A large, global professional services organisation was looking to accelerate the careers of their high potential leaders. Like most businesses, they were under increasing pressure to become more agile, adapt to new technology and respond at pace to increasingly unpredictable environments. And as a global business emerging from the pandemic, they wanted to create greater breadth and depth in their leadership pipeline, to grow and secure the very best of their talent as future C-Suite leaders.
With their mantra of ‘what got us here, won’t get us there’ in mind, the client was highly focused on having innovation, fostering inclusion, and creating a sense of belonging as core threads running through the design thinking for the solution.
The solution
In response to the client’s needs, we worked collaboratively with their people and culture team to design and deliver a 12-month leadership development programme to circa 20 leaders each year. Running throughout this solution were the three core readiness areas that underpin our approach to developing high potential populations:
- Leadership readiness
- Business readiness
- Career readiness
In the context of such senior and experienced leaders, the programme was designed to support them in the flow of their work, with a focus on developmental experiences and exposure to thought leaders. The programme was also anchored on our learning experience platform, which allowed both asynchronous delivery of content and the ability for participants to connect from across the globe
It all started with self-awareness. Participants completed a series of questionnaires, including 360-degree feedback and a self-assessment of their motivators.
An intensive innovation bootcamp experience brought these global leaders together and exposed them to the opportunity to improve their business with a shift in mindset and toolkit. A business challenge lab then facilitated the leaders working to deliver the strategic goals of a complex, fictitious but global business simulation.
Reverse mentoring was used to take the leaders ‘back to the floor’ to understand the business from the bottom up. Members of the executive team then volunteered to act as mentors to these leaders and provide shadowing opportunities throughout the programme.
Finally, coaching was a core mechanism for developing these very senior leaders. This included one to one coaching sessions with a qualified coach, career coaching to focus on their career aspirations; as well as project coaching for their innovation projects and peer coaching from their fellow participants (supported by one of our team coaches).
The impact
Feedback was collected via a questionnaire at the end of the programme, and each leader had a final meeting with their line manager, Right Management coach and HR colleague to review their progress against their initial goals.
Over the course of two years, we delivered the Strategic Leadership Programme (SLP) to 36 leaders.
- 97% of participants felt it was very relevant to the needs of their role and would recommend it to a colleague
- 53% were promoted into new roles during the 12 months
In terms of key capabilities targeted by the SLP, managers said:
- Their future potential had grown by 23% as a result of the programme
- Their self-awareness increased by 12%
- While their tolerance for ambiguity grew by 29%
“I would love to participate in more sessions like this, with such important insights organised in a perfect, professional, interesting and comfortable way. It was a very dynamic couple of days which required huge effort and energy, and I would recommend it to everyone!”
