client stories...

UBS Investment Bank – High Potentials

Theme: Leadership development, personal impact, influence
Country: UK, USA, Hong Kong
Participants: Various

We have been on a journey that has seen us travel from London to New York to Hong Kong and back again working with some of the most talented leaders in one of the world's largest investment banks.

Our client is Executive Director for Human Resources at UBS and from our first tentative meeting a few years back, we have built a relationship with him of mutual trust, creative challenge and collaborative working. Between us we have created exciting new work that has stretched both them and us, from workshops on personal impact through to recent thinking about collaborative creativity and innovation.

What happened next?

UBS Investment Bank - Graduate Trainee Programme

Theme: Insight & Influence: Theory into Practice
Country: UK
Participants: 160 Graduate Trainees
Key Content: Temperaments, Situational Influence, business simulation

We have been asked to do a broad range of challenging development projects with UBS over the last few years and earlier this year our client, who is responsible for the Early Career Development Programme, presented us with our biggest single logistical challenge to date. We are used to working with lots of people, often in complex formats, but we don't often get asked to work with 160 all in one go. We wanted the session to be intimate and tailored so instead of working with the whole group together, we suggested delivering four identical workshops, in parallel, with eight facilitators running with the same bespoke material.

The content of this work was subtle and a potential minefield of misunderstanding; asking a multi-national group of young, bright individuals about to embark upon a career with one of the world's largest investment banks, to reflect upon their problem solving and decision making preferences and to consider how they were going to extend their influence beyond their immediate, relatively limited authority and set about creating a personal reputation and brand that would be the foundation of their careers.

This complexity meant creating a clear narrative that all the facilitators could appreciate completely so that we all hit the key learning points, whilst giving us the freedom and discretion to work in the most effective way with our specific participants.

The outcomes of this complex and high profile endeavour included a cohort of more engaged, focussed participants who now appreciate how their future success is as contingent on how they relate to others as it is on what they deliver. It was also a moment of great learning and personal satisfaction for our business too.