The Executive Team wanted its people to be able to lead change and establish the culture necessary for an aggressive growth strategy.
Following boundless growth in its US home market, this Global Retail Bank entered the UK retail finance sector with an unrivalled offer to both customers and employees.
Seven years on, the Bank continues to feature on the Financial Times’ list of the best companies to work for, and high levels of customer satisfaction are echoed in the company’s financial results.
However, despite a great track record, the European Executive Team began to see that their vibrant start-up was now turning the corner to maturity: slowing customer acquisition, increasing churn and employee doubts over the leaders’ ability to inspire being the tell-tale signs.
Particularly concerned about the feedback on leadership, the Executive Team discovered this: the management qualities of business analysis, programme delivery, and sheer determination to win that were fundamental to a successful start-up, were insufficient to secure a vibrant future for a maturing company.
The Bank invited ReConsulting to rethink its approach to leadership and leadership development. The aim was to ignite the potential of its most talented managers to inspire and lead others to a bright future in an authentic and enduring way. Importantly, the Bank did not want a training course. It wanted a probing inquiry into the nature of leadership at this Global Retail Bank, conducted by the leaders themselves as a means of initiating a change in leadership style across the organisation.
ReConsulting worked alongside the Bank’s Organisational Development Team to review previous leadership development programmes and learn why the initial impact fizzled out over time. We found that previous programmes introduced useful concepts but left the participants’ beliefs about the role and practice of leadership fundamentally unchanged.
Together, we rethought what it would take to offer a refreshing and challenging learning experience and designed a six-month action-learning programme.
The challenge to participants was made clear from the outset: as a leader, you have an obligation to motivate in a goal-orientated fashion and to live out your vision in a fully committed way.
The programme design hinged on this assertion and provided participants with the following opportunities:
- Experimenting with Appreciative Inquiry as an approach to building on what is already good in the organisation
- Challenging ingrained mental models of relationships and developing better dialogue skills to promote learning in challenging situations
- Reflecting on personal values and developing a ‘vision of greatness’ for their business that people can get excited about
- Learning how to translate that vision into a “Teachable Point of View” to be shared with others in an inspiring and motivating way
- Group discussions with members of the Executive Team that challenge the beliefs and behaviours underpinning the Bank’s default style of leading
At the end of the programme, participants formed action-learning sets to maintain the momentum for change generated by the programme and to support and challenge each other in their development as leaders within this Global Retail Bank.
The result, in terms of leadership confidence and energy, has been immediate and significant.
Of course, change at the individual level is an expected outcome of any learning and development intervention. What is different and exciting at the Bank is that the programme has re-connected and re-energised a whole community of senior leaders.
Even after ReConsulting completed its scope of work, leaders from the Bank continue to support and challenge each others’ professional development through the rigour of the action-learning process. The result is an upward spiral of confidence and willingness to embrace the leadership challenge.
The feedback of the Bank’s Marketing Director to a colleague on the Brand Team sums it up:
“ Your session yesterday on our brand was brilliant. Very personal, engaging and brave. You came across as massively authentic which made your message hugely powerful. You’ve set the bar really high for folks like me, so well done and thanks.”