TL;DR
PayPal had a bold vision for the future of commerce. They needed a leadership development program that would help their senior leaders build the capabilities, behaviors, and habits required to bring that vision to life. We partnered with executive leadership to design an immersive experience where leaders could learn, practice, and apply those behaviors.
PayPal
Client
Leadership Development Program
Description
Experience Design, Production Management
Contribution
This work won the Brandon Hall Group Silver HCM Excellence Award in Best Leadership Development Program.
Award Recognition
Challenge
PayPal knew where it wanted to go, but turning that vision into reality would take more than a strategy. Leaders needed to make better decisions, solve complex problems, communicate with clarity, and continue developing the people around them. The work was not about defining the destination; it was about building a shared understanding of how leaders would move the organization toward it.
Insight
Leadership frameworks are most valuable when they do more than describe how leaders should work; they give people a shared language for navigating complexity and making better decisions together. The opportunity was to define practical frameworks grounded in the real challenges PayPal leaders faced every day.
For the frameworks to stick, they needed to be clear, memorable, and easy to apply—helping leaders make decisions, solve problems, communicate with clarity, and develop the people around them.
Defining What Great Leadership Looks Like
Before designing the experience, we partnered with PayPal’s executive leadership to identify the behaviors that would matter most in the company’s next chapter. Through interviews and collaborative workshops, we aligned around four foundational leadership capabilities:
Leading with Clarity
Agile Decision-Making
Impactful Problem-Solving
Investing in Self & Others
These capabilities became the backbone of the program and gave leaders a common language for how they would work, make decisions, and lead their teams.
An Experience, Not a PowerPoint
Once the capabilities were defined, we needed to make them tangible. We intentionally designed the day to begin inside an immersive gallery, giving participants an opportunity to encounter the ideas through exploration before moving into the rest of the program.
Large-scale fabric installations, interactive touchscreens, and suspended information disks transformed the space into a walkable exhibit. Leaders explored leadership principles in action and considered how clear direction can establish momentum and help teams adjust when circumstances change.
By giving participants room to explore before explaining the model, the principles became something they could experience, question, and discuss together.
The experience also needed to work across eight separate workshops in New York City and California. Each venue had different room layouts, dimensions, and technology capabilities, so we designed it as a flexible system rather than a fixed installation. The core content and journey remained consistent, while the physical setup, interactive elements, and technical execution could adapt to each space. This allowed every group to have the same immersive experience, tailored to the realities of the room they were in.
From Principles to Practice
The learning then moved from understanding the ideas to putting them to work. Leaders were introduced to the DACI model, which defines the Driver, Approver, Contributor, and Informed roles within a decision.
Interactive exercises, habit-building sessions, and collaborative workshops gave participants opportunities to practice the tools together and apply them to real leadership challenges. A comprehensive printed companion guide and interactive microsite extended the learning beyond the workshop itself. Designed as core training materials rather than supplemental resources, they brought leadership capabilities, decision-making frameworks, exercises, and reflection prompts together into a cohesive system.
Leaders could use the guide to prepare for sessions, follow along during the workshops, capture insights, and revisit the tools as they applied them in their day-to-day work. The microsite provided an accessible digital counterpart, making the content easy to reference, share, and return to after the program.
Making the Learning Stick
Each workshop lasted two days, but the learning needed to continue well beyond them. Each participant received a curated take-home kit designed to keep the program’s ideas present in everyday work.
A set of five candles represented PayPal’s broader leadership principles: Lead with Integrity, Be Bold, Create Joy, Connect Authentically, and Expand Opportunity. A 60-day action calendar encouraged leaders to build new habits through small, intentional actions. Even the Spotify playlist supported the experience, with music organized around each principle to create a more personal and memorable connection to the learning.
Results
Across eight immersive, two-day workshops in New York City and California, the program introduced PayPal’s senior leaders to a shared set of capabilities and gave them practical ways to apply those behaviors within their teams.
The work continued beyond the original workshops. PayPal later publicly described its BOLD leadership framework using many of the same capabilities introduced through the program, including leading with clear vision, impactful problem-solving, and investing in self and others.
The company has continued expanding the framework from executives through the managerial ranks, helping turn the work into a shared leadership language that could support PayPal’s broader transformation.
The program also earned external recognition from the Brandon Hall Group, receiving a Silver HCM Excellence Award in the Best Leadership Development Program category.