What does it take for an advertising agency to develop its upcoming leaders? Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s global head of talent management, Niall Hadden, tells Lisa Cheong just how one agency goes against the grain in training its leaders.

Employees at Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) pride themselves by identifying traits that are similar to their company mascot – a black sheep that stands out from rest.

Hence, it is no wonder BBH develops its leaders with a mindset that it does not believe in generic leadership. Instead, Niall Hadden, global head of talent management for BBH says in order to be an effective leader, employees have to be “true to themselves”. Hadden adds, “We also view leadership as a non-hierarchical concept, which is what we promote on all of our programmes.”

Because development leadership is critical to the business, BBH has set up a number of global leadership programmes which caters to employees within the different stages of their careers.

But amongst the myriad of programmes, two common themes are constantly emphasised. The first is developing stronger commercial skills, especially looking at how business language can enhance the level of creativity and innovation in the company. The programmes also aim to develop a greater sense of self-awareness and leadership skills, so as to help employees in taking up leadership authority and responsibility.

Some of the on-going development programmes the company provides includes psychometric profiling and coaching support as well as sending its Singapore people on the leadership training programmes at INSEAD.

However, its hotly contested leadership programmes are the ones which take place annually at the agency’s headquarters in London. Even though the programme places are allocated in correlation to the office headcount, with 850 employees in six offices all over the world, Hadden says seven out of the 70 people in the Singapore office have benefited from these programmes over the last 12 months.

During the selection process, participants must meet several criteria, which includes their stage in career progression, their performance to date, future potential and their level of interest in progressing within the company.

The selected delegates are then whisked to the headquarters for one of either three programmes: The one-week Micro-MBA is targeted at those who are leading offices or a region; there is also the two-week Mini-MBA programme for the next level of management executives; BBH also has a three-day Business Leaders programme for other senior executives.

The courses were designed with the assistance of London Business School professors and focus on topics such as leadership, strategy, marketing, organisational development and finance.

When asked about the cost of flying employees to London, Hadden says it makes economic sense to base the programmes where approximately 50% of their employees are located. However, he adds, this increases the cost of the programmes to attendees from the Singapore office, due to flying costs and accomodation.

Hadden says on top of access to a world-class programme, employees also stand to gain from being part of a global group dymanic. “Time spent away from the day-to-day management of client needs is more than compensated for by the additional benefits brought through the newly acquired leadership skills that are transferred back to our business, which is ultimately beneficial to our clients. This is our main reason for investing so heavily in this area.”

The need for investing in leadership training is an obvious business imperative, says Niall Hadden. Due to the rapidly changing landscape, “substantial training and development budget is not viewed as a variable cost, it’s seen as being essential to our future success.”