Developing High Potential Talent At A Global Financial Services Company

With new digital advances emerging and disrupting the banking industry, a global financial services company partnered with YSC Consulting to support the strength of their leadership pipeline. The aim was to design and deliver a global Accelerated Development Program (ADP) for 800 high potential (HiPo) individuals, using the client’s existing leadership framework.

Candidates were globally dispersed across 43 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and North America. With the client’s tight timeframe of two months to design and deliver this global program, the solution needed to be scalable, rich in insight, and commercially pragmatic in order to provide a clear and robust perspective on developmental and succession planning initiatives moving forward.

YSC partnered with key stakeholders within the business to create a bespoke 360° survey based on the client’s leadership framework. This 360° was self-administered as well as distributed to a range of stakeholders including line managers, peers and key stakeholders. In addition, individuals completed the Hogan’s Suite of psychometrics (HPI, HDS and MVPI) to provide some data points about their personality.

To provide all 800 individuals with recommendations for growth based on the leadership competencies, YSC consultants produced individual psychological reports. Reports were based on data collected from the 360° survey and psychometrics, and provided insight into the individuals’ current leadership capabilities alongside underlying psychological insights and drivers. Reports also included recommendations for the individual in terms of how to leverage their strengths, and how to begin developing their blind spots.

Reports were later used as the foundation of individual coaching conversations. By having rich insights collated into main developmental themes by a YSC consultant, the depth and impact of the coaching was accelerated.

Following delivery of the cohort, a regional and global aggregate analysis was conducted to inform the group’s leadership development. A Diversity and Inclusion analysis of their leadership was conducted which showed little regional or business unit differences. However, it did show the global cohort was highly focused on execution but much less comfortable with having difficult conversations. These initial findings informed the broader conversations around how this client identifies HiPos and distinguishes between potential and performance.

As the delivery of this work was successfully completed in Q3 of 2017, collecting impact data around internal promotions and pipeline strength is ongoing.

Due to the success of the first cohort, this program is scheduled to be run annually.