"The horizon leans forward,
offering you space to place
new steps of change."
MAYA ANGELOU

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Case Study – Developing Middle Managers

 

Situation

A $2M high-growth financial services firm called upon Baybridge Consulting to develop behaviorally based leadership competencies for over 80 middle managers. The need grew out of recent changes in the operating culture, high turnover rates for middle managers, and evolving consumer services/products. The initiative was intended to be aligned with the new corporate strategic direction and business growth model. The middle managers were expected to show increases in performance relative to leading employees, alignment of decision-making across functional areas, and capacity to deliver new products and services to consumers.

Process

We responded by providing Leadership Development services:

    • We assessed the current leadership capabilities and needs.
    • We determined capability gaps and aligned workshop offerings with leadership competencies in the areas of business acumen, sales and interpersonal skills, teamwork, and lastly personal leadership.
    • We designed a unique “cohort” process and delivered leadership education over the course of 8 weeks. A cohort is a group of participants who stay together, as one class, throughout the entire process. This design was based on a need revealed in the assessment data, “we are all located at separate branches and do not have a chance to interact with our peers to share best practices, issues, or information to make educated decisions”. Additionally, colleagues in a cohort system have a chance to discuss real business issues while simultaneously learning leadership content.

Impact

    • Minimized turnover rates to industry standard.
    • The commission of future services for executive/officer alignment with corporate growth strategies.
    • Being conferred with “provider of choice” status.
    • Breakthrough learning especially in the areas of personal leadership, developing and motivating others, and building a cohesive team environment among peers.
    • Several managers expanded the learning beyond the classroom by creating a monthly leadership forum to share, analyze, and resolve intractable management problems.
    • Survey and anecdotal information revealed employee comments reporting improvement in their manager’s behavior, attitude, and thinking resulting in improved business results.

Key Success Indicators

    • The Human Resources team worked diligently with the consultants to design, develop, and follow-up on the educational process.
    • The client was extremely receptive to exploring creative avenues to build new levels of competitive capability among managers.
    • The participants were willing to discuss previously “undiscussable” issues to break through mindset limitations preventing managers from realizing high performance.

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