Performance Management and Coaching: Financial Services

Creating a Coaching Culture at a Financial Services Firm

Client Case Study

Situation

An industry leader in the real estate investment market was looking for an innovative approach to improve performance, engage employees, and reinforce the unique culture it had built over the last decade.

The company felt that the discipline of coaching exemplified the approaches, perspectives, and behaviors they wanted their managers and executives to demonstrate in their employee interactions.  They also wanted to create an intrinsically motivating work environment to drive engagement and performance.

The overall goal was to create a company-wide coaching environment and to implement effective performance management systems that would be embraced and consistently used by employees, managers and executives. There were 6 key project principles:

  1. Culture: Develop a solution that supports and fosters the company’s culture
  2. Empowerment: Empower managers to be true facilitators of employee development
  3. Support: Provide employees with information and tools to take ownership of their performance
  4. Simplify: Eradicate the dreaded, annual (bi-annual) performance review
  5. Accountability: Shift ownership for employee development from HR to executive and manager teams
  6. Learning Organization: Instill continuous learning and improvement to allow the system to evolve as needed

Complications

  • Relevance: Recognizing that investment institutions rarely have employee development as a top priority
  • Skepticism: Starting on the heels of a prior coaching development initiative that received mixed reviews while overcoming the “flavor of the month” reaction by all employees
  • Executive Support: Getting buy-in from all managers and executives

  • Change: Letting go of long-standing, traditional metrics

Approach

The overall approach of this initiative was to build a coaching, performance measurement, and evaluation system designed by and for the people that would be using it—executives, managers, and individual contributors.

People at all levels were engaged in a collaborative and iterative design process that produced a performance coaching system that would work for their specific needs and environment. The approach also focused on providing a high level of transparency in the change process and in each aspect of development for the new processes and systems. Developing and implementing the new approach included the following 6 components:

1.  Assessment: 

To ensure the initiative would be successful, we reviewed the existing performance systems, processes, and tools to determine what supported a coaching environment and the company culture and what did not. A cultural survey was used to assess employee satisfaction, values alignment, and potential barriers to success. The assessment surfaced a number of key issues that could pose potential barriers to success, including:

  • Dissatisfaction with the current performance appraisal system, the existing 360°, and the overall strategic initiative management processes
  • The perception that the current Performance Measurement and evaluation systems were subjective and unfair

Based on the assessment findings, the company expanded the initiative to encompass the following additional components: Greater focus and feedback on employee satisfaction, goal development and goal management, performance measurement and metrics, performance analysis, developing training and an automated platform to facilitate the above areas and aligning compensation with coaching and performance objectives

This broadened and integrated perspective became known as AMPS – which stands for Assessment, Motivation, and Performance System. It is a process for facilitating manager and employee interactions, setting successful goals, coaching, and motivating. AMPS focuses on ensuring that employees have clear, achievable, and understood goals while helping to facilitate conversations between managers and employees.

Approach (cont)

2. Coaching

Executive coaching started at the beginning of the project and focused on a simple and engaging process for executives to coach their direct reports and model the desired behaviors. Coaching then expanded down through the organization to both Directors and Managers to create alignment and pull-through.

3. AMPS System

AMPS also spawned a server-based technology platform that manages a 360° assessment, goal development, and a simple performance management process. The system uses a dashboard that both managers and employees access to track goal progress and completion. The dashboard design was based on input from management regarding use and functionality. The final version only contains features used and valued by management. The AMPS system provides the ability to:

  • Create, track, edit, and evaluate goals on a weekly basis
  • Build performance evaluation consistency for employees through detailed expectations
  • Drive regularly scheduled conversations between managers and employees
  • Track AMPS Conversations (what we call coaching conversations) between manager and employee
  • Use a dashboard to access all aspects of the performance system
  • Have users maintain the system

4. 360 Evaluation

  1. The company collaboratively worked together to create a new set of values and cultural standards that best represented the organization both in reality and aspiration
  2. A Values 360 Assessment was created using the values definitions created with the management team and employees
  3. A widely validated motivation model was incorporated into the 360
  4. A company-specific coaching model was developed to use with the 360 assessment

5. Training

From a development perspective, we focused on two key areas to ensure adoption.

  1. We worked one-on-one with the executive team and management to help them to better coach and support their employees
  2. We created AMPS Tools and techniques to help employees and managers effectively use the AMPS System and fully integrate it into their company culture

6. Compensation

To ensure accountability and reinforcement, we tightly tied AMPS performance measurement to individual performance bonuses. The weighting was follows.

  • 40% for performance goals (day-to-day responsibilities)
  • 30% from personal development goals (reflecting career paths, gaps in skills, or growth opportunities)
  • 30% from the Values 360 Assessment delivered twice a year

Results

In twenty four months:

  • 100% adoption of new process and tools
  • 80% high quality goals
  • 85% of employees hit their goals
  • 95% of employees are now performing above standard on the Values 360 Assessment

Related Information

After a difficult search to find a partner that could address a very specific leadership development need, we chose LSA Global. They were responsive to our needs and created a highly customized solution that we continue to see results from. It is nice to know we have access to their expertise with a simple phone call.

Valerie Blackburn
Director of Business Operations

We contacted LSA to help us design and deliver customized management development programs. LSA worked with us to meet our exact needs. We started at the top with our executive team.  It was such a great success that we rolled it out company-wide. We look forward to a long-term partnership with LSA Global and their team of experts.

Barry L. Byrd, SPHR
Human Resources Manager

I continue to be impressed by the level of leadership development training and management expertise and quality of advice and facilitation that LSA has to offer.

What a smart and client-centric group of great people who really know how to help assess and develop high performing leaders.

Tracy Esposito
Director

zynga LSA Global gaming client

For our go to training outsourcing partner, LSA provides exactly what we want and need – which is not an easy task.

As always, they design and deliver outstanding leadership development results and high quality management training programs that totally align with our unique business and talent strategies!

Elizabeth Siebert
Director, Organizational Excellence & Development

Intuit

Having tripled in size and recently merged, LSA helped our executive team to increase our level of strategic alignment, to solidify our new direction, and to push our agency forward.

As we look to rapidly scale, the clear, actionable, and critical few strategic moves combined with how we differentiate ourselves to our top accounts and target clients has really set us on a great path to success.

This is exactly what we needed to get to the next level. Thank you LSA!

Matt Britton
CEO

We reviewed the top Leadership Development offerings and selected LSA’s 12-month Leadership Program based upon the value and systemic approach.

The feedback on the program, approach, and results was phenomenal. While other programs may be better known, the other options were more theoretical and did not compare in terms of LSA’s practicality, quality, and results.

We could not be happier.

Stacey Porter
Senior Manager Learning and Development

Roche

I’ve been associated with LSA for the last 8 years and have found them to be extremely professional and client-focused.

I’ve participated in a number of solutions ranging from Performance Management to Leadership Training.  I’ve found the quality to be superior.

They are always well prepared and have definitely done a considerable amount of pre-work in order to customize to our unique culture and goals.

Duane Schroeder
Human Resource Manager

Great job in designing the Mergers and Acquisition strategy session for our global leadership team. The session was excellent.

I gained additional insight on the importance of the role of HR regarding strategy, culture, and people in Mergers and Acquisitions and would recommend LSA to anyone looking to align strategies and cultures.

Gloria Veon
Senior Vice President, Human Resources

Fujitsu

LSA has been a tremendous asset at my current company and my past company.

As an HR leader, I am always looking for ways to find external resources that can provide impactful leadership and management development expertise. LSA consistently does that for me.

The tools and practices are crisp, business relevant, and easy to apply on the job.

Ken Boehm
VP of Human Resources

We consider LSA Global the top outsourced learning and development partner.

We work closely with LSA to customize leadership and management development programs to meet our growing business needs.

I would highly recommend LSA to any company wanting to deliver high quality and practical learning solutions for their leaders and managers.

Terri Wright-Scheer
Vice President Human Resources

LSA exceeded all my expectations.

We interviewed 7 potential training and consulting partners and selected LSA due to their expertise, flexibility, and breadth and depth of leadership solutions.

We were able to design a highly focused and relevant management training course that fit our unique needs.

Our leaders and managers galvanized as a team and are better prepared for the rigors of a leading their teams in a very competitive and fast-changing market.

Mitch Mandich
CEO

Edify

LSA helped us design and deliver blended leadership solutions for our key leaders to help drive our growth plans in a way that aligned with our unique culture and values.

LSA understood our business, had deep expertise in the content areas, customized the leadership development programs to fit our specific needs, and delivered great results in alignment with our strategic priorities, culture, and performance management systems.

I highly recommend them to anyone looking to take their leaders and the performance of their teams to the next level.

Beth A. Taylor
Vice President of Human Resources

Thoratec

Our relationship with LSA is extremely valuable.

We worked closely with LSA to customize critical Management Training Programs to meet our unique business needs.

I’d recommend LSA to any company looking for first class and high quality leadership and management training assessment, design, delivery, and follow-through.

Ken Boehm
Vice President of Human Resources

The quality of LSA’s Leadership Training Programs and facilitators is always top notch. We recognize and appreciate the hard work LSA always goes through to align to our unique culture and meet our specific requirements. Thank you for regularly going above and beyond. Your support and dedication, both on the strategic and tactical side, have been outstanding!

Anna Meyer
Leadership Development

Intuit

Thanks for your incredible patience and passion working with our leadership team to create alignment.

Your leadership and executive coaching services have been one of the most effective I’ve ever known.

Debbie Von Raesfeld
Director and HR Business Partner

AMD

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