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Wherever you are in the world, you’ll either be saying a fond farewell to summer or a welcome hello to warmer weather to come. In the season of change, we should be mindful of the people and talent risks associated with uncertainty, ambiguity and the value of people-centered transformation. In this edition, we are delighted
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to share the innovative ways our clients are keeping ahead of the curve through assessment and development interventions to provide the necessary support and scaffolding to enable people, managers and leaders to shake up their routine, evolve habits, and adapt to new challenges ahead.
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PROPEL AROUND THE WORLD
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Team members from Propel UK spent this month coaching executives in New Zealand, Switzerland, London and Brighton. Executive coaching is used by many companies for the development and support of senior leaders and high potential employees, helping them through their challenges with greater clarity and awareness. The 6th Ridler Report on coaching notes that leaders often report on being better coaches after having professional coaching themselves, which makes them more effective leaders. This being the case, we encourage organisations to see the benefits of executive coaching as multi-faceted: encompassing the development and support of the individual, improving the company culture and attitude towards coaching, and impacting positively on direct reports who benefit from a leader with a greater awareness of coaching skills. Adding to this, it is easy to see why Leader as Coach programmes continue to be popular with organisations.
Propel New Zealand is excited to be embarking on the third year of a Management Development Programme with an iconic NZ organisation. The longitudinal nature of this programme has meant that we have seen significant behavioural change in the participants who have been part of the previous programmes, leading to a groundswell in improved management capability. Our Management Development Programme supports participants through pre-programme diagnostic assessments; a coaching feedback discussion; two face-to-face learning modules; peer coaching; and executive coaching. The organisation has also benefited from internal networking and breaking down of functional silos with managers from different parts of the business working together on the programme. It has been hugely rewarding seeing the shift in thinking about what it means to be a manager and how to achieve results through others.
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More and more industrial clients are reaching out to Propel Spain for support on how to evolve technical experts - from fields such as science, engineering and IT - into professional world-class leaders. The traditional career ladder for these types of roles may not necessarily offer enough exposure and opportunity to develop people management soft skills; pragmatic workshops, followed with shadow coaching sessions, therefore can help to address this. By helping technical experts to develop a style for managing others, to provide ongoing support, and to encourage them to trust their teams when work is delegated, we are finding more and more technical experts are reaching the senior echelons of an organisation.
The Propel Middle East team continues to have the privilege this month to partner with some of the most ambitious organisations in the region, proving once again that Talent Assessment and Development is a top priority in times of uncertainty for private and government clients alike. We were very proud to successfully pilot our Development Centre in one of the largest non-oil and gas organisations in Saudi, and the program will now be rolled out across the world where hundreds of leaders will have the opportunity to benefit from the Development Centre and to realise their full potential. From a technology standpoint, our team of developers has achieved another impressive milestone with two more third party integrations, allowing our clients to access a forever growing list of online assessments through the Propel Talent Portal.
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THE VALUE OF PROPEL
“We chose to work with Propel because the Propel Talent Portal was able to provide us with a solution that met our every need – it is easy to use, cost effective and flexible enough to accommodate all of our custom requirements. The Propel team have been trusted advisors throughout the process and are a true partner to our business”. Berta Pappenheim Da Silva, CEO. |
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The Cyberfish Company conducts research and delivers solutions to clients which help them to manage exposure to cyber risk resulting from human behavior.
Cyberfish developed an online psychometric behavioural assessment – The Cyber Attitudes Assessment (CAA), which measures the personality traits and behaviours which are known to have a direct or indirect influence on attitudes towards information security risk and exposure. Cyberfish were looking for a technology partner to provide them with a user friendly and highly secure online platform upon which to host the CAA and its’ associated feedback reports. Cyberfish chose to partner with Propel because of our state of the art Propel Talent Portal and our ability to respond rapidly to their need and work closely with them to ensure that the CAA was built to their specification within the desired time frame. |
We provided expert advice and support to guide the design of the custom CAA feedback reports and were able to demonstrate the security of the Propel Talent Portal at every stage of the process.
The CAA survey and reports were launched at the beginning of March and is the Cyberfish Company’s pioneering online product. It is also the only psychometric assessment of its kind in the market globally. It is being used with clients globally to support both recruitment and development initiatives and extremely positive feedback is being received regarding the insights that the survey is able to deliver. Ultimately the CAA survey is already helping to make the world a more cyber secure place. |
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“At Vision Invest we are passionate about providing continuous support to our senior leaders to facilitate continued growth and enable them to perform to their potential and therefore cascading their skills and knowledge to the talents within Vision Invest ecosystem, which is aligned with our vision and perception of our Human Capital being the backbone of our organization. Partnering with Propel allowed us to design and deliver a best-practice and holistic development program providing objective and robust leadership insights across multiple perspectives and tools. Our Leaders were able to utilize this information, supported by coaches, to create relevant and practical plans and goals for their professional development.” |
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Vision International Investment Company, formerly known as ACWA Holding, are a group of companies who together lead the privatisation of state-owned utilities and assets in Saudi Arabia.
Vision Invest were looking for a progressive, dynamic and flexible talent consulting partner to design and execute a Development Program for a selection of their Executive Leaders. They understood the importance of ensuring the continual growth of their talent at such a critical level of the business. As such, they focused on structuring the development of their senior leaders in order to maximise performance levels of the organisation. Propel International designed a world-class talent program to evaluate and then develop the capability of senior leaders at Vision Invest. Propel’s objective was to deliver holistic, fair and objective evaluation of ability and potential, amalgamated from various assessment sources, including business simulations, |
psychometric assessments, 360° feedback, and aspirational assessment. From this, multiple coaching sessions and developmental touch points were delivered to ultimately create and execute focused, relevant and tangible development goals for the program’s participants.
Propel delivered a 2-day Development Program with 12 Executive Leaders from Vision Invest. The first focused on behavioral evaluation across business simulation exercises, whilst the second focused on the development and professional growth of attendees, including a Self-Awareness and Career Management Workshop, reflection on performance aided by video recordings and feedback sessions with qualified coaches. The outcome for Vision Invest was robust and reliable information upon which to make data-driven talent decisions. The outcomes for attendees were numerous; objective feedback from multiple sources, multiple touch points with coaches to discuss their career aspirations and finally the translation of program outputs to pragmatic and realistic actions for their development. |
MEET A PROPELLER
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What pioneering project are you currently working on?
My recent focus has been on helping our clients to make the graduate recruitment process much more engaging and exciting with the introduction of valid and reliable Game-Based assessment. It is common that the same graduates may be applying for a number of different programmes, so it is critical for an organisation to have a stream-lined and frictionless process to make them memorable and send positive messages about their brand. By working with our clients to understand the role of a graduate in their organisation (both now and in the future), we are able to directly measure those attributes that are critical for success in the role and give the client a clear idea of a candidate’s possible fit. It has also been shown that well developed game-based assessment (like those we use from Arctic Shores) increase diversity and reduce the chance of drop-out during the recruitment process. And candidates love them! What is your advice when it comes to talent assessment and development?
My focus is to really understand each of our clients individually and determine their needs so that our solutions are customised and fit-for-purpose. The key is to balance both science and practice and provide a true partnership approach. Why are you passionate about Propel?
One of the key reasons we launched Propel in New Zealand in early 2017 is that as a business, we are truly focused on partnering with our clients. This is at the heart of all we do, from providing solutions that solve problems to creating technology to improve the assessment and development experience. What do you believe is the biggest challenge in talent management today?
I think one of the key challenges in Talent Management is keeping up with the changes and developments in technology and the impact of this on how we assess and develop people at work. We are hearing about expectations for assessments to be extremely short and to provide clear insights on that person for a role. While it is critical that we provide a good candidate experience, it is also very important that any assessment used is reliable and valid (predicts performance at work). |