Amway Case Study: Building Leadership Capacity through Corporate/College Partnerships

Topics: Partnerships

Overview

Amway, a leading global direct-selling firm, is committed to creating a performance driven culture that facilitates employee development. In 2008, Amway Global Learning & Development discovered a significant gap in the people leadership skills among first-line leaders. They also realized there was no global support network for first-line leaders, limited hands-on experiences to build people leadership skills, and no common language or approach around leadership at Amway. They recognized that this situation was negatively affecting employee engagement and performance, and that they had to address it quickly. 

Amway’s Global L&D decided a new learning program was needed, which they named the Global Leadership Certification Program (GLCP).  The goal of the GLCP was to teach first-line leaders the core, common, and critical people-leadership skills necessary to engage, motivate and manage others. They opted to design and implement this program through a cooperative relationship with Davenport University and Harvard Business Publishing. Harvard Business Publishing provided program content, while Davenport University provided support with program design and delivery, as well as content. This three-way partnership resulted in a 7 month certification program that included – in both live and online environments – a knowledge and skills curricula, hands-on application, peer networking and coaching.