Nike

Communication and Self-Management

Nike is a major global sportswear and equipment supplier. Nike distributes their products in over 300 Chinese cities, making China their second largest country market after the USA.

Objective

Nike has had a presence in China since the early 1980’s. The business demand and growth has been immense, with one third of all Nike shoes now being produced by the 210,000 contract workers in the country. With the continued growth of the business there are always new recruits joining the organisation. New staff come from a variety of backgrounds and so in order to manage their business effectively Nike China recognised a need to improve:
•    Interpersonal communication skills
•    Internal communications to provide a more efficient workplace environment.

Solution

Working in close partnership with the National Learning and Development Team at Nike, Impact China designed a modular series of management development programmes. The Effective Communication module was dedicated to developing participants’ interpersonal communication skills over three stages:
Stage 1 – Effective Communications Foundation
Stage 2 – Personal Communication Skills
Stage 3 – Cross-departmental Communication Session

As sponsors of the programme the National Learning and Development Team wanted this module to enable all Nike managers to communicate in a similar style across the company.

To do this, Impact designed a highly interactive programme of challenging experiential projects, personal feedback sessions and group dialogue. Throughout the programme expert Impact staff were on hand to facilitate the learning and add input on communication styles.

Result

Overall the programme was highly rated by Nike China and the participants. One participant said: "this was a value-adding programme for my individual learning curve and development as a professional manager."