mission or the famous take-off agreement and its process of recognition by peers. This axis is concretized by tools that work in synergy (intranet, workshops, conferences, articles, videos, nudges, etc.). What makes the strength of this method is not so much its different elements as the coherence of the whole at the service of change. Thierry Nadisic admits: "Never before have these axes and their components been put together in a systemic way, with a global vision to bring coherence, strength, rigor and activate individual and collective energies."
Article originally published in edition #5 of the magazine "le fil", the emlyon alumni magazine - May 2025