figures in the shadow

Our client, anchored through its long history in their commitment to their customers and their special brand of service, had embarked on an unprecedented restructuring initiative at one of the most difficult times in its long history. The company’s adjusted profit per-share had fallen in the double digits and its share-price was dropping. In the marketplace, it competed not only with established players in its industry, but also faster-growing non-conventional companies. Their Indian operations revolved around the back office customer services operations apart from other business for the domestic Indian economy. The former supported business continuity objectives of the company and worked 24/7. Such Global Capability Centers (GCCs) had typically been cost centers. The shift to become profit centers laid emphasis on creating additional revenue streams for the parent organisation by servicing external clients. Furthermore, CoEs (centres of excellence) were taking centre stage to drive product development and innovation in areas such as AI, cloud, engineering, data analytics and cybersecurity.

The company had announced changes in its attempts to fix problems by streamlining organization, reengineering key cross-business processes, and leveraging policy changes. Just two years earlier, the company had already gone through a cut in the headcount. Growing great leaders was one of the things that had always set them apart. Backing their colleagues by providing innovative learning experiences, they enabled them to build new skills, reach their career goals and develop as leaders at all levels. And they knew that investing in developing their top talent was something they would pursue even as they cut cost. This investment was critical to be able to reorganize themselves and remain relevant and competitive.

The focus on development of top talent was critical to transformation of the larger organizational system. In its current phase, formal systems were being used for achieving greater coordination, and top-level executives took responsibility for the initiation and administration of new systems and processes. Such coordination systems had proven useful for achieving growth through a more efficient allocation of its limited resources. Managers had a great deal of decision-making responsibility, and at the same time had to justify their actions more carefully to a “watchdog” audience. However, these very systems and programs had begun to exceed their usefulness - a “red-tape’ crisis had come into full swing. The reason - line managers resented direction from those who were not familiar with local conditions. And staff, for their part, complained about uncooperative and uninformed line managers. Together, both groups were frustrated with the system - in other words, procedures took precedence over problem solving, and innovation was at risk.

Transformation through this crisis emphasized strong interpersonal collaboration in an attempt to overcome the bureaucracy - spontaneity in management action through teams and the skillful confrontation of interpersonal differences. Such a transition, we suggested, was often especially difficult for the experts who created the coordination systems as well as for the line managers who relied on formal methods for answers. Hence managers had to develop a more flexible and behavioral approach to management - solving problems quickly through team action, working across functions, building interdisciplinary teams that consult with, not direct, field units. We partnered with the India business office to design a journey that included 360-feedback, and a set of three coaching sessions bookended with triadic alignment meetings with their managers.

Our preliminary conversations with the top talent and analysis of their reports gave us a sense that the talent was entrenched in expert and achiever levels of leadership agility. The expert level, with its tactical, problem-solving orientation, was best suited for relatively stable environments where complexity is fairly low. The achiever level, with its strategic, outcome-orientation, was effective in moderately complex environments where the pace of change was moderate and episodic. Both of these, we advised, had worked relatively well for companies until the waning decades of the 20th century, when the globalization of the economy ushered in an era of continuous change and growing interdependence. Going forward, consistently effective leadership in uncertain environments required mastery of the visionary, facilitative orientation found at the catalyst level of agility.

Working to improve the levels of leadership agility - that is moving to a new level of agility, and/or developing specific competencies within the current level as reflected in the 360-feedback, meant focusing on five aspects - one, trust-building through declaring and staying committed to the primary purpose of the coaching process - growth and development; two, taking a whole-person perspective - extending beyond the role to include discussions about behavior, values, relationships, parenting, finances, and even spiritual life; three - setting personal and professional development goals; four - exploring and identifying underlying psychological dynamics - “competing commitments” and “big assumptions” that make even the most successful professionals change-resistant; five - use everyday initiatives to experiment with more agile behaviors across three distinct action arenas - engaging in pivotal conversations, that is person-to-person discussions with important outcomes at stake; improving team performance, that is initiatives to improve a team and/or its relationship with its larger environment; leading organizational change, that is initiatives to improve an organization and/or its relationship with its larger environment.

Achieving business results over a sustained period of time is often the ultimate mark of authentic leadership. While short-term outcomes can be driven without being authentic, creating long-term results is only possible with authentic leadership. For this reason, we began the journey with leaders writing their life story. Akin to drawing a self portrait, in words, we saw this critical because attempts to determine definitive styles, characteristics, or personality traits of great leaders in the past five decades had uncovered one simple fact - there was no clear profile of an ideal leader. Instead, interviews with leaders who were genuine and authentic had revealed that their leadership really emerged from their life stories. Consciously and subconsciously, they were constantly testing themselves through real-world experiences and reframing their life stories to understand who they were at their core.

By exploring the life story with the leaders, we gained an opportunity to be a witness to the totality of their lives and their experiences. Such a seeing created conditions that enabled trust-building and lowering of defenses to change, which essentially set the stage for honest reflection of the good, bad and ugly of their lives, including the 360-feedback, and a noticing of what’s coming next. Because behaviors are the result of a distinct (mind)set - mental and emotional capacities, that are learned and developed in stages, deeper analysis of their feedback was critical. Together, this enabled us to understand a leader’s core, strengths, values, and passions, and possible directions for the future — those pursuits that have and can continue to energize and bring joy. Furthermore, we had the opportunity to explore competing commitments and big assumptions unconsciously working to stall efforts to realize goals. Together, all of this work contributed to discovering the very essence and purpose of their existence. And because authentic leaders frame their stories in ways that allow them to see themselves not as passive observers but as individuals who learn from their experiences, we were able to create conditions that enabled a majority of the talent to remain reflective most of the times, a key departure for expertise and achievement levels of agility.

Our client ‘s transformation was anchored in three strategic leadership pillars: Setting the Agenda, Bringing Others with You, and Doing It the Right Way. Our coaching engagement was geared to support this by focusing on two key pillars -

1. Alignment across manager’s strategy and execution - related feedback, stakeholders’ experiences with behaviors and competencies, and personal life story and direction-setting.

2. Leadership initiatives across three action arenas leading to opportunity for courageous actions and non-judgmental reflection.

These two pillars together, supported the expansion of leaders’ repertoire from deep-seated expertise and achievement oriented responses, to also include facilitative, catalytic orientation vertically (up and down the hierarchy) and horizontally (across functions and silos). With a central focus on the talent’s being - authentic leadership, our work had activated the hard work necessary to develop self-awareness through well-rounded feedback and courageous self-exploration. While denial and rationalization could have could have been the greatest hurdle to become self-aware, our work set the leaders up to inquire more honestly and truthfully, and act more visionary and strategically. The culture of the organization also promoted leaders using formal and informal support networks to help them stay grounded and lead more integrated lives.

The partnership with the leaders contributed to innovation, speed, and agility required to seed possibilities for success in the competitive financial services industry. Additionally, we contributed to our client’s organization-wide efforts to innovate their learning and development offerings. Together, we were enabling them to directly address the realities their leaders faced at each leadership level - rapid pace of change and deep need for strategic alignment across every colleague at each level.