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In 2017, the SKEMA Business School Observatory on the Feminisation of Companies published its Gender diversity in the banking industry report, looking at female representation in 71 banks across 20 countries. The report found that although women make up 52% of global banking workers, they average only 38% of middle managers and 16% of executive leaders. The researchers suggest that women in banking face a ‘double glass ceiling’ – while reaching the middle management tier can be challenging, breaking through to more senior leadership roles can be tougher still.

Research from the FT also highlights that although the majority of junior staff working in financial services are women, only one in four reaches a senior role. The research demonstrates that the proportion of women at each level plunges dramatically as women move up through the ranks. In general, the FT concludes, progress has been painfully slow. Some representative comments from women interviewed for this research include, “if all your bosses are men there isn’t much to aspire to” and “men are better at self-promotion”.

In 2016 Jayne-Anne Gadhia, CEO of Virgin Money, led a government review into the representation of women in senior management in the finance sector. Her report, Empowering Productivity: Harnessing the Talents of Women in Financial Services, revealed that only 14% of executive jobs were held by women.

The researchers suggest that women in banking face a ‘double glass ceiling’ – while reaching the middle management tier can be challenging, breaking through to more senior leadership roles can be tougher still.

Gadhia’s report identified a ‘permafrost’ in middle management - women are either failing to progress or simply leaving. Although there is a widespread assumption that many women put their careers on hold to focus on family, the research found that women without family commitments were just as likely to stick in middle management or to walk away. Gadhia suggested that the issue is a complex one and the solution lies in cultural change.

There is some evidence that women are more reluctant than men to put themselves forward for leadership roles. And even in our age of quotas and women in leadership initiatives, there is still an ingrained unconscious bias deeply ingrained in the culture of many organisations.

What can organisations do to address this issue? 

Think about the future leadership capabilities you need.

Too often, senior leaders recruit in their own image and are not always open to the benefits of gender diversity and different leadership styles. However, in our fast-moving, digital era every organisation can benefit from more diverse leadership at every level. We also need to rethink the type of leadership skills that we need in unpredictable times. This represents an ideal opportunity to engage more women with exciting development opportunities.

At Cirrus, we have carried out a great deal of research into modern leadership challenges and have identified the capabilities that will be vital for leaders now and in the future. This is a key aid in identifying talent, both externally and internally, and for encouraging more women into more senior leadership roles.

Developing these capabilities will help, but it’s also vital to consider future potential for leadership. Here the notion of career aspirations and key drivers or motivators come in, which will be particularly relevant to explore with female candidates. We know it can be lonely at the top. Talk to the women in your organisation about the variety of leadership positions you can offer and explore how they fit with each individual’s career aspirations. Understanding what is important to women leaders can help you build a more diverse senior leadership population.

We know it can be lonely at the top. Talk to the women in your organisation about the variety of leadership positions you can offer and explore how they fit with each individual’s career aspirations.

Identify and develop your talent

Identifying potential at an early stage is a key part of encouraging more women into senior leadership. In line with the above capabilities, it’s important to ensure women with leadership potential are cognisant of their strengths as well as aware of areas for development.

Offer support in various forms to ensure women are focused on developing their careers – most people will benefit from a combination of work experience, coaching and mentoring as well as formal learning and development.

Through ongoing performance conversations, supportive managers can help women to build increased confidence in their capabilities. Providing access to a network of senior female mentors can offer valuable advice. One-to-one coaching can help to identify individual goals and work out ways to achieve those goals. More formal programmes of learning and development, especially those with a specific focus on women in leadership, can be invaluable.

Reach out to young women and girls

Many big financial institutions now have early outreach programmes, where senior women leaders visit schools to help shift girls’ perception of the finance industry.

Ensure you have women on the shortlist

If your organisation is not shortlisting women for senior leadership roles, you really need to ask yourself why not. If you work with external recruiters, be very clear about the importance of diversity. If internal candidates are not coming through, think about more creative ways of encouraging them. Women are not always quite so vocal about their aspirations as their male counterparts.

Create a culture of inclusion

Creating an inclusive and flexible working environment can help to embed diversity across your organisation. Ditch any ‘presenteeism’ mindset and encourage remote working and flexible working hours where you can.

Many women simply don’t aspire to traditional senior roles. Creating roles that appeal to women who may want to do things in different ways is vital.

Treat women fairly

Interesting research from the Bank of England found that women experience more severe repercussions for misconduct in the financial advisory industry than their male counterparts do. The research found that women are 20% more likely to lose their jobs – and 30% less likely to find a new one – following an incident of misconduct compared to men. The gap is even wider in organisations with few female managers. Researchers commented that: “The effects of the gender punishment gap are costly, long-lasting, and may ultimately contribute to the glass ceiling faced by women in finance.”

Appoint more women to board positions

The UK Government has introduced diversity quotas to help address gender imbalance at board level. The cultural impact of more women on the board can be significant. These women can be powerful role models for others. There is also evidence that women are less likely to take the sort of risky decisions that led to the financial crisis.

Tom Leach Coaching is a small business providing executive coaching and mentoring in the public and voluntary sector and in higher education. Set up in 2013, the business has grown beyond its early roots in leadership development in the health sector. Conceived as a small, fast-moving and flexible enterprise Tom Leach Coaching draws in other coaching professionals with a range of expertise to support team and leadership development.

The Founder and sole Director of the business, Tom Leach, is a qualified coach with higher degrees in management and education. He has been a Lecturer and Researcher in higher education in Scotland, an Associate Lecturer for the Open University Business School, Head of a team of internal consultants in the health sector, and National Project Manager for the NHS in England. Below, he speaks to Finance Monthly about the common problems that he helps businesses and leaders with and the benefits of having a business coach.

What common problems do businesses and Executives fall into that coaching helps to address?

The world is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Politically public services are under huge pressures to respond to overwhelming expectations within the tightest constraints of financial and economic resources imposed by austerity. Technological and scientific improvements unimagined by earlier generations have created magnificent opportunities, but have stoked up huge public expectations. Climate and environmental change offer vivid examples of the prevailing uncertainties in all walks of life.

In the last 24 months, Tom Leach Coaching has worked with public sector leaders striving to find more effective ways of working across organisational boundaries, breaking down the old silos of health and social care, building multi-disciplinary teams, coping with organisational mergers, and stabilising services under constant pressures of change.

For most of our clients, critical personal and career questions surfaced as they struggled with their organisational and leadership challenges. For the Chair of a commissioning group, a priority was to identify their particular role on the Board, to manage her own finite energies, reduce her unrealistic expectations of herself, and concentrate her attention on areas of the group business which would produce the most significant returns.

A Finance Director starting in a new role on the board of another health organisation was coached over the period of transition, helping him to achieve a better level of performance in a shorter period.

Executive coaching often provides the most effective, cost efficient and most accurately focussed means of achieving such leadership development.

 

What difference can having an executive coach, like Tom Leach Coaching, have on an individual’s strategy and career path?

 

Leaders in the private and public sectors typically face huge business pressures, which in part arise from the volatility and uncertainties of the environment in which they work, as described earlier. As we have seen, however, personal management and career issues often become entangled in day-to-day decision-making at an emotional level, increasing personal stress and reducing resilience. Without exception and since Tom Leach Coaching’s creation, our clients value highly the time that executive coaching allows them to think through issues in a structured way and view them from a range of different perspectives. Having the time to think makes all the difference. Frequently, it results in a complete change of approach.  

When should a company or their Executive consider speaking with and hiring their own business coach?

Executive coaching can make a significant difference to leadership performance where new appointments are being made. Ideally, coaching should be considered in the period before a transition and during the critical first weeks of ‘on-boarding’ and integration of a new post holder. Large corporations replace 12% of their executives annually. That means a lot of transitions are taking place. Research shows that as many as 40% of new leaders fail (fired or resign) or underperform during this period of transition.

Most executives and organisations do not plan enough for their transitions. Executive coaching can help.

What differentiates a good executive coach from an excellent one?

Differentiating a good from an excellent executive coach may be less difficult than separating the good from the rest. Numbers of coaches have grown rapidly in recent years and there has been a confusing proliferation of qualifications and titles. Professional regulation is progressing, but the field is wide open and careful scrutiny is essential. Professional recognition is a starting point. Relevance and length of experience are likely to be significant but not sufficient guides. A recent survey reveals that most executives follow the recommendations of colleagues when making their choice of coach.

Above all, it is essential to make use of a ‘chemistry session’ to test the experience and promises of a potential executive coach. Good coaches usually make these available free-of-charge.

Website: www.tomleachcoaching.co.uk

Email: tom@tomleachcoaching.co.uk

Is globalised trade in reverse? Is protectionism on the rise with the potential of a spreading trade war? These are questions at the top of many business leaders’ minds. The answer to both these questions is yes, and business models are going to have to change as a result. Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia, co-author of ‘Backlash: Saving Globalisation from Itself’, explains for Finance Monthly.

WTO figures already show a significant slowdown in the growth of international trade as a percentage of GDP. We are still only at the early stages, but a trade war and a stalling of globalized trade is almost inevitable.

This first part of the 21st century has seen many shifts from the post-war global world order that we had all become used to and on which the trans-national business model has been built. These changes are significant, encompassing political, cultural and economic shifts that have upended old assumptions.

To cite but a few examples, global governance structures (WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc) were previously seen as fair arbiters of the global order. Now their governance structures are seen by developing countries as dominated by the West and by the developed world as no longer serving their interests.

‘World trade produces net benefits for all’ was the 20th century mantra. Now it is clear that such benefits are very unevenly distributed with consequent economic, social and political implications. The free movement of global capital was seen as a vital fuel for growth and development. Now it is seen as potentially destabilizing, a system for hiding large amounts of illicit money, and a facilitator of tax arbitrage.

Low labour costs were seen as the competitive advantage of developing countries. Now they are seen as the basis of ‘unfair competition.’ Persistent trade imbalances were dismissed. Now we understand their corrosive effects on deficit countries.

In an information driven world, privacy and national security issues affect trade – from the manufacturing of routers to the security of data platforms, to building self-driving cars. For instance, Qi Lu of the Chinese tech company Baidu explains: “The days of building a vehicle in one place and it runs everywhere are over. Because a vehicle that can move by itself by definition it is a weapon.

But maybe most important is the major geopolitical shift. The post-war world order was characterized by Western dominance and overseen by the hegemonic power of the US. Now we have three more or less equally potent trading blocs – the US, China and its sphere of influence, and the European Union. Economists have known for decades that in such a structure, competition between blocs was much more likely than co-operation.

Trans-national business has played a role in these changes. A meaningful proportion of the US trade deficit comes not from ‘Chinese goods’ but from American goods that are being manufactured in China (the computer I am writing this on, for example). Businesses have long engaged in arbitrage between countries in investment, jobs and taxes, nurturing, over time, what has turned out to be a political time-bomb.

Neither can business leaders be blamed for such behaviour. They were doing their job: optimizing their business models. But times have changed. The rules of world trade need overhaul. And business models will have to change with them.

Some business leaders are already taking action. “The days of outsourcing are declining. Chasing the lowest labor costs is yesterday’s model” says Jeff Immelt of GE. “Now we have a strategy of localization and regionalization” states Inge Thulin of 3M.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the trade agreements that we have all become used to were developed in a world of trading largely in goods. They are poorly suited to trade in services, digital commerce and large financial flows.

It is tempting to dismiss talk of trade wars as a Trump phenomenon. Much bombast, little meaningful action, and something that will soon pass. That would be to misunderstand the slow but sure tectonic shifts – political, cultural and economic – that are happening.

How individual businesses react, or, preferably, pre-empt these shifts will determine their future performance. And they will determine whether the political consequences of their actions will, over time, smooth things out or make them worse.

Martin Schneider began his professional career in Consulting Engineering. He then worked for ABB and ALSTOM in various international functions up to senior management level and restructured a US-based technology company. As of 2004, he’s the CEO of the BRAINFORCE Group, and as of 2007 – its owner.

BRAINFORCE Group has been a leader in interim management and expert solutions for almost 40 years. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the company has subsidiaries in Europe, the Baltics, Russia, Africa and Asia, as well as a strong network of partners in the Americas. Here, Martin tells us more about his company and the benefits of interim management.

 

In your opinion, how important is it to have first-hand experience of running a business in order to be an effective interim manager and to provide valuable insight to other business leaders?

Business leaders are typically people with strong self-confidence about their knowledge, capabilities and skills. If they realise that their counterpart has an equivalent level of knowledge and experience, they tend to trust and accept them. Interim Managers are usually needed in difficult, non-routine situations. The goal is to achieve sustainable results as quickly as possible, based on their past learning curve, an above-average ability to lead and motivate people, and last but not least - an entrepreneurial mindset. The same way a ‘silverback ranger’ knows his forest inside-out, an interim CEO knows his profession and has been successfully steering operations through tough challenges for years.

 

Why is an interim manager more effective to optimise organisations? How can cultural and historical challenges be overcome?

I believe that a manager who has previously led, optimised or restructured e.g. three different management structures has a higher success rate to do the same with the fourth management structure. An interim manager comes in with an analytical mind and an unbiased view. He also has no aspirations to stay there forever, which eliminates the negative political aspects. Furthermore, he brings in leadership skills, cultural sensitivity and a portfolio of best practices from his several previous assignments in different company cultures. All these aspects are essential for the success of an interim manager. Once an interim manager “changes sides” and becomes a permanent employee, the dynamics and perceptions around him change. His gaze, as if blinkered, is restricted to the part of the road that lies immediately ahead of him and thus, the value-added of the interim management approach vanishes, from our experience, within one or two years.

An interim manager usually is able to gain the trust of the people in the company within a few weeks due to his seniority, objectivity, empathy, cultural sensitivity and strong professional track record. An interim manager usually gets to know what truly is going on in an organisation amazingly quickly. People start to talk as soon as they realise that the interim manager is there to help and to give the credit for the achievements to the internal people who were actively involved in the project.

 

What do you find are the most common issues that organisations struggle with, from a management perspective?

In a nutshell, I would say that weaknesses we observe are often connected to weak internal communication, slow decision-making and ‘over-engineered’, rigid and bureaucratic internal processes. An experienced interim manager has learned how to communicate effectively at all levels.

Due to the work overload and limited management resources, management decisions are not always implemented to the last consequence. An interim manager brings in additional management capacity and is dedicated and responsible for the completion of implementation.

Today’s world is heavily regulated, even over-regulated in many areas. As a consequence, management at all levels are motivated to make ‘safe’ decisions only, as opposed to brave ones and even worse - to sit out problems. Such managerial shortage is cascading down organisations.

Another major problem that I’ve seen is the belief that IT systems lead to better decisions. They should only be supporting the decision-making process, not substituting it. As there is no perfect information in this world and ambiguity is more common than clarity, despite Big Data, the human decision power based on previous experience and intuition generally leads to better results. Why are the ‘Hidden Champions’ typically family-owned and/or family-style managed companies and not corporates? Why is one of the key factors of successful corporates their ability to keep entrepreneurial behaviours alive?

100% standardised and measured processes kill people’s ability to think out-of-the-box, to respond with common sense in exceptional situations and to nourish positive creativity.

An experienced interim manager has the capacity to judge where and to what degree of sophistication new processes should be introduced, and existing ones optimised or simplified. They take a more entrepreneurial approach.

Last but not least, today’s trend towards ‘the cheapest solution is the best solution’ is detrimental to companies’ sustainable performance. In most cases, the ‘cheap’ internal solution turns out to be the most expensive solution due to the learning curve needed. Simply put, time is money. This expensive learning curve can be avoided by deploying an interim manager who has already gone through the learning curve previously. The value-added of an interim manager generally exceeds the cost of a learning curve by far.

 

 

Can interim management play a role in developing managerial talents within the business?

Certainly. In fact, we often observe businesses burning young talents by promoting them too fast to the next level when there is an unexpected early departure of their superior. In such a situation, the deployment of a well-picked interim executive for a few months can save the business a lot of money. Why? The interim manager will build-up the young manager’s skills step-by-step by assigning him new responsibilities and being his neutral mentor during this phase. An example: a young manager talent without previous restructuring experience was assigned to restructure a complex engineering and manufacturing operation. The perspective was to lead this international operation as their CEO after restructuring. The corporate management decided to save the investment for an experienced restructuring interim manager who would have further developed this young manager during the restructuring phase as his deputy. The result was that the young, promising and capable managerial talent was overwhelmed by the complexity of the restructuring situation, and left the company before the completion of the restructuring. The corporation lost time in the restructuring, as well as a good future managerial talent.

 

What are the advantages and disadvantages of promoting senior positions from within, vs. external recruitment?

Promoting senior positions from within is the traditionally preferred approach by most companies. The reasons are manifold: familiarity with organisation and processes, cultural fit, known strengths and weaknesses of the individual promoted, etc.

However, there are also substantial disadvantages. Without ‘fresh blood’ entering from outside, there could be rope team building, less innovation and lower agility. A typical statement one can hear very often is: “We have done things the same way for 20 years, why should we change our way of getting things done?”.

To fill senior positions from the outside is particularly important if an organisation is in a phase of transition (e.g. cultural change, disruptive technologies challenging the business such as Industry 4.0/IoT/Digitalisation, etc.). Interim managers particularly bring in the required “’fresh blood’ instantly and due to their unbiased view and changing management experience are able to break up rope teams and change the culture into a new direction. Once a new desired state is achieved by the interim CEO, he hands over the company to the new permanent CEO selected with the appropriate profile.

 

What are BRAINFORCE’s philosophy when helping clients with interim management and consulting services?

Our philosophy is to provide managerial solutions within days at a high-quality level, and to achieve results which exceed the investment for the interim or consulting assignment by far.

 

What makes your company unique?

We are a fully integrated service provider and work with our own people. We do not believe in the franchise model in this demanding management field. Founded in 1979, we have a wealth of experience in the field and are proud to say that we are the ‘original’ in the interim management provider industry in continental Europe. Over the years, we have perfected our professional, quality-focused M.A.S.T.E.R.3-Pool Management and customer-relationship processes.

BRAINFORCE’s experts stand out for their extensive leadership experience, with proven successes in design and implementation, as well as having a positive mindset and a winning personality.

 

Contact details:

Phone: +41 44 448 41 41

Email: management@brainforce-ag.com

Website:  www.brainforce-ag.com

Finance Monthly speaks to author and President of CDR Assessment Group – Nancy Parsons about her company and their coaching tools, her philanthropic initiatives and the passion that drives her.

 

Tell us about CDR Assessment Group, your career path prior to co-founding the company and your books.

Twenty years ago, I co-founded CDR Assessment Group, along with my business partner Kimberly R. Leveridge, Ph.D. CDR is recognized as one of the top firms for combining the science of assessments with the art of developing people. We provide our proprietary assessments for leadership development and talent management for global clients.

Kim and I developed the CDR 3-Dimensional Assessment Suite® in 1998. The Suite digs deep beneath the surface to help each leaders’ self-awareness move to a whole new level to improve their performance, work relationships, success and satisfaction. Our coaching tools have helped leaders accurately measure their character traits and strengths, risks for derailment; and drivers & reward needs. The Suite is available in five languages (Spanish, French, Italian, German and English.) We have built a global team of certified CDR executive coaches and consultants who provide services for CDR clients.

In late 2017, I published a research-based book, Fresh Insights to End the Glass Ceiling and since publishing, I’ve been interviewed by over 50 radio hosts and a national television show. The book sheds new light on why the glass ceiling exists – and it is not what most people think. The personality-based research shared in the book reveals why so few women make it to the top, and the staggering costs of not promoting more women to senior leadership positions. My book is packed with practical solutions to end the glass ceiling for good.

I enjoy writing and have authored more than 30 articles and have had a blog since 2009. My second book, titled Transforming Leaderocrity is scheduled for release in late 2018. I have enjoyed presenting at international, national and regional industry conferences and am an NSA member. As a speaker, I have been described by others as being “refreshingly frank, gutsy, funny, wicked smart and passionate.”   When presenting to groups, I enjoy shedding new light on why people do what they do, both the good and the bad.

In 2016, I founded the Vets Coaching Vets philanthropic initiative and since then, our team has worked with six different veteran organizations to coach more than 50 transitioning veterans to accelerate their career success. Since 2000, CDR Assessment Group has been a women-owned WBENC certified business and is now affiliated with WBEA.

I am delighted to be married to the love of my life and have four grown children, three grandchildren, and three very spoiled dogs.

 

Can you detail the key services that CDR Assessment Group offers?

We provide consulting, executive coaching and training services that wrap around our unmatched assessment tools. We train executive coaches (both internal and external consultants) to use the assessment tools with their clients.

While most of my actual client work centers around coaching senior executives and executive coaches, CDR Assessment Group is able to reach and develop thousands of leaders and professionals each year. Of course, a good portion of my time is devoted to running and growing the business. We have a network of globally dispersed executive coaches who utilize our tools with their clients and who participate to serve as consultants and coaches for our projects as well.

One differentiator for us is that our assessments are like the Swiss Army Knife of the assessment world. In addition to using these tools for executive coaching, we use these scientifically validated measures as an integral part of our consulting and training services to help clients with:

Why would you say experienced corporate executives need the services of an external management consultant/coach?

Corporate executives need our propriety assessments and coaching so that they can gain an acute sense of self-awareness that they otherwise cannot achieve, even with the best soul-searching techniques. By completing their initial coaching debrief session with the CDR 3-D Suite (about 2.5 to 3 hours), they can hit the ground running with new, deeper insights to help them better understand their strengths, risks, vulnerabilities and motivation to a nuanced level. Equipped with this new level of self-understanding, they can improve their leadership capability well beyond their current effectiveness level. They can also begin to see what makes others tick and how to be more effective with their teams and stakeholders.

How important is it to have first-hand experience of running a business in order to provide valuable insight to other business leaders?

I think having experience as a CEO is extremely valuable as a coach because one has then walked in the shoes of strategy, operations and P&L. However, experience alone is not enough because one then only scratches the surface. By adding scientifically validated assessment tools into the coaching process, we accelerate impactful, usable real-world dialogue from the first coaching session. We don’t hold hands wasting valuable time getting to know our executive clients, we are able to dig deep and accelerate results from the first coaching session.

We then link executive team data to business strategy to be sure that the actual profiles of team members are well aligned to achieve strategic objectives.

Here’s recent feedback of a COO who is a Ph.D. in the pharmaceutical industry:

“I gained valuable insights into my leadership style and I particularly enjoyed her session on how stress impacts me as a leader. That part of our session is something I use almost every day. As a scientist, the data-based assessment was very appealing and gave me some good data to rely on when discussing my role at the company with the board and my CEO. In addition, while the assessments were very thorough, what I enjoyed most was my one-on-one coaching session with Nancy. Her advice, opinion, and experiential knowledge gave me some good perspective on my current job and also my future career. So much so that I wish I had done this years ago!”

 

What makes your job rewarding?

I am rewarded by knowing that we are revolutionizing leadership and talent development by identifying true talent to a level not done before. That will help us increase leadership effectiveness which has suffered to this point. I love helping people become self-aware to a whole new level. Most executives say they wish they had done this 20 or 30 years ago. Those “aha” moments and the sheer joy people have, despite acknowledging their risks and vulnerabilities, in going through the assessment debrief is my performance fuel.

Another area that brings me a high level of satisfaction is helping individuals get onto the right career path. So many leaders, veterans and others are off track but do not quite know how to identify what is the best career for them. We are able to help these individuals find clarity of their best course forward.

I also really enjoy facilitating executive team development sessions (that are custom designed based on the CDR data) once all team members have had individual coaching debriefs with their assessments. This transforms team dynamics, effectiveness and ability to convert conflict into positive performance.

 

What differentiates CDR Assessment from its competitors?

 

What do you hope to achieve with your philanthropic organization Vets Coaching Vets?

I am passionate about our philanthropic effort. We hope to build this program through building partnerships with corporations who benefit from hiring Veterans and who want to make sure they are hiring them and developing them in a way that taps into their inherent strengths and satisfies their motivational needs.

 

Jan Bowen-Nielsen is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Quiver Management – a European quality award-winning coaching, leadership training and change consultancy company working with clients across the UK and internationally.

 Jan Bowen-Nielsen comes from a corporate background with senior management roles in the UK, Europe and America, including a CEO role for an international business in USA. He became known for being a good ‘trouble-shooter’ and at times a ‘trouble-maker’, so he gained a lot of experience in initiating and leading strategic change initiatives. When he returned to the UK in 2002, he set up a change consultancy together with a partner, called JBBI, believing that they were some of the first to combine executive coaching and change consultancy – coaching senior teams to successfully drive change through their organisations.

This brought Jan into the coaching industry and he found himself speaking at UK and international conferences about how his company used coaching to bring about organisational change. He was also invited onto the Advisory Board of EMCC (the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, the leading professional body for coaching and mentoring in Europe). Here he speaks to Finance Monthly about his career in coaching, the industry itself and his business.

 

What attracted you to founding a coaching company?

 Through my EMCC board work, I became heavily involved in helping to raise the professional standards in the coaching industry. In 2008, I exited JBBI and decided to focus on coaching, as I was receiving a lot of calls from previous clients and through recommendations to coach senior executives and leadership teams.

However, my vision was to spread the benefits of coaching beyond senior executives. I wanted to bring ‘coaching to the heart of leadership’. I could see huge potential if we get line managers within organisations to coach and develop their own team members to increase performance.

So, we designed and put together a practical coaching training programme for leaders, accredited by EMCC. This enabled us to give line managers an internationally recognised qualification in coaching and mentoring. The relatively short programme is designed to be practical, relevant and embed coaching skills into a leader’s daily working environment. It has been highly successful and a cornerstone of our business ever since.

 

What does the business look like today?

This month we celebrate 15 years as a business and we now have a great team of 19 coaches, trainers and consultants spread across the UK. All of our coaches are qualified and very experienced business leaders.

We work with large corporates, professional firms and high-growth businesses across all industry sectors. Our client list within the financial services sector includes well-known large corporates such as Standard Life, Tesco Bank, Macquarie Bank, Lloyds Banking Group as well as independent financial adviser practices.

Our range of coaching and leadership training courses has expanded significantly, and an important development has been how we train professionals, such as financial advisers, in coaching techniques to help them improve how they interact with clients and deliver their advisory services.

 

What is your ideal assignment?

An ideal assignment would be when we combine our coaching, training and change consultancy expertise to help develop a coaching culture within an organisation. This would involve coaching the team of top executives, training all line managers in coaching and adding other leadership skills to the mix, such as motivation, development, performance management and helping people through change. We have had some outstanding success stories which has attracted national media attention. Seeing how some organisations go from an old-fashioned command and control approach to a modern coaching style is immensely rewarding, as is witnessing the benefits on staff morale, personal growth and business results. This work allows me to see my original vision coming to fruition!

 

What motivates you most about coaching leaders?

Our coaching assignments vary considerably, but it is fundamentally about developing a business leader’s thinking, behaviours and performance. Sometimes, this involves being a sounding board for key strategic decisions, other times,  it will be about driving radical organisational transformations, or it might be helping a functional director (such as a CFO) to step up to a CEO role.

What really motivates me is when I see leaders get ‘aha’-moments and question some of their beliefs about themselves and the world around them, and through this insight get new ideas, or radically change how they think, behave and lead their organisations. Since these leaders are influencing many people in their organisations and in some cases, even their industry, the impact can be felt by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Months later, I may hear some positive news in the media or see something change in their organisation, and I know that I was there when the CEO made the ‘discovery’ that started this. It’s a great feeling to know that not only did I help the CEO, but also positively helped many more people. The glory of course goes entirely to the CEOs - it was their insight and decision-making, I just facilitated the thinking that led to it.

 

How has the coaching industry evolved and where is it going?

15 years ago, coaching often involved helping underperforming leaders. Now, leaders increasingly understand the benefits of coaching and our clients tend to be very successful leaders in their own right, yet are looking to improve even further and step up to another level. Think of how a successful sports performer looks to their coach to continue to improve and gain an edge over their competitors. It is similar in the business world.

We have seen coaching evolve from being an exclusive benefit for a few fortunate top corporate executives to become more mainstream. Large organisations employ internal coaches to help middle managers and other staff, and managers are trained to use coaching as part of their style. We are seeing coaching being applied to help business owners and entrepreneurs grow their businesses and we are seeing ‘health coaching’ for patients in the NHS. So, the coaching approach is now finding many positive outlets.

Coaching is not a protected term, anyone can call themselves a coach, but through the work that the professional bodies are doing, organisational buyers are increasingly discerning and will readily ask to see qualifications and credentials. They are right to do so, coaching is not an easy discipline and it takes a lot of skill and training to do it well.

 

 

What would you say makes you and Quiver Management ideally placed to provide coaching for leaders?

Over 15 years we have steadily increased our credibility as coaches. My entire team is made up of qualified and experienced business leaders who have long been at the leading edge of using coaching to help individuals, teams and organisations develop and grow. We’re proud to have won a number of quality awards for our coaching and training programmes. We are members of professional bodies and have signed up to their Code of Ethics. Our coaching training programmes are accredited by EMCC and our leadership training by the ILM. Most importantly of all, we have an impressive track record with excellent feedback from our clients.

 

 

What would you say are the top 3 qualities that make a good leader?

I am of course biased in terms of advocating that coaching should be at the heart of good leadership. Great leaders believe in the importance of developing their people and building capability, and they possess the coaching skills to have high quality development conversations with their team members. But of course, coaching is not the only quality that makes a good leader, I also believe that good leaders are visionary. They can paint a picture of the future and inspire their team to follow their vision.

The third element I would pick is their ability to execute. A great leader is able to engage, motivate and when needed - ‘drive’ their teams to meet their goals. I’m fortunate enough to be working with great leaders across many different sectors and types of organisations.

I would like to add one more characteristic of a great leader, and that is that they are often humble enough to recognise that they are far from perfect and that they are keen to continue learning, to be challenged and develop.

 
Thank you for taking the time.

You are very welcome, it has been a pleasure.

 Contact details:

www.quivermanagement.com

jan@quivermanagement.com

 

 

James Scouller spent nearly 30 years in the corporate world before becoming an executive coach. In that time he worked in engineering, fast-moving consumer goods, fashion retailing, packaging and wallpaper.  In his last 11 years he held three international CEO roles.  After the third, he left to set up The Scouller Partnership, an executive coaching firm, in 2004.

James coaches leaders and their teams – his clients are CEOs, heads of divisions and subsidiaries, MD-owners of smaller private firms, other senior executives and younger high-potential managers.  Their age range is typically 35 to 55.

 James is also author of The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, a critically acclaimed book which has received international recognition for its new ideas on growing leaders.

 

Why do you think executive coaching has become so popular?

Put simply, because it works.

Traditional training is great if you want to learn technical skills and absorb theory, like law or accounting. But as most of us have noticed, it’s not so good for transferring interpersonal skills.

Think of the people you know who’ve gone on expensive leadership courses. Did they behave any differently on their return to work? For almost everyone I’ve talked to, the answer is always ‘no’.

Why didn’t the training help? It’s because if we’re trying to learn and apply new behaviour that clashes with powerful limiting beliefs and the habits they create, the old beliefs and habits triumph every time. And that blocks the learning.

For example, imagine you’re teaching senior executives to handle difficult conversations better. They may hear what you’re saying, but deep down they often believe it’s risky to open up and say what they’re really thinking and feeling about the other person’s attitude or performance. This is because they’re often afraid of conflict or coming across as a nasty person. Those fears – which stem from limiting beliefs – will easily overwhelm an embryonic new behaviour. So under pressure they won’t change their behaviour even if they’ve practised several role-plays.

The only way to build and apply new behavioural habits in the face of powerful limiting beliefs is to surface and examine them. But I don’t know any executive who’d open up to the rest of the group on a training course and admit private stuff, especially stuff they are uncomfortable with. It’s not going to happen.

But it can and does happen in private, with a skilled executive coach they trust and respect. The coach can help the person let go of the old belief and build new habits that persist even under pressure.

In other words, the coach can go to places that the trainer can’t. That’s why I think executive coaching has grown so quickly in the last twenty years.

 

So what kind of results can clients achieve with good coaching?

It’s no exaggeration to say the effects of executive coaching can be transformational.

Let me show you two typical examples of before-and-after coaching profiles. Both clients scored themselves on 32 qualities – 10 focused on their mental performance state and 22 on their ability to choose their behaviour skilfully under pressure.

To make sure they weren’t kidding themselves, we also interviewed their colleagues at the start and end of the coaching assignments. In both cases, the observers’ comments backed up the clients’ own ratings.

The important thing to note is the dramatic change in both clients’ overall profiles.

As you can see from the first example, over 13 months the client achieved a huge change in her overall profile, with feedback from colleagues confirming she had become ‘much more effective … with greater leadership presence.’  You can see she changed all of her negative scores into positives. She’s since been promoted to a Managing Director role.

The second client’s challenge was to become a more skilful leader of organisational change. After 14 months’ hard work, he achieved a remarkable change in his overall profile. Feedback from his six observers confirmed the shift. His mental state changes laid the foundations for his improved ability to connect with and influence others while displaying greater leadership presence. He has now adopted a much more personal touch when communicating with both board colleagues and everyone else in his firm.

 

How does this kind of individual transformation benefit an organisation’s performance?

The major mental and behavioural shifts that you can achieve through good coaching always translate into performance gains for organisations – sometimes very quickly.

Nine years ago, I coached the engineering director of a £5m engineering firm in Scotland. His boss was the Managing Director and owner of the business. He’d hired the engineering chief three years earlier to help him win more business in four ways. First, by inventing new products. Second, by raising on-time delivery of customer engineering projects (as too many had been arriving later than promised). Third, by delivering the projects faster. Fourth, by responding quicker to customers’ requests for quotes.

The engineering director had been given money and three new engineers to support him. In all, the investment had added hundreds of thousands of pounds to the firm’s cost base.

After three years, there’d been no invention. On-time delivery of projects to customers (which was the most important metric of all) had worsened. Engineering projects were taking longer – so long they were now behind the industry average. And customers were receiving quotes even slower than before.

The Managing Director had done everything he could to help this man improve his performance. He was a fine engineer, but nothing worked. Unsurprisingly, relations between the two were tense.

I was hired to help the engineering director turn his performance around. With the Managing Director’s input we agreed three coaching goals to be achieved within seven months:

 

(1) Improve project on-time delivery from 40% to 80%.

(2) Cut project lead times from 11 weeks to 9 weeks.

(3) Raise the percentage of customer quotes answered within 5 days from 42% to 60%.

 

After seven months the results were staggering. The client had raised on-time delivery from 40% to 93%; well beyond the 80% goal. He cut lead times from 11 to 7 weeks (the best in the industry) and 2 weeks better than target. And he boosted the percentage of customer quotes answered within five days from 42% to 63%, just ahead of the 60% target.

The firm’s sales and margins soon increased and the ROI from coaching was clearly visible.

 

What is the key to getting results like these?

You won’t be surprised to hear there’s no single key, but certain basics must be in place. Yes, the coach must be well-trained. But more than that, coach and client must build a strong relationship based on two-way respect and trust. Clients must feel their coach knows what they’re doing, understands their challenges and that everything they discuss remains confidential. That’s the first thing.

Second, clients must be serious about growing as a leader. Clients have to put work in if they are to change their behavioural habits under pressure. The clients who get the best results with me are the ones who do what they said they’d do between meetings.

It’s important too that the whole process is measurable. After all, companies are paying for clients to be better executives or leaders than they were before the coaching. In other words, clients and their sponsors want to see positive change.

It’s essential to set measurable goals at the start, with feedback from the client’s colleagues, and measure progress as you go. At least halfway through – and certainly by the end of the coaching – the client and sponsoring firm should be able to see what change there’s been with measurable data. I don’t think coaches can forget that companies want a return on investment. You’ve seen how we can measure results from the earlier examples.

I’d say the fourth key is the coach’s own experience as a leader. Too many people approach leadership as an intellectual concept. To some degree it is, but as seasoned leaders know, it’s also a felt experience. Coaches working in the leadership field need to have experienced the pressure – the difficult times – of having to lead, of having to connect upwards, sideways and downwards. My own first-hand experience as a leader means I can understand other leaders’ personal challenges and emotions – plus the wider pressures on them coming from the rest of the company.

There’s a fifth key. If clients want transformational results, it means they’ll be working on their inner limiting beliefs, feelings and perhaps their values. Here it’s not enough for coaches to rely on tools and techniques. In my view, they need to be working on their self-mastery – that is, mastery of their minds and habits. Why?  Because clients will have to work on self-mastery if they want to achieve transformational outcomes. Coaches must walk their talk and show their own commitment to self-mastery so they can act as models for their clients.

The final key is a clear coaching process that’s grounded in sound, powerful ideas around leadership and personal growth. Coaching shouldn’t jump around from session to session in a random way.

 

You mentioned powerful ideas so let’s talk about your book, The Three Levels of Leadership. Who is it for and why has it sold so well?

The book is a practical manual for leaders and people aspiring to be leaders. This is regardless of their field, whether it’s business, military, education, charities or whatever.

I think it’s sold well because it has new ideas and tools to help 21st century leaders meet their greatest challenges. It has probably the most compact, complete learning model you’ll find for executives wanting to grow themselves as leaders. I compare the book to a Swiss army knife – it gives you all the key ideas and tools you need in one unified, compact master model.

 

So much has been written about leadership already. Why do we need new ideas? 

You’re right – the market for leadership books is saturated. But so much of what’s out there is either academic or based on personal experience. So it isn’t intended to – or able to – help leaders grow.

Meanwhile, all the data shows that business leaders are struggling to engage employees. And research shows repeatedly that the higher your people’s engagement, the higher your margins, innovation, customer service, growth and shareholder returns. The biggest survey I saw showed that only 13% of employees feel fully engaged and nearly twice that number are actively disengaged, meaning they’re prepared to commit hostile acts. The rest, just over 65%, don’t care at all. That’s not the only problem. Belief in business leaders’ competence, trustworthiness and honesty is 20% at best.

In short, leaders are struggling to lead. That’s why we need new ideas and that’s what I aim to deliver.

 

Could you give us a quick summary of the book’s main ideas?

The book provides an in-depth, easy to read collection of models and tools which I call the Leadership Mastery Suite. Keeping things simple, it has three learning blocks.

The first is mental model mastery. It’s about surfacing, unpacking and replacing your old mental models around leadership and being the leader to help you pay more skilful attention to what matters most.

The big idea here is what I call the four dimensions of leadership.

Let me explain. Without realising it, pretty much every leader I work with, holds unhelpful ideas (mental models) around leadership and what it means to be a leader. These ideas usually cause you and others serious problems. For example, they increase leaders’ sense of inadequacy. This magnifies your tendency to be too task-focused (and ignore the need to connect with and influence people) or be too relationship-focused (and ignore the need for clear tough choices and decisions).

Mental model mastery is about uncovering these unhelpful ideas, challenging them and then replacing them with something far more useful and practical: the four-dimensional view of leadership. Once that’s done, it’s about helping you understand the four dimensions in detail and the specific aspects you need to focus on in your role right now. This is the foundation stone for the other two learning blocks. Without this foundation, I’ve found most leaders find it harder to succeed.

Historically, I’ve used confidential one-to-one coaching in this learning block. However, I’ve recently introduced a one-day intensive for those who want powerful experiential learning in a group setting. I also offer an enterprise diagnostic to help leaders understand which of the four dimensions they need to focus on right now and which aspects within that dimension need action.

The second learning block is self-mastery. This is the most transformational of the three learning blocks. It’s about helping clients handle the four dimensions of leadership with more skill, presence, flexibility, energy, resilience and genuineness. This enables you to connect with and influence people better.

Self-mastery is where we get into limiting beliefs and the tools – especially a technique I call 4R – for helping you change your behavioural habits even when your hot buttons are pressed. The results you saw in those earlier diagrams came from self-mastery coaching. Most of my client work is in the self-mastery zone, although I expect my assignments in the other two learning blocks to grow in the next five years.

The last block is knowhow mastery. The aim here is to help you gain the technical knowhow most leaders lack in addressing the four dimensions of leadership, which was the big idea in the first learning block. If you set aside the question of seniority and sector, there are only four knowhow areas all leaders should master. They are:

 

For knowhow mastery, I combine one-to-one coaching with group coaching, team coaching, workshops and enterprise diagnostics.

 

What should readers do if they’re interested in learning more?

The ideas and tools I’ve touched on here are explained in the second edition of my book, The Three Levels of Leadership. If you’re interested in exploring coaching or any of my other services you can email me at james@thescoullerpartnership.co.uk and ask for a free “How to lead change” extract from the book. Or you can call me on +44 (0)1525 718023 to explore the Leadership Mastery Suite and discuss how I might help you or your organisation.

Contact details

James Scouller
The Scouller Partnership
Website: www.thescoullerpartnership.co.uk
Email: james@thescoullerpartnership.co.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1525 718023

Heidrick & Struggles China recently conducted a survey of 151 senior executives at director level or above in mainland China to understand how extensively employer branding affects corporate success, and the factors that attract them to and retain them at an organization.

"Leaders of multinational corporations in China are finding it even more challenging to attract the leaders they need to thrive in today's operating environment – the 'new normal' which has been shaped by slower economic growth, higher costs, stricter regulations, the disruptive pressures of e-commerce and China's changing demographics," said Linda Zhang, Partner-in-charge of Heidrick & Struggles' Shanghai office. "Due to the shortage of skilled workers and high attrition rates, companies continue to cite talent as a top concern."

When asked to pick the three most crucial factors that make an organization a good place to work, respondents name 'high quality of senior leadership' (57%) and 'attractive corporate culture' (52%) higher than 'a competitive employment offer in terms of salary and benefits' (49%). Yet, good company brand and reputation, clear personal development and promotion path are seen as less important factors when it comes to the pull factors.

When asked what attracts them to a company, over 90% of the executives in the survey say that having senior leaders who are charismatic, inspiring, credible spokespeople is very important to their decision in joining a company. This aligns with the trend of 'CEOs as celebrities', with high-profile, charismatic executives such as Alibaba's Jack Ma and Baidu's Robin Li becoming synonymous with their company's image, and inspiring employees and customers alike.

"Our experience shows that the turnover rate of senior executives in China is roughly 12-15%. As the competition for talent heats up, companies cannot rely on remuneration as the only weapon for attracting and retaining best-in-class senior leaders," said George Huang, Head of China at Heidrick & Struggles. "Most senior level employees in China would like to follow an inspiring leader with a strategic vision, whether it is to achieve certain business or financial goals, or to disrupt an industry with an emerging technology. The satisfaction that comes from working with inspirational leaders that cultivate a strong company culture is increasingly influencing senior-level executives' employer decision."

When it comes to retention, the most important leadership qualities that encourage employees to stay are that senior leaders trust their staff, have a high level of transparency, and foster two-way communication between management and employees.

According to the study, when asked to pick the three most important factors for a company's structure and business model, recognition of high achievers (99%), a friendly and collaborative working environment (93%), and respect and encouragement for diverse thinking and new ideas (91%) are the key building blocks constituting a compelling corporate culture. These results are similar to those in the Asia Pacific Consumer Markets Report 2015 – a previous Heidrick & Struggles employer branding survey of senior executives across the Asia Pacific region – where 98% of respondents said that diversity of thinking in the workplace is the most important characteristic, while recognition of high achievers was in second place at 97%.

Roughly 31% of executives surveyed say they are currently looking for new job opportunities and hope to leave within 12 to 18 months; an additional 29% say they may leave within the next two years if better opportunities are available. This finding suggests that employees in China may have less patience with a suboptimal status quo at work than employees elsewhere in Asia. In the previous Asia Pacific survey, just 30% said they were considering leaving their employers, and only just over half of this group hoped to make a move within 18 months.

The survey included senior executives from a wide range of industries at multinational companies in China, including industrial (42%), consumer (19%), healthcare (16%), technology (10%), financial services (5%), professional services (3%), marketing services (2%), education/not-for-profit (1%), and conglomerate (2%). All respondents came from companies with more than 5,000 employees globally, and 79% have more than 1,000 employees in China. For a majority, China accounts for more than 10% of their company's global revenue.

(Source: Heidrick & Struggles)

Swiss Alpine resort, Davos, is set to see another flock of economy specialists worldwide meet for the World Economic Forum 2017 beginning 17th January, which will be covering in-depth globalization, the US election, big data, and leadership priorities for the year.

The year’s WEForum is titled "Responsive and Responsible Leadership,” stating that “more than ever, leaders need to share insights and innovations on how to best navigate the future,” and has established that the leadership priorities for the year include the Fourth Industrial Revolution, on the back of technology advancements; the need for a dynamic, inclusive, multi-stakeholder global-governance system via public-private collaboration; the restoration of global economic growth; the reform of market capitalism, and rebuilding of the compact between business and society; and finally “leaders will need to address the pervasive crisis in identity formation that has resulted from the erosion of traditional norms over the past two decades.”

President Xi Jinping is set to become the first Chinese head of state to lead the WEForum, and he will be joined several formidable co-chairs: CEO of Royal Philips Frans van Houten; Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, documentary filmmaker of SOC Films; Meg Whitman, President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Brian T. Moynihan, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Bank of America Corporation; and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, CEO of Save the Children International.

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