4 Surefire Ways to Get the C-Suite Fired Up About Learning

If you want a company filled with engaged learners, “Start with the top of the house.” That’s the advice of Pamay Bassey, Kraft Heinz’s chief learning and diversity officer.

During her four years at the global food company, Pamay has worked hard to engage the C-suite with learning. She has asked senior leaders what their pain points are, coached them, and pointed them to programs that will take them to the next level. She has shared articles of interest (from, say, the Harvard Business Review) with CEO Miguel Patricio and his leadership team. She has brought in speakers from other businesses and top-notch universities, so senior leaders can learn from the best and brightest. 

As a result, Pamay says, “There’s a robust learning energy around the organization.” According to the LinkedIn 2023 Workplace Learning Report, Pamay is in good company: Learning leaders are working more closely with the C-suite than ever before. Some 44% of L&D pros now collaborate with the chief human resources officer, compared with 39% in 2022. And 50% of L&D pros work more closely with other executive leadership, up from 43% the year before. 

Making the C-suite your ally is just good sense. First, there’s the obvious: It helps to have friends in high places when you’re negotiating budgets or launching learning initiatives. But senior leaders also set the tone for the company.  When they engage in learning, their passion for growth reverberates throughout the entire company.

Let’s look at the four ways that Pamay and her team at Kraft Heinz are engaging the C-suite with learning.

1. Work with leaders on developing their own careers

“Don’t be afraid to find out what executives need and provide that to them,” Pamay advises. “This helps empower leaders to understand what their teams need and ensure they have what’s needed for growth.” 

Pamay maintains an open door for senior executives, so they can drop by to discuss pain points and learning objectives. One executive might need help developing an individual growth plan. Another might need guidance after receiving results from a 360 review. And yet another might need recommendations for an external educational program.

A few years back, Pamay and her team piloted an Executive Leadership Experiences program in which they asked leaders what skills they needed for their development and then paired them with outside programs. One executive, for example, wanted to be more of an intrapreneur, to help drive innovation within the company. Pamay suggested that the exec attend the Driving Innovation and New Ventures in Established Organizations program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. The leader did, and then shared what they learned with their team, as is required by the program “”Encouraging leaders to share what they learned is key,” Pamay says. “It ensures that their team knows that their leaders are learners, which is powerful modeling.” 

2. Offer internal leadership development programs 

If your company has the resources, consider offering senior executives — and managers who want to join their ranks — an internal leadership program. Kraft Heinz does this with its nomination-based Leadership Masters Program, a yearlong curriculum that focuses on developing enterprise leaders. These are the leaders who look at what’s best for the business overall, not just their department or function. 

Started in 2019, the Masters Program covers everything from understanding market forces to leading a globally competitive company to understanding the Kraft Heinz value chain. The program includes virtual lessons, as well as three series of four-day in-person sessions, one of which takes place at Stanford. Since the program started, 65 leaders have gone through the program, and another 25 are slated to start this year. 

3. Start a speaker series for senior executives — and the rest of the company too 

Executives love to hear how other leaders have innovated, faced challenges, or navigated change. That’s why Pamay and the company’s global chief people officer, Melissa Werneck, have curated several speaker series for senior leaders. 

The first is Kraft Heinz’s Executive Team Leadership Learning series, designed specifically for the CEO, his direct reports, and their teams. The series features experts who speak about everything from developing a growth mindset to storytelling, which, Pamay says, is “a skill that all great leaders possess and practice.” Boris Groysberg, a professor at Harvard Business School, has spoken to the group a number of times, teaching them about inclusive leadership, as well as leadership and innovation. 

Because C-suite learning is more effective when you also engage the people who directly report to senior executives, Kraft Heinz offers a Senior Leader Learning Series, to share what the senior leaders have learned with the company’s more than 100 vice presidents and senior directors.

And of course, it’s important for the entire company to engage with learning. So Kraft Heinz offers a #LearnLikeAnOwner speakers series, open to all employees, from trainees to the CEO. This is one of Kraft Heinz’s most popular L&D offerings, often drawing close to 1,000 participants for each session. Speakers — which have included Hubert Joly, former CEO of Best Buy, and David Shaw, former head football coach at Stanford — have come from many different walks of life. 

4. Have the CEO host a Book Lovers Day 

In the fall of 2021, Kraft Heinz held an event called “Book Lovers Day,” in which the CEO chose a book — Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes, But Some Do — and invited people across the company to join him reading it. The book, by Matthew Syed, explores how success in complex organizations hinges on confronting mistakes and learning from them. After reading the book, Miguel held a virtual book club session to discuss the book with employees. 

“Those who attended the event,” Pamay says, “gave us fantastic feedback about being given the opportunity to learn and grow with the CEO.” The event also showcased Miguel’s love of learning, which comes as no surprise to Pamay. She says that senior leaders learn best when they’re offered opportunities to participate in “learning experiences where they can engage with the broader organization.” The event was such a success that Kraft Heinz hopes to host another one this year.  

Final thoughts: Leaders get out of it what L&D pros put into it

How much does engaging the C-suite benefit L&D? 

“It helps tremendously!” Pamay says. She points to the time when she launched Kraft Heinz’s #LearnLikeAnOwner initiative and invited employees to make a commitment to learn and share about it. When the CEO and chief people officer both made commitments, it became a topic of public discussion — generating excitement about the project.

Pamay cautions, though, that you’ll get out of your C-suite learning what you put into it. “Be creative,” Pamay urges. “Our senior leadership really appreciates when it is clear that time and energy have gone into finding learning experiences that can help them learn and grow, as business leaders and as humans.”

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