IMPACT Group is a mother-daughter succession success. Laura Herring founded the company in 1988. After graduating from Notre Dame (undergrad) and earning an MBA from Washington University, her daughter Lauren worked internationally for a short time, then joined her mother’s company. In 2009, Lauren was named CEO, and Lauren’s parents are now happily and actively retired.
Today, the only constant is change. It is coming at IMPACT Group faster than ever, and in the Age of AI, humans in the workforce are questioning their place and their value more than ever. At IMPACT Group, they believe that not only will companies need to leverage the latest technologies, but the most successful companies will leverage human capital as their #1 differentiator.
Adoption Of Advanced Technologies For Efficient Working
As Baby Boomers continue to retire, and as all the other generations wrestle with growing their careers, IMPACT Group is working with corporations and their employees to help maximize human potential to win in the marketplace. At its core, IMPACT Group is a coaching company. They believe that behavior change happens over time and that applied learning is the key to personal and professional growth. Coaching is one of the best tools an organization can employ to develop talent, and IMPACT Group blends its coaching with best-in-class technology to accelerate learning.
An example of this is their new product utilizing online learning platforms and one-on-one coaching to scale leadership development for leaders. Online learning is widely recognized as a great way to enable access to development at scale. However, the biggest challenge is engaging with the resources and applying the learning. IMPACT Group’s blended program solves this challenge, as they maintain the flexibility to learn and grow through self-directed channels while creating insights and applications through coach-led reflections and focused coaching sessions.
The more advanced technology becomes, the more the value proposition strengthens for IMPACT Group. They help employers build strong leaders who can effect change, leverage technology, and avoid unintended consequences.
Handling The Post-COVID Blues
IMPACT Group is seeing two major impacts. First is the realignment of employee priorities and values. Many employees are prioritizing opportunities to work from home, spend more time with family, minimize commutes, and live closer to family. These values put greater pressure on today’s business leaders. Leaders now must act with more evolved leadership skills to arrive at decisions that benefit both the business and the employee. IMPACT Group’s business is growing in this post-COVID era because IMPACT Group has proven methods for developing these more highly evolved skills, such as emotional intelligence and compassionate business decision-making.
The second impact is on talent relocation. COVID closed borders, and that left a deep void for many businesses that rely on mobile talent and multicultural teams – as well as for people who want to be expats and experience new cultures.
Now that COVID dangers have abated, businesses are again moving talent. However, businesses must recognize the higher level of employee agency. Employers who want top candidates to move have to offer attractive relocation benefits such as relocation coaching and support for the employee’s spouse/partner to find work and continue their career in the new city. This was true before COVID, but competitive hiring managers much more widely recognize the need for relocation coaching to address the employee’s well-being than ever before.
IMPACT Group’s XaaS
IMPACT Group has just completed moving to a newer platform for their career and leadership coaching programs, bringing a better experience to the individuals they coach. This new platform is the common environment for the coach and coachee, offering a richer experience with on-demand and live coach-led workshops. It also enables more structured offline learning through its proprietary courses and pathways, allowing individuals to enhance their experience during their 1:Me Coaching sessions.
Being The Market Leaders
IMPACT Group competes with other world-class organizations that offer compelling solutions. Some are at the far end of the tech curve – emphasizing their goal of perfecting a tech platform that drives coaching. Others offer great coaching but are lagging in tech enablement, which means their costs are high because they haven’t realized efficiencies.
At IMPACT Group, they prioritize tech investments that offer clear user experience benefits and cost efficiencies that benefit both the company and its clients. But the heart of the solution is human-centered coaching. IMPACT Group’s coaches use proven programs to develop people so they can thrive in an increasingly tech-enabled world, leveraging their emotional intelligence to balance the needs of the business with the needs of people.
IMPACT Group has recently worked on several large-scale partnerships that made a huge impact organization-wide.
- Equipping 350 first-time people leaders in an industrial company with the six basic tools of leadership through our High IMPACT Leadership program (Chicago)
- Accelerating the careers of nearly 50 high-potential women in the banking industry (St. Louis)
- Engaging with the top leaders at a large US financial institution (Minneapolis)
- Providing personalized career transition/outplacement coaching for hundreds impacted in the US and globally (San Francisco)
Conclusion
IMPACT Group’s clients are increasingly leveraging online learning platforms such as LinkedIn Learning to develop leadership competencies at scale. While these programs have been very effective, many employers find it difficult to keep talent engaged in self-directed online learning. Additionally, online platforms are effective in delivering new content. However, the real value is only derived when that learning is applied. Knowledge without practical application doesn’t benefit the business.
To address these issues, IMPACT Group offers new solutions so employers can combine their online learning experiences with proven performance coaching. Each learner completes online courses and then meets periodically with a coach to help them take action and build new behaviors. This solution is both effective and scalable.
