Building a New Generation of Leaders at a Financial Services Firm
Facing a wave of retirements among its senior leaders, a mid-market financial services firm partnered with Inspired Action Network to design a twelve-month leadership development program for its emerging executives.
Mid-Market Financial Services Firm
20
Emerging leaders developed
12 mo
Program duration
85%
Internal promotion rate (up from 40%
14
Participants promoted or expanded scope
The Challenge
A mid-market financial services firm was facing a demographic cliff. Within thirty-six months, eight of its twelve most senior leaders were expected to retire. The firm had a strong bench of directors and senior managers, but most had never operated at the executive level, and the firm had no formal leadership development pipeline. Off-the-shelf executive programs felt too generic for the firm's specific culture and the particular expectations its clients placed on senior leaders.
The CEO needed a program tailored to the firm — one that would accelerate the readiness of twenty emerging leaders without pulling them out of their day-to-day responsibilities for months at a time.
Our Approach
We designed a twelve-month custom leadership program built around the firm's specific leadership competencies and the real decisions these emerging leaders would face. The program combined monthly full-day cohort sessions, individual coaching, stretch assignments tied to live business challenges, and peer accountability groups. Every element was designed to be immediately applicable to the work participants were already doing.
We co-designed the program with the firm's existing senior leaders, who served as sponsors, scenario designers, and occasional guest facilitators. That involvement did two things: it ensured the program reflected the firm's actual leadership demands, and it created relationships between retiring leaders and their successors that no classroom program could have produced.
The Transformation
At the twelve-month mark, fourteen of the twenty participants had been promoted or moved into expanded scopes of responsibility. Three had stepped into newly vacated executive roles. The firm's internal promotion rate for senior leadership positions, historically around 40%, climbed to 85% during and after the program.
The less visible win was cultural. The cohort built relationships across functions that the firm had never had at that level, and those relationships continued to shape how the firm operated long after the formal program ended. The CEO has since committed to running the program again for the next cohort.
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