Center for Leadership
Studies

“Feeling like I had to know everything and have all the answers was not the point. It’s much more generative to not know,” says Lifescan Manager of Organizational Effectiveness, Sonya Moore-Wells of her MAOL experience. Moore-Wells has not, however, always assumed such an open stance toward ambiguity.

Having worked for Deloitte as a consultant, Moore-Wells entered more than twenty organizations to help orchestrate large-scale change, learning and development initiatives and change management. She was well accustomed to leading others into the unknown with confidence and acuity. As she worked toward her MAOL degree, Moore-Wells learned how not to be the person with all of the answers and to, instead, listen for opportunity and allow herself and others to unfold.

“At Lifescan I’m responsible for learning and development, leadership development programs and shaping the curriculum for all of the company’s learning and organizational development programs. Because I do this kind of work for my company, I can intellectualize everything I learn in the MAOL,” Moore-Wells explains. “But what I’ve realized is that while I may be able to intellectualize it, I’m not really allowing myself to experience it for myself. I don’t do me, I do this for other people, so the MAOL has been a really huge breakthrough for me.”

She recalls feeling inundated with new thinking during her first sessions, and being wholly exhilarated by it. Having watched her supervisor, Anne Griswold, complete her MAOL degree, Moore-Wells had some idea as to what to expect going into the program. She recalls that each time Griswold returned from a MAOL session, she would not only be filled with new energy, ideas and thoughts, but she had a new ambition and drive to look at how her team could unify to make changes in the organization. In her breakthrough initiative, Moore-Wells is also finding creative ways to unify departments within her organization and even her organization’s customers.

Moore-Wells’ breakthrough initiative sees her partnering with the human resource and sales training teams in order to understand how thinking preferences and styles impact relationships, communications, and decision making in the organization and with customers. Though Lifescan had been using the thinking preference assessment tool internally for three years, they hadn’t previously turned it toward the external market. Moore-Wells explains that the tool has helped her organization improve productivity and internal relationships and decided it made sense to translate it to the Lifescan customer base. Being able to better determine her customers’ needs, Moore-Wells says, can only lead to improved sales and improved relationships.

Since beginning her MAOL studies Moore-Wells has reached out to members of her organization to share the tools and frameworks she’s been learning. She also says that she owns an increased ease and confidence in her own leadership and is continually appreciative of the resources available to her through MAOL in the form of the people involved in the program.

“The key thing I continue to get out of MAOL is the breadth of experience and wisdom and knowledge that you have access to, not only in the faculty and people in your cohorts, but the previous cohorts, and the people who come back to visit,” says Moore-Wells. “The access to all of this wisdom and knowledge and expertise is amazing. I would never on my own have that without doing a lot of work. The relationships and the openness to any conversation with people who have such brilliance is what excites me most.”