The Excellence in Leadership Programme

The Excellence in Leadership Programme

Ovivo has always been a strong believer in internal promotions and, in 2018, we formalised our approach to talent management and succession planning to integrate it more fully into our strategic planning. To ensure future growth in the company, managers now identify employees with strong potential for future managerial positions, and we invest in developing training tools to help prepare them. While mentoring and technical skill training can be done locally, we felt that our future leaders would benefit from a global leadership training.

Building the Leadership Programme

The Excellence in Leadership Programme was created and based in Montreal, to ensure that management training is consistent and in line with our values. We had our first Leadership Programme in 2019, where a group of our top talent was invited to participate in a weeklong programme.

‘’Top talents come from various fields of work within Ovivo. Because we have proportionally more engineers, people tend to think that we are only focusing on engineers. However, we invite people from various departments: project management, operations, IT, and finance, for example. We ensure to cover all divisions and every region of the globe’’ said Marie-Pierre Lavallée, Vice President, Human Resources & Communications.

“We select about 20 participants per year to ensure the best learning and team-building experience. Obviously, our talent pool is larger than this.  We therefore plan to hold the Excellence in Leadership Programme for many years to come.  In addition, we added virtual follow-up sessions with each cohort.’’ Said Marc Barbeau, President, and Chief Executive Officer.

A Busy Schedule

The agenda is extremely busy and highly interactive. As soon as they arrive, participants take part in a team-building activity so that they get to know each other. The following three days are spent in the leadership course at the Executive Institute of McGill University, one of Canada’s top universities. Marie-Pierre Lavallée worked with McGill University to develop a special programme for Ovivo. Participants are equipped to understand the type of leaders they are and develop:
– their emotional intelligence to learn how to manage conflict,
– their leadership influence to motivate,
– their collaborative teamwork to ensure problem-solving.

The group then comes for a two-day meet-and-greet at our Head Office to understand the various functions needed to run a global business. ESG is also a topic of choice. Added to this busy programme are lunches and dinners to get to know everyone a little more.

Throughout the programme, participants get to experience firsthand how our values, especially teamwork and ownership, are a part of our work life. ‘’We seek leaders who take ownership, who are driven, resolving problems, bringing solutions, and not putting the problems on the shoulders of someone else’’ explains Marc Barbeau.

At the end of the programme, participants leave happy -perhaps exhausted- but most certainly with a big sense of belonging, teamwork, and engagement, and a better understanding of what it takes to manage a global organisation like Ovivo.