Leadership Development
How delaware helps its leaders consciously choose collective leadership
How does Beanmachine help delaware build leaders who consciously choose growth, impact and collective leadership?
At Brussels Airport Company (BAC), leadership is not just about managing processes or delivering results. It is about connecting people in an environment that never stops moving, literally. With around 1,300 employees spanning administrative, technical, infrastructure and operational profiles, BAC faces a unique leadership challenge. What works in the office does not necessarily work on the runway. One standard solution for everyone? That simply would not fly.
BAC is also an organization with a strong internal compass. People here do not just do their job. They do it for the societal role of the airport, for the passengers, for the smooth running of daily operations. That sense of purpose is an asset, and at the same time a challenge for everyone who leads within it.
The question: how do you turn a subject matter expert into a strong people manager?
Until recently, leadership development at BAC focused primarily on team development. But Nathalie Briessinck, Organizational Learning & Development Manager at Brussels Airport, and her colleagues saw that more was needed. BAC wanted to make a clear shift towards a stronger performance management culture. Leaders needed to grow in self-awareness, in setting clear expectations, in delivering difficult messages, in navigating resistance and in changing behavior durably, not just intentions.
There was also a cultural challenge. In the first pilot groups for leadership training, sometimes only five or six out of ten participants showed up. For some, learning felt like something they had to do, not something they wanted to do. The programme needed to change that.
Co-creation tailored to the airport: PM Navigator
Nathalie already knew Beanmachine and colleague Kris Govaert from a previous collaboration. From a natural sparring partnership around leadership and performance, the idea for PM Navigator was born: a leadership programme for people managers, co-designed with and for BAC.
In two design sessions, Kris and Nathalie brought together a diverse group of leaders, new and experienced, from across the organization, to develop the programme from within the BAC reality. The design principles: start from the BAC context and values, connect to the existing performance cycle, account for the different leadership realities across the organisation, and focus on self-reflection and practical application, not on stacking models.
The result: a programme built around four modules. Leading self starts with the challenges of (first-time) leaders and personal leadership essentials. Leading others focuses on situational leadership, coaching and feedback. Leading towards results covers output management, delegation and dealing with under- and overperformers. Leading my team for excellence closes with collaboration, trust and leading through change.
PM Navigator consists of four shared sessions with a fixed learning group, a 360° feedback assessment and an individual coaching session. The methodology is explicitly experience-based: participants leave each session with concrete tools they can put into practice with their team the very next day.
Building the foundation for conscious leadership
Corentin Van Loo, people manager at BAC and PM Navigator participant, looks back: “For me, the programme comes down to three things: getting to know yourself better as a leader, having concrete tools to communicate with people, and finding a foothold for navigating change in an organization where something is always in motion.”
Nathalie looks ahead: “Groups fill up faster. People managers are recommending the programme to their colleagues. The idea of ‘I’m wasting my time here’ has made way for ‘I’m getting tools and I’m moving forward’.”
At Brussels Airport Company, PM Navigator has become much more than a training. It has grown into a lever for helping people not only excel in their area of expertise, but also lead with greater awareness and confidence, with enough runway to keep growing as a people manager. And this is just the beginning: BAC is building towards a broader people manager ecosystem, in which development programmes, team coaching and skill-based learning reinforce one another.
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