Director, Leadership Development

The Director, Leadership Development role will be responsible for leading the transformative 1-2 year Aspire program that helps to empower some early in profession employees to develop greater leadership, networking and communication skills that will help them to develop personally and professionally.

The successful candidate will manage the Aspire team and be responsible for business planning and program delivery to meet the needs of some new Microsoft employees to help them be effective professionals. This will include using your learning and development expertise and experience in complex project management to deliver programs, across all learning modalities. In creating and delivering experiences that sets up the learners up for success, you will contribute to increasing their retention and promotion velocity of this vital group. This will require skills in stakeholder management and business acumen to understand the varied needs of the businesses and work with stakeholders across the organization.

The role is based in our Redmond, WA office location.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

• People Management - Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.

• • Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
  • Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
  • Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

• Program Planning and Development

Develops, guides, and iterates on learning programs, initiatives, and strategies for relevant audiences by identifying organizational needs, managing resources, communicating with executive stakeholders, and prioritizing work for the team. Ensures alignment of and empowers the team to align larger learning and skilling capabilities to the strategy of the organization for the most impact. Consolidates and connects information across the learning feedback loop to empower the team to build holistic planning across segments/the company, coordinate integration efforts, and orchestrate the skilling story with the team. Leads, facilitates, and prioritizes long-term planning efforts that capture the voice of the learner and have a global (e.g., intra-region) impact. Owns the strategic development of learning objectives and outcomes using a learner-centric approach, as well as how the team can successfully leverage them. Orchestrates and gives direction on how to best manage and scope resources available across segments/the company and within the team to help the team execute on the plan. Owns the process for financial planning and forecasting and determines budgets through assessing financial trends.

• Program Execution

Oversees the implementation of core learning programs and systems at a global level. Guides the team and/or orchestrates stakeholder feedback on the content and program improvement process through examining and incorporating 360-degree feedback and data to make content adjustments. Owns the execution of a strategic end-to-end learner journey and collection of learning experiences and programs. Coordinates and orchestrates across numerous landing teams to allow the team to best execute and land on the content and operational needs.

• Content Review and Confirmation

Represents the company and their team as a thought leader in their area when reviewing and enabling team members to review learning and development solutions and best practices in the industry with internal and external clients.

Establishes standards and best practices for how data should be used to see how successfully the content is meeting pre-established learning objectives for various deliverables. Owns the process for enabling the team to gather and evaluate content feedback from relevant stakeholders and partners from feedback sessions (e.g., focus groups) to determine and drive the most important feedback to prioritize and incorporate. Validates and approves program/content assessment for the team to enable them to execute rollout. Models and empowers the team on how to ensure that the content exceeds minimum requirements. Serves as a chief advocate for ensuring established privacy and accessibility standards are being followed by the team during content review while considering and tracking potential risks.

• Program Success Analysis and Metrics

Oversees teams' use of data to evaluate relationships and trends across data, create and tell the data story, define capability gaps for the business, improve benchmarking, and drive learning priorities through learner-centric methodology. Coaches and manages teams to effectively evaluate learning programs and content to determine how they are being consumed by stakeholders and to drive higher consumption. Enables and continuously improves on the usage of internal and external tools and business intelligence (BI) systems for the team to pull appropriate data in partnership with relevant BI teams and leaders. Oversees the evaluation and analysis of programs’ effectiveness by enabling

others to conduct learning survey analyses, including program metrics (e.g., user satisfaction, participation in the deliverable), return on investment (ROI), behavior change, and business impact. Owns the communication of and enables their team to share key performance indicators (KPIs) and the data story with relevant stakeholders and executive leaders to get buy in for and to be accountable for achievement of target metrics. Continuously monitors competitive trends, learning culture external benchmarks, and landscape to improve company offerings.

• Stakeholder/Customer Collaboration

Owns the process for identifying, developing, and managing relationships with key stakeholders/partners across relevant audiences, business units, or verticals/industries to represent their learning-related needs. Ensures that all teams collect customer/stakeholder feedback and oversees adjustments needing to be made to improve alignment between the program team's efforts and key stakeholder objectives. Leverages full-domain expertise of local/regional and global perspectives and owns consistent diversity and inclusion efforts with all key learning stakeholders and executive leaders. Leads efforts to design and maintain rhythm of business cadence with key stakeholders and leaders. Communicates learning and development approaches to executive leaders and stakeholders to educate them and secures buy in and implementation of solutions.

• Embody Microsoft’s and