The client asked us to help enhance the leadership capabilities of its most promising Senior Managers and Assistant Directors, initially in just one part of the firm. We created a challenging, personalised leadership programme that had such an impact that it became a compulsory career milestone across all service lines in the UK and Switzerland, attracted participants from several other member firms across Europe and Africa, and led to us running similar programmes in the Middle East. In seven years, more than 1200 participants took part in groups of six to twelve.
The shift our client was seeking
Our stakeholders knew they wanted to ‘upgrade’ this cohort’s leadership capabilities to help them transition to more senior roles, but they weren’t initially clear on what that upgrade would look like. So, we drew on data from promotion panels, performance appraisals and discussions with HR to identify the four most common gaps at that level:
Personal impact – gravitas, assertiveness, confidence and emotional intelligence
Influence – a diverse toolkit for securing genuine commitment from team members and key stakeholders
Team leadership – selling a vision, managing conflicts and developing their people
Stepping up ‘out of the weeds’ – the hard transition from technical expert into a broader leadership role
How we closed that gap
We created a bespoke, experiential programme for groups of 6-12 where every session was designed to challenge, flex and develop participants. They rarely knew what was coming next – an approach that replicated the ambiguity and uncertainty of their working environment. The pace, energy and focus changed throughout and introduced the core tools and techniques in response to what participants brought to us, rather than ‘teaching’ them as scripted content up front.
We put real effort into the transfer of learning to the workplace. Participants enlisted their appraiser or sponsor to hold them to account, supported by ongoing coaching: for the first four years from the firm’s growing pool of fully-trained internal coaches, and later from each other, as we evolved the programme to train participants to coach their peers. Many of those coaching groups met long after the programme – one even continued when a member went on secondment to Australia.
Unlike many leadership programmes, ARC paid significant attention to the blockers that stop good intentions translating into actions. We helped participants tackle the unconscious scripts and habits that were locking them into sub-optimal ways of working and thinking about themselves and others – difficult territory, but it massively increased their chances of breaking habits they already knew were holding them back.
Wherever possible, a LeaderSpace facilitator partnered with an internal one. All internal facilitators were themselves accredited coaches, trained in the relevant psychometrics, and had experienced the programme as participants.
As you’d expect, the programme evolved as it rolled out into new parts of the business or overseas territories, and as the firm responded to changes at the top and its external environment.
The impact we had
Years after they took part in the programme, many of ARC’s 1200 participants are still in touch. They’ve told us it’s ‘the best development I’ve had in my whole career’, ‘a game-changer,’ ‘fundamental in shifting my mind-set and capabilities – in work and in life’, ‘set me up on a path of self-improvement and being able to find strength I didn’t know I had’ and ‘was one of the first courses I’ve ever done where I could just think about me. Who I am, what I want to be.’
Participants left ARC determined to leave a legacy, not a faint smudge or a trail of damaged, disaffected people. The programme also supported the firm’s agenda of creating a coaching culture – and, by building its internal coaching and facilitation capability, reduced the cost of delivering the programme by more than £450,000.
The programme was also a finalist for the Training Journal Awards, most notably for the effectiveness with which people’s learning translated into tangible improvements in their leadership. One participant put that point beautifully: ‘Hopefully I never ‘recover’ from ARC if ‘recover’ means going back to being the same as before!’
“The programme is an invitation to be unconventional, to test one’s boundaries, to be oneself. The air of mystery surrounding the programme and its content is closely guarded by the programme’s alumni. This has created a buzz of excitement, and a sense of the programme being a ‘must have’ at the senior management level - not just a slot on the management curriculum or a box that needs to be ticked.”
