The situation

Our client was a Global Integrated Payments Company Engineering Leadership team operating within the Technology function.  Working virtually, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, this team was being asked to deliver more, deliver differently and deliver faster to keep our client at the centre of their customer’s ever evolving needs.

The challenge

The team needed to accelerate the pace they delivered their strategy, navigate a seamless move to remote working whilst also delivering efficiency and process improvements.  All of this required them to individually and as a team rethink how they worked.

They needed to both inspire and develop their individual teams –and strengthen stakeholder relationships to enable them to lead a transformation programme which involved disrupting outdated ways of working and reinventing new practices.

Traditionally the team had worked together as and when they needed to – the old strategy required limited cross-function working.  However, in their new world, they needed to come together, to collaborate and support each other, and bring the strategy off the page and into their day-to-day decisions and leadership.

The whole of the function needed to step up a level – in what they did and how they did it – with this leadership team responsible for making that happen.

The solution

We designed a modular leadership development programme for the team, equally strong on capability development, and day-to-day application.

To ensure the programme met the specific needs of the individuals and the team, we did a series of diagnostic interviews to understand their needs.  We then summarised their views in a feedback report and gained their agreement to the critical development priorities.

The content encompassed core elements of a modern curriculum which was tailored to their ambitions;

• Leading yourself through deepening self-insight
• Inspiring and connecting with their purpose – their Why
• Engaging others using Head, Heart and Gut
• Leading change and optimising stakeholder relationships.

To ensure maximum relevance and transfer of learning, each module consisted of pre-work and a capability-building experiential workshop that resulted in individual commitments to apply the learning.

Between each module, we facilitated a series of small group ‘application pods’ which provided peer and expert coaching to deepen the learning and strengthen trust and relationships

The six-month programme closed with the participants showcasing their learning and progress with peers, boss and WDI faculty.

The results

Self-insight was transformed, and therefore the ability to connect, influence and build trusting relationships with their team, peers and stakeholders.  And the learning was individualised; people thoughtfully adapted and integrated the content to suit themselves, and their circumstances as a leader.

As a team, relationships were transformed as trust deepened.  The colleagues were vulnerable together, had open conversations and then turned to each other as collaborators.  And as a team, performance was uplifted through a shared connection with the strategy that was both collective and deeply personal.