Case Study / 40 leaders across Australia equipped with skills and behaviours to hugely increase their leadership performance A leadership development programme that transforms the learning culture and builds future success
01/ The Client Peoplebank is Australia s largest IT recruitment company, specialising in the permanent and contract placement of ICT professionals across all vertical markets since 1990. The company has a national network of offices within Australia in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney and has a talent pool of over 350,000 ICT professionals. In addition to its extensive Australian footprint, Peoplebank has significant operations in Asia with offices in both Singapore and Hong Kong. 02/ The Challenge Peoplebank s learning and development team comprised of people who had been promoted from the sales side of the business. They provided good sales and recruitment training but lacked the broader organisational development experience to create a cohesive strategy or build longer-term learning objectives. The company recruited a new learning and development manager with a remit to create a learning framework and culture for the business, particularly focused on leadership. 03/ The Solution Peoplebank had already engaged with a couple of providers to help create a leadership development solution but the learning and development manager also introduced rogensi to the company, having worked with them on similar programmes in a previous role. When I arrived, my first thought went to rogensi because I just know they always deliver a phenomenal programme, says Natalie Goldman, National Learning and Development Manager at Peoplebank. The major difference with rogensi was that they came in and were really able to focus on creating a framework for us to work on for our leadership. Although it was quite structured, it still allowed the company to really grow within that framework. The solution rogensi provided was its Extraordinary Leader programme based on data and research from Zenger Folkman. This programme starts with a 360 degree assessment and then measures the leaders against 16 differentiating competencies that contribute to extraordinary leadership. Peoplebank s CEO (a great believer in the value of research-based material) was very impressed by the quantitative research and competency framework behind this programme and the company was keen to proceed with rogensi s solution. The quantitative data from Zenger Folkman gave the programme validity and transferability to our organisation and we felt it was definitely the right fit for us, says Goldman. We could also tell that the quality rogensi delivers was really the level that we wanted.
Once a month we got our whole leadership group together via a webinar and we had a variety of speakers and invited business leaders from the wider community to talk about each of these competencies. The programme began in late 2011 with the company s leadership group of 40 people doing the 360 degree survey and receiving their reports and a group debrief at a conference in early 2012. After being trained by rogensi as a coach for the Extraordinary Leader programme, the learning and development manager provided 1:1 coaching sessions for the leaders to go through their development road map and individual action plan. Two months into this process the company realised that it wanted to do more to support this programme. This resulted in a webinar series focusing on the most common competencies that covered the whole leadership group. When I did an analysis of all the competencies our leaders were focusing on I recognised that there were 8 common ones that covered 95% of the cohort, says Goldman. Once a month we got our whole leadership group together via a webinar and we had a variety of speakers and invited business leaders from the wider community to talk about each of these competencies. rogensi supported the webinar series, with one of their consultants speaking at some of the sessions, including a refresher on the Extraordinary Leader, inspiring and motivating and driving for results. The other speakers were business leaders within the corporate community. The initial webinar series ran for 18 months and in 2014 Peoplebank carried out another 360 degree survey for the leaders to monitor their progress. The feedback showed that the group had improved across most of the competencies, but revealed that the entire group believed that one particular competency inspiring and motivating others - would make the most difference to the company. According to the Zenger Folkman research this particular competency is vital but it was also one of Peoplebank s lowest scoring competencies in the 360. So we were saying this is the most important thing, but it s pretty much the thing that we re worst at, says Goldman. So we decided to focus this year s webinar programme completely on inspiring and motivating others. rogensi provided additional research and helped find resources and tools to help the leaders understand how to translate this competency into their day to day activities. The four leaders in the group who had this as their number one competency were invited to share in the first webinar what they and their teams identified as inspiring and motivating behaviour. We provided Zenger Folkman s 25 ways to inspire and motivate, and a number of other tools for reading before and after the webinar, says Goldman. We tried to get people to walk away with three things they would start doing, or continue to do, that they would think are inspiring or motivating. Peoplebank plans to carry out another 360 survey at the end of this year, followed by another leadership conference in early 2015. We re looking forward to working with rogensi again because we think it s important to continue to focus on this and we re seeing really great results with it as well, says Goldman.
We are seeing some really big turnarounds in people who two or three years ago you would never have thought possible. 04/ The Achievement Peoplebank has gained a number of significant benefits as a result of implementing this leadership development programme: The results of the 360 surveys clearly showed that the leadership cohort had improved considerably against the competencies. The group had no fatal flaws and in all cases, the leaders had scores above 4 for all the competencies, indicating that this is a very strong group of people. The programme has transformed the culture among these leaders and many have undergone significant changes in the way they interact with their teams. Having a meaningful development conversation was a really big issue for us as our leaders were very numbers driven, says Goldman. But since we started this programme people are really starting to understand the broader concept around coaching their people and having these conversations. As the leaders now understand the importance of developing their teams and coaching their people they are taking an active role in driving a leadership and learning culture within the organisation. I m no longer the only one pushing the learning agenda, says Goldman. Now the leaders are having meaningful conversations with their people and seeing them develop. They are driving improvement and that s a massive shift. The company s annual engagement survey has seen the scores for leadership increase significantly over the past few years since this programme has been implemented. Previously, leadership was one of the things people were consistently saying was not strong enough and we needed better leadership we don t hear that anymore, says Goldman. People are now saying we re doing better consistently year on year and the score for leadership has improved exponentially. Since running this programme we have seen a massive spike in improvement. In addition to the statistics, there is also anecdotal evidence that this programme has had a huge impact on the leaders at Peoplebank. One leader with average 360 scores, whose team used to complain that they never held development conversations with them or did any coaching, has undergone a total transformation in the two years since this programme began. Two years on they are my shining star because now their whole team are talking about how they are constantly having coaching conversations with them and asking how they can support them as a leader, says Goldman. We are seeing some really big turnarounds in people who two or three years ago you would never have thought possible.
05/ The Legacy Peoplebank s objective for this project was to create a learning culture and framework that would last and that would really improve the performance and standing of its leaders within the organisation. Results so far indicate that this project has been hugely successful. We came into this programme wanting to build the best possible, industry-leading type programme. We needed it to be of a really high standard to lift the game of our leaders and set high expectations, raise that benchmark and get them to achieve that, says Goldman. Together with rogensi through this Extraordinary Leader programme I feel we are definitely getting very close to reaching that. The programme is ongoing, with a further 360 survey planned for late 2014, followed by another leadership conference co-facilitated by rogensi in early 2015. We are planning to continue doing this as a long-term project together with rogensi, says Goldman. It s something that we feel is so valuable and so important that we want to focus on and keep investing in. 06/ The Verdict The first thing that always stands out to me about rogensi is the content. The content they use is of incredibly high quality and it s very robust and very broad. Their consultants are very knowledgeable: they re very switched on and very professional as well. Partnering with rogensi makes the journey so easy. No matter what information we need, whenever we need it, it s there. I don t know of any other company like them I haven t come across one yet and I ve been working in this industry for 18 years. Natalie Goldman, National Learning and Development Manager, Peoplebank
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