ISL and Incito Win 2026 Brandon Hall Group Gold Award for Leadership Development
Year-long leadership development program has developed more than 70 leaders and built a shared approach to leadership across the growing engineering firm.
CALGARY, AB — October 6, 2026 — Incito Executive & Leadership Development today announced that SHIFT: Leadership Growth at ISL, a leadership development program created by ISL Engineering and Land Services Ltd. in partnership with Incito, has received a 2026 Brandon Hall Group Gold HCM Excellence Award in the Best Leadership Development Program category.
The award recognizes SHIFT for its approach to building leadership capability across ISL as the organization has grown. As ISL expanded from approximately 300 to more than 600 employees, the technical expertise that had helped build the business was not always matched by the people leadership capability needed to lead it at greater scale.
As in many technical organizations, career progression at ISL often meant highly capable engineers and project managers taking on increasingly complex people leadership responsibilities. As the company grew, ISL saw an opportunity to provide those leaders with a more consistent foundation for leading people, teams, and the business.
Since its launch, more than 70 leaders have participated in SHIFT across five cohorts, with a sixth planned, and several participants have progressed into ISL's executive leadership team.
Working with Incito, ISL created SHIFT as a year-long leadership experience built specifically around its culture, strategy and day-to-day leadership challenges. Rather than separating leadership development from the work itself, the program combines in-person workshops, individual coaching, peer triad sessions and 360-degree assessments with repeated opportunities for leaders to apply new approaches on the job.
SHIFT is built on Incito's better³ approach - Better Me. Better Us. Better Business. - which connects individual development, collective leadership, and organizational performance.
“We've believed for a long time that leadership development is measured by what changes when leaders go back to work,” said Jenn Lofgren, Managing Partner at Incito. “SHIFT was designed to give leaders the opportunity to practice in the situations they are actually navigating, while also building a shared way of leading across the organization. That's why Incito’s better³ program is designed around each organization’s business, culture and the leaders it needs next—rather than around an off-the-shelf program.”
For ISL, that has meant bringing leaders from different offices, disciplines, and levels together around common frameworks and expectations. As the program progressed, those frameworks began extending beyond the formal sessions. Leaders started using shared tools in meetings and with their teams, while participants took greater ownership of applying and reinforcing the leadership practices across the organization.
“We loved the fact that SHIFT was built for purpose,” said Randy Heaps, Chief People and Administrative Officer at ISL. “It drew from all kinds of leadership models and competencies, but the structure, which for us was a year-long program, the coaching, the in-person sessions, that was built around our culture.”
ISL has also continued investing in the program as the organization evolves, reinforcing leadership development as an ongoing part of the business rather than an initiative that ends when a cohort graduates.
The Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards recognize organizations for innovative human capital programs and strategies that demonstrate meaningful organizational impact. The Gold recognition reflects the sustained client-provider partnership and organizational approach to developing leadership.
“The recognition belongs to everyone who has continued to make SHIFT part of how leadership happens at ISL,” Lofgren added. “The cohorts have an end date, but the development doesn’t. That continued practice is what allows the work to become part of the organization.”
To learn more about SHIFT and Incito’s better³ approach, visit https://www.incito.ca/inside-a-leadership-shift and https://www.incito.ca/better-leadership.
About Incito Executive & Leadership Development
Incito Executive & Leadership Development works with leaders, teams and organizations to build the leadership capacity needed to move their business forward. Through executive coaching, leadership team development, enterprise leadership programs and strategy work, Incito helps organizations create lasting shifts in how leaders think, work together and lead the business.
Incito has supported more than 10,500 leaders across 210 organizations, including Fortune 500 companies.
Learn more at www.incito.ca.
About ISL Engineering and Land Services Ltd.
ISL Engineering and Land Services Ltd. is a multidisciplinary engineering consulting firm with offices across Western Canada and the Yukon. SHIFT was developed as part of ISL’s ongoing investment in its people, leadership capability and long-term organizational growth.