Our client is a leading wealth management bank that provides its customers investment banking, private banking and asset management services worldwide. India was seen as an execution arm only and the intent was to change that view for global teams. The lateral senior hires had trouble integrating and scaling the organization while they had ideas and proven past track record as they were constantly pushed down by the tenured lot. Given the current volatile environment and plans of expansion by the bank, expectation from India delivery center leaders was following:
Client identified a set of 30 leaders as high-potentials who were expected to impact regional and global stakeholders by enhancing the perceived value of their personal and the organization brand. This cohort included both the tenured leaders and lateral hires.
Further, from this group of 30 leaders, 12 exceptional leaders had to be identified during the process and taken on a longer journey to keep them engaged & develop them for bigger global roles and build intensive trust based relationship with stakeholders.
For the entire cohort of 30 leaders, the intent was to focus on Global stakeholder management, higher engagement, influencing and enhancing the perceived value of the India delivery center.
Expectation from 12 leaders specifically was to:
Recalibrate conducted multiple appreciative inquiry sessions and interviews with the top leadership team and stakeholders to gather data on current internal and external environment and get an understanding of alignment between vision, mission, values and business strategy. This output vetted the existing competency framework of the organization and also helped in coming up with a new proposed set of competencies (which were missing) aligned to the strategic intent. Post identification/vetting of the competencies, a customised development journey was created.
A four-month APEX leadership program grounded in leadership laser coaching (ACI Columbia certified coaches), customised development/assessment center including formal psychometrics was undertaken along with capability-building workshops based on principles of neuroscience and action learning. The journey was supported by cutting-edge technology using AI, intelligent analytics and also includes “On-Demand” learning on a mobile platform. The capability-building workshops had a combination of business and experiential simulations and action learning to observe/develop demonstrated behaviors aligned to global leadership competencies. The workshops were then followed and anchored by a three-month executive coaching journey focusing on key development areas and business outcomes for all thirty leaders.
The core competencies identified for the journey were:
The top 12 people were identified through globally researched tools & templates providing a holistic view of an employee while staying in the employee’s job role & the organization’s strategic intent and align it to their future role. These 12 leaders were specifically coached on shifting their identities so that they could see themselves in light of global leaders and help scale India operations.
Following methods were used for the assessment center:
Formal
Informal
The top 12 exceptional leaders continued their coaching journey for additional 4 months, wherein they were continuously engaged in reflecting and honing their development areas with the coach specifically in preparation of their alignment to global roles
The Columbia coaching process focuses on “What’s happening”, “What matters” and “What’s next”. The coaches consciously helped members to identify near term opportunities to apply tools and techniques and measure effectiveness through observational feedback.
The result which were observed with the entire cohort of 30 was as following
Coaching facilitated the transition seamlessly. Some of them have outshone others and experimented with areas they have not even gone and went extra mile to create a level engagement wit their global teams and peers. The 3 month journey gave members a chance to stop and look under the hood. Coaches encouraged reflections by sharing methods of ‘Single loop’ and ‘double loop’ learning. The Columbia coaching process contributed to laser focus and major shifts in short period of time.
The 12 identified top talent who had gone through an extended coaching journey saw following results
What we heard from their Global and India stakeholders was on the lines of:
What we heard from the leaders themselves: