BlackRock
- Client:
- BlackRock
- Project:
- Country managers workshop - design
‘Thank you for helping us to make last week's country managers event a success. A week on, the memory is still fresh and I can safely say that all attendees got something out of the sessions with TSOC. All of us manage teams and the strong consensus is that we don't invest enough in improving team management skills. Self awareness is clearly also a rich theme, mostly because team leaders all seem to think that one or more of team members would benefit from better self awareness.’
Result: Participants agreed that all the objectives were hit, and many wanted to explore their own EI further, through personal profiling or through work with their own in-country teams. We have been asked to facilitate part of their next offsite, and individual review conversations being conducted will identify what personal and team development they wish to take forward.
Situation: When Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and BlackRock merged in 2006, the new firm of BlackRock was created with a strong global investment capacity. However the EMEA team found themselves lacking some of the learning and development support that they had been used to in their previous organisations. In particular, the Country Heads were working at a cracking pace in building their businesses, and finding the leadership demands this placed upon them taxing. With so much emphasis on action-oriented growth, the opportunity to think about their own leadership style came rarely.
Task: The EMEA Managing Director wanted his team to explore their leadership style through learning about Emotional Intelligence (EI). One of their quarterly offsite meetings, to be held in Lake Como, Italy, was identified as the ideal opportunity to do this, as it would bring together Country Heads from Europe and Asia Pacific. The objectives for the event were to:
- Provide a stimulating and engaging development day.
- Help country heads with the need to be heard, and the need to listen.
- Convey the importance of attitudinal development over skills.
- Establish the value Blackrock places on Country Heads as EMEA team.
- Position the day as an overall team and individual development intervention.
Action: We planned the event to draw on both theory and practice, recognising that the group was action-oriented and yet needed good data to support new information. Using a Team Effectiveness diagnostic, specifically built around the principles of applied emotional intelligence, we sought an overall picture of the team’s style, and its own perception of strong and less strong areas.
We designed the offsite event to incorporate a theoretical understanding of the research behind EI, supported by active, experiential exercises to demonstrate or clarify key points. Our partners from the Central School of Speech and Drama provided a dramatic scene about hotel management, which as a Forum Theatre experience enabled the EMEA team to observe and re-direct specifically un-emotionally-intelligent behaviour. In addition, the inclusion of a graphic facilitator meant that metaphors were captured visually, and will be used to remind participants of key points.
