Multi-Year Executive Leadership Team Program
The Opportunity
The establishment of a newly formed leadership team for the retail arm of a national asset management business, coinciding with the outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent impact on the retail industry, presented an opportunity to bring together the Retail Leadership Team (RLT) to build trust, establish ways of working and develop the required leadership mindsets to steer the business through a very challenging and disruptive time.
The remit was initially to run two multi-day team workshops to form closer connections and understanding, breakdown silos and jointly create the strategy for the business. Due to the success of the initial workshops, the work evolved to become a multi-year leadership and team development program to continue building collective team muscle and leadership capability of the core team.
The Solution
Year 1 of the program:
Commenced with a discovery phase in which all RLT members were interviewed about their experiences on the team and opportunities to improve connections and ways of working. Internal business stakeholders who interacted regularly with the RLT were also interviewed to obtain an external perspective on how the team operated. The first year of the program comprised two, two-day face-to-face workshops addressing points of friction, tensions with other stakeholders in the business and co-creation of the strategy for the Retail business in response to Covid.
In year 2 the program extended to include:
360 leadership assessment to understand the predominant leadership styles of the RLT and the impact on the business in terms of team climate and engagement
One-on-one coaching on 360 feedback results
A 3-day Enterprise Leadership offsite with presentations from the Executive Leadership Team and market analysts
6 x ½ day leadership sprints covering – Cultivating resilience, Driving engagement in teams, Understanding investor mindsets, Building customer intimacy, Developing high performing teams and Leader as Coach
Team charter and established ways of working
The 3rd year of the program extended further to include:
Follow up 360 leadership assessment and coaching
2 x 2-day leadership offsite immersions on Enterprise Leadership
In the second offsite Leaders participated in a full day leadership simulation with invited stakeholders from across the broader business
3 x ½ day leadership sprints covering – Leadership Styles, Emotional Intelligence and Inclusive Leadership
3 x 90-minute group coaching sessions to collectively solve real leadership and business challenges through guided dialogue
Executive coaching of some RLT participants
The teams reporting into the RLT were also included in Year 3 with:
2 X ½ day sprint accelerators
2 x 1-day Enterprise Leadership Workshops with the 3 main divisions of the retail business
Executive coaching of high potential managers
The following diagram represents the participant experience on year 3 of the program.
The Impact
Successful response to Covid-19 crisis – The organisation was the only retail asset management company in Australia to not terminate retailers from their assets during multiple covid lockdowns
Significantly improved understanding and alignment of RLT team – The RLT reported enhanced interpersonal relationships and improved performance and decision making across the team. This greater alignment in the RLT was supported by improvements in employee engagement and confidence in the leadership team over the 3 year period
Elevated leadership capability and ability to operate as Enterprise Leaders – Leaders built the ability and discipline to step away from operational issues through providing greater accountability and trust to their teams, freeing them up to work on the more strategic challenges facing the business
Improved team climate and engagement – The follow up leadership 360 assessment in year 3 showed substantive increase in the number of leadership styles effectively used by the RLT and improved team climate as experienced by their direct reports