Summary

For a leader with a small team and a large workload, it can be hard to find quality time for personal and professional development.  When you’re part of a small company with ambitious growth plans, you can’t afford to neglect talent development, especially not your own.  David is Head of Solutions and Delivery and may be required to step up to a larger role as the bank grows.

Working with Brilliant Minds not only gave David useful insights and guidance and ensured that he dedicated some time to his professional development, but also provided direct benefits for his team and other people in the tech department.  The external involvement was the catalyst to make development activities a focus and to ensure that David is ready to step up when he is needed.

Investment

This project was mainly about coaching.  It also included a LAB Profile workshop for the team.  The entire project involved:

• Seven LAB Profile interviews
• A half-day workshop
• A few hours of consultancy time to write reports etc
• Monthly coaching for the Head of Department for five months
• At current prices this would cost around £10,000

Results

David has been able to adopt a more strategic approach to the workload and build towards a bigger role, should it be required of him.

David’s team members also benefited from the individual and team insights.

[If that’s all you need to know to be interested in how we can do the same for you, please click here to contact Sharon Smith, my PA, and request a free consultation]

Background

Hampshire Trust Bank is a small but rapidly-growing bank where, like all banks, the provision of technology is key to success.  The current tech team is small and relies on people with wide-ranging skills to deliver the solutions needed as the bank grows and expands its range of services.

An exercise in succession planning identified David as a likely candidate for a more strategic role as the team increases.  It’s a natural progression from his role as Head of Solutions and Delivery.  One of the major challenges David was experiencing was the conflict between the demands of an intensive schedule of technology upgrades and new applications with the need for thorough strategic planning.  As a key member of the tech team from the start-up phase of the bank, it was too easy for him to be everybody’s first point of contact for everything.

Why Brilliant Minds?

This project taps into some of our core capabilities:

• We know the tech sector and have worked with other banks’ IT professionals
• Leadership and engagement in technical environments is our speciality
• We love working with leaders to craft a style that suits them and their team

We also have worked previously with one of the senior tech leaders…

What we did…

We used a tried and tested process that we have used with other leaders.  Each member of the team had a one-to-one session with Dianne to compile their LAB Profile, which uncovers both motivation patterns and productivity patterns.  By collating the individual profiles, Dianne created a Team Profile, to highlight the strengths and diversity within the team.

That was followed with a half-day team workshop to look at the team profile together and explore the implications.

With all this valuable information available, Dianne and David then worked through a programme of one-to-one coaching.  Understanding his own profile was invaluable; understanding the working patterns of people around him was even more useful.

Results

In general, the team workshop created focus on how the team members work together and was the catalyst for many small insights that improved daily interactions.  It also became a common language for talking about differences in approach.

Overall, there was much more respect for the differences in the team and less frustration with each other.

The coaching programme with David yielded many and varied results…

Better diary management to end the exhausting treadmill of back-to-back meetings.  David now has regular time slots that are free of meetings and can be used to work on tasks that require in-depth thought.

This has opened up opportunities to be more proactive in working with the Senior Executive Team and other stakeholders, resulting in better working relationships and closer consultation with other areas of the business.  The simple expedience of allowing adequate time to prepare for every meeting has made a huge difference to the effectiveness of meetings too.

Clarity about his own motivation and productivity patterns and therefore how to make it easy for himself to tackle a major piece of work, resulting in David producing the first of a series of strategic reports on the future of technology for the bank.

When it comes to leading the team, David now has valuable insights for every person.  How much change they can handle; are they comfortable designing new processes; do they prefer to collaborate or work independently?  All of this information makes it easier to keep every person in the team engaged, feeling valued and working at their best.

To arrange a free consultation:

Call Sharon Smith on 01480 861569

or complete our Contact Form

or if you prefer book direct into Dianne’s calendar here