
Q&A: Darden’s Solutions for Developing Functional Leadership
By McGregor McCance
In his role as chief client officer and executive director of Executive Education and Lifelong Learning at the Darden School of Business, Devin Bigoness meets frequently with leaders from sectors including public and private corporations, military agencies, government entities, nonprofit and trade/industry associations. While different in structure and purpose, all share an interest in improving leadership capacity and capabilities at every level.
That interest has helped grow opportunities for schools like Darden to partner with clients on programs tailored to develop leaders in ways that improve their immediate skills, but also their ability to understand how decisions and actions fit into and influence what’s happening across the enterprise.
The Darden Report visited with Bigoness to learn more about the increasing emphasis on functional leadership.
Q: What’s the definition of functional leadership?
A: As the world moves faster and with more complexity, leaders face pressure to be both technically advanced in their specific area and also able to think and operate at an increasing enterprise level. Functional leadership helps leaders in key functional areas of a company – such as marketing, finance, human resources or operations – improve and develop expertise in that function while also understanding how the pieces fit together in the entire organization.
These programs engage in two core areas. The first is content areas directly linked to the function, such as trends and shifts in the technical side. Second are capabilities such as strategic thinking, cross-organization collaboration, leading high performing teams and leadership self-awareness. These help individuals think and operate across the organization while also growing the technical capability in their primary function.
Q: Why are companies interested in introducing these skills and concepts deeper into their organizations?
A: If an organization can develop leaders with strong technical depth as well as the ability to think across the enterprise/organization they can operate with greater speed, drive organizational innovation and bring key voices to the table for developing strategies. Functional needs change rapidly, particularly with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, as well as through competitive shifts. These kinds of leaders are very valuable in the organization.
For some organizational leaders this is referred to as “T Shaped” learning where the vertical line exhibits the technical expertise and functional area. The horizontal line of the T is the ability to think broadly across the enterprise. This has proven to have strong benefit to the individual leader to increase engagement, retention likelihood and promotion opportunity both within the function and as a potential senior leader in the organization.
Q: Can you give examples of how Darden has partnered with companies?
A: The School has partnered with Capital One and Kraft Heinz on several specific programs for functional leaders.
Kraft Heinz had a pressing need to enhance the decision-making capabilities of leaders in the finance area. The aspiration was to both enhance the financial analysis and strategy area of the function while helping their leaders think more deeply about the broader business implications, particularly on a global level. Darden partnered with Kraft Heinz to design a customized Financial Leadership program that incorporated Darden’s strength in participant-centered learning through case study discussions, simulations and real world applied learning discussions. The Darden faculty engaged the global group of Finance leaders (about 35 in this case) on how to think critically about the financial issues and the leadership possibilities of Kraft Heinz.
We worked with Capital One to develop a Technology Leadership Development Program which had core objectives such as: growing top talent in the function, enabling them as leaders to help drive leadership impact through applied learning, understand some of the key technology shifts affecting the financial services area while also building key business leadership capabilities in emotional intelligence and collaboration. It was critical to enable leaders in the technology area to understand both the needs of today and also the key role they play in helping prepare the organization for tomorrow.
We worked with one HR/Talent leader that said if you can develop leaders that speak fluently both the language of engineering/technology as well as the language of business/leadership, those leaders would be worth their weight in gold. The program with Capital One was an effort to develop those bi-lingual technology and business leaders.
Q: What is Darden’s approach to helping a client build its functional leadership?
A: Darden has the best business faculty in the world, and the School uses the Socratic method to explore real business problems through case studies. This approach, which is used in our functional leadership programs, requires the learner to both understand and learn from the technical/functional areas of the case and understand that these can be key organizational decisions to make. It requires increased strategic and critical thinking. In most of our Executive Education and Lifelong Learning programs we engage the participants to “go deep and go broad” in their experiential learning and engaging discussions about the business situation for learning impact. We customize programs to ensure that both the learning is contextualized to the organization’s needs within an individual function and across the organization.
We often work with the heads of the function (CFO, COO, CHRO, CMO) to integrate the learning with projects that enable participants to apply what they’ve learned in real time to generate ideas and solutions for the organization and its challenges. In most of the C-suite discussions we have about these types of programs, the solutions help that executive sponsor directly build the individual, team, function and business value through education programs.
We are increasingly working with C-suite functional leaders to develop talent from front-line managers all the way up to those being prepared for executive leadership. C-suite leaders are asking for strategies to help develop these key functions and also build leadership bench strength. Darden can help with that.
Q: How do companies measure success?
A: They can measure success by answering questions in some important areas:
- Business impact: Was value for the organization created through applied learning and discussions? Are they able to apply key takeaways and framing to innovate and grow value in the business?
- Leadership capability: Could participants demonstrate increased leadership capabilities in their functional areas or across the organization?
- Networking and collaboration: Could participants build or deepen relationships within the function to work more closely and effectively together?
- Team and function engagement: Is this leader driving engagement and impact as a manager and leader in their team and more broadly in the function?
- Talent and retention: Did overall engagement of the talent in the program grow? Have opportunities for growth in the organization or potential retention rates increased?
For more information about Darden’s functional leadership programs, visit Executive Education and Lifelong Learning here.
The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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