Case Study
Leader Development with Results
Situation
A global financial services organization decided to establish a corporate university to both provide high impact development opportunities and reinforce its culture of intellectual rigor and client service. One of the university’s important pillars was elevating leader performance. The top executives were concerned that most packaged programs were glitzy, expensive and failed to deliver business results. The leadership development literature bore out these concerns. The CEO was only willing to invest in a practical program that could demonstrate results linked to organization performance. Given that participants would be extremely intelligent, technical, demanding and busy managers, the challenge was to design and deliver a program that would be on point and engaging with clearly defined target outcomes.
Centauric Contribution
Centauric understood the organization’s culture and was familiar with a number of leaders and managers throughout the firm. We provided practical insights and innovative solutions, working in collaboration with highly talented in-house instructional designers. We positioned this program as an element of a larger culture development process.
Centauric began by conducting research to identify the differences between highly effective and less effective leaders in the organization. This led to the discovery of 15 critical actions that high impact and valued leaders made at 5 pivotal moments in their relationships with employees.
Our design involved teaching people how to:
- Adopt a leader mindset of curiosity, caring and confidence
- Recognize situations where they could make a difference as leaders
- Identify the moves they should make in these situations
- Make the moves with skill and impact
Because our goal was to build leader habits, the program included a number of events, activities and daily communications that took place over a three-month period.
Outcomes
Pre and post program, assessments of the extent to which leaders were making key moves showed improvement in a number of targeted areas. Additionally, participants reported being clearer about their responsibilities and more confident in their ability to make the right moves at pivotal moments. Their managers began to adopt the language and concepts introduced in the program and were very supportive of the progress made by the participants. Work continues to refine the program and evaluate the longer-term impact on employee engagement, performance and organization culture.
Elements of Centauric Approach:
- Assessment
- Coaching
- Learning Program Design and Implementation
- Change Leadership