Hilti North America has always believed its people are the foundation of its success. After years of relying on traditional psychometrics, the Organizational Development team recognized the limited behavioral development potential of an oversimplified view of personality. This prompted the search for an innovative tool that is both humanistic and accurate to meet their standard and culture for shaping outstanding talent development. Alongside this, switching to a psychometric provider who could support specific participant data privacy and security was a strong consideration too.
As the company embraced new ways of working and sought to drive sustainably high and caring teams, Hilti wanted the clarity of a fuller picture on developing their teams’ potential, beyond the assumptions of high-level personality labels. The aim was to equip their team members with a precise and practical awareness of their strengths and areas for development, and deeper awareness of how to connect with those around them. To harness that self-awareness to support greater emotional intelligence, adaptability, and collaboration. Ultimately, to create cultural alignment on developing high performing and caring behaviors together, through a shared understanding of how personal style and team dynamics influences business outcomes.
By implementing Lumina Spark, the Hilti North America Organizational Development team as part of the Office of the CEO, has delivered a richer, more nuanced framework for personal growth and team effectiveness, enabling employees to communicate more effectively, navigate complexity, and contribute to a high-performing and high-caring, aligned organizational culture.
Lumina Spark stood out immediately. It helped people see how their personality shifts in different contexts and offered a complete view through their Three Personas (Underlying, Everyday and Overextended) which provided a more complete picture of how people show up in their roles, how they respond under pressure and how they can flex to different situations.
Importantly, Lumina Spark introduced the power of Embracing the Paradox. Instead of choosing between Qualities, team members learned they can be both Empathetic and Logical, Structured and Flexible, Competitive and Collaborative. This shift in perspective allowed teams to move beyond either-or thinking and step into a more adaptable and self-aware mindset.
Lumina Spark aligned with Hilti’s culture and goals, offering a developmental pathway for individuals while also reinforcing team cohesion and shared purpose.
Rosalia Cunningham has been with Hilti for over 35 years. She began her career in HR in the late 1980s when behavioral diversity was a new conversation, and inclusion had yet to enter the mainstream. Since then, she has helped shape Hilti’s culture through creativity, resilience, and a deep belief in people. As Director of Organizational Development, she leads a team (as large as 12 members), known as Sherpa Business Coaches or OD internal consultants including Senior level management, along with Project Management across North America. The entire Hilti Group network had over 70 Sherpas world-wide.
Since 2019, Rosalia has championed the use of Lumina Spark at Hilti, and has been instrumental in aligning with their Learning and Development organization’s imperatives. Along with residing in the Organizational and Culture Development and Learning and Development segments as offerings to their internal customers, it solidly sits at the heart of Hilti’s overall development experience, with tools like Journey to Composure, Spark Coach and the individual Splashes from peoples’ Portraits used in one-to-one development, team coaching and development and cultural alignment.
She sees Lumina Spark not just as a tool, but as a mindset, a way of helping people and teams understand who they are, how they show up, and how to work better together through adapting effective behaviors.
Rosalia Cunningham led the shift. Hilti adopted Lumina Spark across its North American operations to drive meaningful cultural and behavioral change. Hilti introduced Lumina Spark through a distinctive format called Team Camps. These immersive sessions are guided like a journey to the summit, with facilitators acting as Sherpas who support and challenge teams to reach their highest potential. Each experience combines engaging activities with reflective learning, tailored content and clear commitments for practical application.
From onboarding new hires to supporting leadership and functional teams, Team Camps are built around the idea of a journey, guided like a Sherpa leading climbers to their highest potential. Hilti’s Team Camps are one to two full days, with an overnight typically for team bonding which includes:
The Lumina Spark team camp experience begins with connection, ice breakers and intention setting, before starting key learning experiences, with practical activities, individual reflections, and team challenges.
Alongside team camp sessions, Lumina Spark supports one-to-one coaching conversations where each team can map their Effective and Overextended selves, identify areas that they would like to improve, and agree clear development actions.
This Team Camp experience continues to expand into topics such as cross-cultural communication, emotional intelligence, team visioning, prioritization and feedback. Exploring Hidden Treasures brings Underlying strengths to the surface that are often absent from Everyday behavior but are crucial for connection, trust and long-term performance.
Increased collaboration and self-awareness
Since introducing Lumina Spark, Hilti teams have shown stronger collaboration, deeper understanding, and more thoughtful communication. Individuals are more aware of their behavioral style, especially when under stress and are better able to adapt to challenging situations.
The clarity gained from understanding the difference between Effective and Overextended selves gives people a practical tool to plan responses instead of reacting. That clarity has improved communication, decision-making and trust across teams.
The power of recognizing individual Qualities
Participants gain confidence from recognizing their underused strengths and from learning how to tap into Hidden Treasures in their Underlying Persona. This has helped teams not only bond, but delegate and collaborate more effectively.
Shared behavioral language
The Lumina Learning language has also become embedded within teams that have completed the process. People recognize qualities in each other, and use a shared language to connect, support and course-correct in the moment.
Feedback collected from participants highlights practical benefits such as faster team alignment from early on, clearer conversations about behavior, and a stronger ability to allocate work according to each person’s Qualities. Comments from session participants include:
Hilti’s Learning & Development team is embedding Lumina Spark into emerging leader programs as a four-gate journey that focuses on practical behavior change and improved leadership performance:
This rollout supports Hilti’s Lead 2030 strategy by building leaders who can adapt their behavior, foster inclusion and drive team performance. Lumina Spark plays a central role by helping teams appreciate their differences and convert personal awareness into better team outcomes.
Hilti is excited to continue expanding Lumina Spark into new areas, starting with new leaders entering the business in 2025 and beyond. With demonstrable results and a clear behavioral language embedded in teams, Lumina Spark remains a cornerstone of Hilti’s plan to build emotionally intelligent and high-performing teams that deliver business results.
Future scoping, will include giving every new hire a Lumina Spark Portrait experience. Hilti understands the need to “slow down” to “speed up” to accelerate integration from day one. This will broaden their orientation, as new starters gain immediate behavioral clarity about their working style, how they connect with colleagues and where they might overextend. That clarity reduces the time to build trust and helps teams become productive faster through shared understanding of working styles from the very start.
Hilti strives up the summit to make construction better, along with making our culture better and people BETTER too!