Building a senior management team against the odds

Situation

A new leader had been hired as Managing Director of a 500-strong Global Markets IT team for a major investment bank.

The management team was demoralised after a series of re-organisations and changes of leadership, had no sense of teamwork, no set of shared values and no defined goals.

Many of the individuals had little or no formal management training despite having teams of 50 plus each to run, and they were voicing significant cynicism and scepticism with regard to the future.

Solution

We worked over a two year period with the individuals and the team as a whole in a series of events designed to coach the dynamic of this team. These events supported the team in defining a common purpose, building the skills to create clear goals, dealing with stakeholders and operating as a team. They also addressed the management of change and key skills and approaches to leading their own teams.

We also carried out one to one coaching with the Managing Director. This focused on creating clear goals, preparing for interactions with clients, peers and leaders, and developing this person's leadership style in a way that was effective, but authentic.

Result

The feedback from the team was extremely positive, despite their initial scepticism and their performance increased significantly over the two years that we worked with the group.

They successfully created a much more rigourous culture in their dealings with their internal customers, and they successfully delivered a systems plan that was acknowledged to be far more ambitious than anything the bank had previously undertaken.

Their leader stated that the work we did with them was 'invaluable' in achieving their success.

'The feedback from those involved was extremely positive with the overall performance of the team increasing significantly over your time with us'.