What is Covance Leadership?

At Covance, we know that the key to our company's success lies in the success of our employees and in particular, our leaders. We believe that for each leader, there is a success profile. We as an organization strive to achieve that level of performance in each and every leader.

Click on the sections below to learn more about the Success Profile:

Job experience describes the kinds of situations that someone entering management should have experienced. More than any other factor, it is lack of experience with critical job challenges that prevents high-potential people from achieving promotions they seek and the level of achievement necessary to build a great company.

Organizational knowledge refers to the degree of understanding that managers must have about how the organization operates. It includes areas such as functions, processes, systems, products, and services. To develop as an effective leader, one needs to understand how the total organization functions and how its various functions interrelate.

Research by DDI and the Center for Creative Leadership have isolated certain qualities and learned behaviors that often cause trouble for leaders. These qualities, which are referred to as personal attributes (such as risk aversion), are not always directly observable like job experiences, organizational knowledge, and the behavioral competencies. Nevertheless, it is essential to consider personal attributes as an individual moves into leadership. Personality traits that either facilitate leadership success or impede effective leadership performance. At the simplest level, personal attributes predict how a person is likely to behave in certain circumstances.

Finally, competencies define clusters of behaviors or skills that are related to job success or failure. When used within a success profile, competency models are invaluable; they help Covance profile effective leadership and effective performance. Competencies serve as a basis for performance assessment, for evaluation of our leadership talent pool, and for leadership development initiatives.

Covance's leadership architecture has been designed with four components in order to better communicate what is needed to be successful at each particular leadership level. The levels are Manager, Managing Manager, Business Functional Leader, and General Manager.

For example, the skills needed for success at the Manager level are different from the skills needed at the Managing Managers level. Typically, the Manager is the front-line level leader and is responsible for managing individual contributors. As a Manager, the focus is on hiring, coaching, and evaluating the work of our individual contributors.

Contrast this focus with that of the Managing Manager. Managing Managers are important for a rapidly growing organization in another way. They are responsible for hiring and developing the managers, our front-line leaders. Managing Managers need to be able to identify new leaders that will continue to make Covance great. They coach leaders; they delegate to leaders; they set goals for leaders.

And, this distinction among the leadership levels continues when moving to Business Functional Leaders and then to the General Manager level. The leadership skills demanded at the senior executive levels are vastly different from those at the frontline levels or even the middle levels.

Covance is commited to developing our leaders in every step of their management career.