This large financial services company has grown rapidly over the last 7 years and is now one of the top 10 Insurance and brokerage companies in the US. The Technology team has grown in both size and responsibility, as they have centralized most of their technology functions. Team leads have been promoted into new management roles with more responsibility and needed to raise the level of their leadership skills to successfully manage the growing teams and business complexity.
In addition to in-house training, the CTO hired Dr. Janet Ply to increase the leadership skills for 12 of the up and coming Technology leaders. This comprised an EQ assessment up front, an additional leadership assessment as part of the course work, and a three-day, hands-on workshop where the participants completed exercises related to their projects and team. After the workshop, each participant completed a leadership development plan, which was shared with the CTO. Four workshop participants were selected for a year of coaching to continue their leadership development.
The workshop participants worked collaboratively on several cross-functional projects to solve problems such as an integrated software release schedule across the technology group and how to minimize disruptions to increase work throughput. All of the participants had noticeable improvements in providing growth opportunities for their teams through planning and delegation, being more proactive in problem-solving, holding themselves and their teams accountable for deliverables, and taking the initiative to step up into more strategic roles.
