25% increase in profit before tax and a 24% rise in underwriting profit during the transformation programme
Delivered the organisation’s best combined ratio since 2007 through stronger Executive Committee alignment and effectiveness
Four-year partnership with the CEO and Executive Committee to build a high-performing, more inclusive leadership team
The challenge
The organisation had faced a number of significant challenges in previous years, including declining financial performance, deep public criticism over its culture and a period of worsening productivity amongst its workforce. The CEO wanted to rebuild the ExCo and transform its effectiveness as a leadership team to enable the transformation of the organisation into a high-performing and inclusive firm.
The solution
The ENGAGE team partnered with the CEO to agree the business and coaching objectives for the ExCo’s development.
We ran a number of early sessions to both observe the team in action and to get the team’s buy-in to the coaching process. We then used a series of diagnostic tools to assess the collective leadership strengths and development areas for the team (including in-depth forensic interviewing, Hogan assessments and a team 360 survey).
Using data triangulation techniques, we analysed the diagnostic sources to prepare and then co-create a coaching Blueprint with the team. This then acted to give structure to each of the coaching sessions which followed.
Our team coaching sessions then worked through the critical elements of the plan, using observation, feedback and working sessions to tackle the current challenges the team were facing as part of the firm’s transformation plan. The topics covered included:
Agreeing the core purpose of the new ExCo
Understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses as team members
Agreeing ways of working within the team (acceptable and unacceptable behaviours)
Getting aligned on the team’s collective priorities and objectives
Improving the “shadow” of the team in the rest of the business.
This was reinforced with regular individual coaching check-ins and review conversations with the CEO.
The impact
Over the time that we worked alongside the ExCo, the dynamic and impact of the team improved dramatically. Its financial results were the best for many years with profit before tax up 25%, underwriting profit up by 24% and delivering its best combined ratio since 2007.
The Exco itself developed a clear team purpose, became more balanced with a 50:50 gender mix for the first time, improved its ability to deal with conflict inside the team and began to get improved feedback from both its Board and its second-tier leaders and teams.
In addition, employee engagement scores improved significantly deeper in the business as the ExCo team became more aligned and started acting with a greater sense of “collective responsibility”.
Additional individual coaching activity helped two of the newest members of the team (the CFO and Director of Corporate Affairs) to transition into their new roles (both as internal promotions) successfully.
Our client is a global insurance business with offices across twenty countries. It operates through an extensive international network of more than 4,000 local coverholders, holds 80 insurance licences, and has the capability to write reinsurance business in over 200 territories worldwide.
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