Teemu Leppänen was elected Metsä Fibre's Manager of the Year 2014.
Forest companies invest in leadership development. For example, Metsä Group offers several training programs at different levels for managers.
“The framework for good leadership applies to the entire group and everyone in managerial positions, and that is why we want all our managers to go through our Develop as a Manager program or our equivalent Learn, Grow, Lead program in English,” Human Resources Development Manager Niina Salminen says.
Operations Manager, Rauma Factory Teemu Leppänen Metsä Fibre is the manager of a team of ten people. He has participated in Metsä Fibre's manager training, which served as a pilot for the current group-wide joint training.
“The most important thing from the training was understanding that not everyone receives feedback in the same way. It was also interesting to get to know and exchange ideas with people from different factories.”
Leppänen has also completed a specialized professional qualification in management, for which training is organised at Metsä Group on a company-specific basis. The training is carried out by an external partner, but Metsä Group also plays a major role.
"We have our own content, our own speakers and our own facilitators. For example, the management of different business areas goes through issues related to strategy," says Salminen.
The next level of coaching at Metsä Group is Booster. The company invites key people from different business areas to training, the content of which focuses on business understanding and strategy. The training lasts six months.
Even higher than Booster is the group's joint program Challenger. It is organized once a year as an invitational program for key personnel. The program includes four sessions and an extensive, group project work, which is a genuine business case.
Facing new things
Stora Enso's Pathbuilders is a six-month leadership development program in partnership with the Swiss IMD Business School.
Controller Thomas Puonti The Inkeroinen factory in Finland completed the program in spring 2013. Puonti's group included 14 students from all over the world. Three of the four week-long sessions were held in Switzerland and the last in Finland, where the group project was presented to the group's management team.
“The projects were real challenges, and we had to tell the management team how to solve them. But they were worked on along the way, guided by both IMD professors and members of the group's own management team who were involved in the modules.”
The group included people with very different positions and educational backgrounds, and the project topic was not necessarily related in any way to their current job or education.
"In the training, you had to face completely new things and absorb a huge amount of new information to understand what was going on, but on the other hand, people from different backgrounds looked at things from completely different angles, which gave rise to completely new thinking."
Text: Katariina Krabbe
Photo: Juha Sinisalo
