Infusion of Courage

The Regence Group (formerly Regence BlueCross-BlueShield) is the largest affiliation of health-care plans in the Pacific Northwest/Mountain State region, serving nearly three million people with more than $6.5 billion in combined revenue. EAS consultant, Carmen Voilleque, worked this year with the company’s group of in-house legal counsel, a team of expert attorneys that serve as a part of leadership and management teams in client organizations across the Northwest.

In recent years, The Regence Group was challenged with providing client organizations with in-house attorneys who are comfortable with assuming an “unofficial” leadership role, and have the necessary courage and expertise to advise and guide even the most senior executives in making appropriate business decisions. Most of the attorneys who make up The Regence Group in-house counsel found the act of challenging senior executives in client organizations to be both daunting and uncomfortable. While clients demonstrated a clear need for legal counsel to move from a position of executing client work assignments to becoming more proactive advisors to the executive teams, The Regence Group counsel didn’t feel confident taking this kind of leadership role.

To address this concern, The Regence Group designed a two-day offsite for all in-house counsel to attend titled “Take Action,” and hired Voilleque to provide some of the content. Voilleque introduced The Regence Group’s in-house attorney team to the Courage, Power, Passion* leadership program (CPP) developed by Extreme Arts. The objective of the CCP leadership program is to unlock participants’ inner courage, help them discover passion in their work, and better use their power to encourage positive change. The program was effectively adapted to the needs of The Regence Group to help provide the participants with the vision and strategies necessary to take action in client organizations by engaging in persuasive and courageous conversations with people “up” the chain of command while simultaneously becoming more comfortable with holding a role of opinion leadership among the management teams with whom they work.

Voilleque used a combination of dynamic content presentation, interactive team problem solving, and rich real-world hypothetical scenarios to encourage participants to test their knowledge, experience, and inner courage. The program provided a unique opportunity for in-house attorneys to practice their skills against challenging, believable situations, but also in a safe and supportive environment with useful feedback and encouragement.

*The Courage, Power, Passion leadership program (CCP) is also referred to as Revolutionary People Management (RPP) in other areas of this website.