Nexia International
Game Changing Awareness
Background
Nexia is a successful national financial and accounting services organisation. Integral has been working over the last five years providing a range of leadership development workshops and coaching. This has included facilitation of senior leadership objectives, team cohesion and mindfulness workshops for staff.
The Challenge
Nexia Australia recognised that professional and career development of its staff is paramount to the future success of the organisation. Integral was engaged by Nexia to engage its leadership team with a leadership development program based on Nexia’s competency framework. The program was designed to build consistent core capabilities for all Nexia leaders that would filtrate throughout the business locally and nationally. It was designed to be repeatable and scalable across the business, that could be delivered locally, and supported by digital technology.
Integral was extremely conscious that professional service firms have pressures and responsibilities associated with client service delivery that meant professional development interventions must be designed to require minimum time away from billable work.
Integral took on the challenge to build a robust and customised approach using Nexia’s competency framework, values and behaviours to underpin this development opportunity.
The Solution
A customised suite of workshop modules was delivered to middle level managers and senior professionals. These modules were aimed at giving leaders the skills to both drive higher employee engagement and also key performance outcomes. To ensure learnings were being translated back to the working environment each participant had a designated coach for a period of four months to assist in the translation of learnings.
Working collectively, Integral targeted the most important competencies within Nexia’s Competency Framework, so that it was relatable to the organisation’s culture and its vision for the future. The modules included:
Achieving Results - participants are able to define performance measures and continuously assess, improve and achieve objectives; monitor and uphold high quality of service and products.
Team Engagement - participants work cooperatively with others to assist and learn; positively influence others and ensure team participation to support the firm's goals.
Client Excellence - participants develop the firm's profile and reputation by consistently building and projecting strong professional and personal credibility with clients; delivering a superior client experience.
All participants completed a Leadership Skills Audit which compared self estimates of the skills expected in the three areas above with the rating of the participant’s manager. All participants received a summary feedback of these ratings. The effectiveness of the team they managed was also measured using a team effectiveness measure which showed areas the team was performing well in and areas for improvement.
To encourage maximum engagement from all participants it was paramount to minimise the leaders time away from billable work. Hence, each module was delivered in one half day session and timed to run monthly. (avoiding key EOM or EOFY periods). Integral worked collaboratively with Nexia to align the workshops with their expectations.
The Results
The program built awareness of participant’s understanding their leadership style and how it has an effect through their team and their clients. It also had noticeable results around personal effectiveness skills for the participant to take responsibility for enhancing their self-awareness, and committing to change and taking a definite action steps towards their goals.
