Avion is proud to partner with clients that are committed to developing their leaders, their teams, and their entire organizations. We typically serve clients over the long term, through a variety of engagements, as a way of maximizing the value we deliver and ensuring significant business impact.
Financial Services company accelerates employee Partner-track development
Very talented employees were not always succeeding in achieving expected promotions to next levels.
Avion provided feedback and individual coaching, which helped employees recognize personal strengths and potential hinderances to promotion.
Employees learned earlier in their career what they need to do to get promoted, and as a result, there were fewer surprises for both employees and management.
HR transformation requires new ways of thinking and operating
An HR leadership team was challenged to help build the company of the future in the face of a rapidly changing marketplace and an increased demand for future-ready talent.
Avion provided executive coaching to senior HR leaders to support individual development. The client also received change management consultation and organizational design to support systemic change. Avion’s approach included team-based coaching for mid- and senior-level managers across the function to support broad scale alignment and productivity during a time of significant change.
The client experienced an increase in the speed of delivery on critical initiatives, greater buy-in from key stakeholders on the new strategy and its ability to deliver on the needs of the business and achieved an increase in satisfaction with the quality of support provided across the portfolio.
Global healthcare company builds future-ready leadership pipeline
A changing marketplace and global shifts in customer expectations require a strong and flexible leadership bench.
Avion partnered closely with internal stakeholders and designed and delivered a year-long development program for top talent focused on growing enterprise-level leadership capabilities. The client received a highly customized program that met the unique needs of a diverse group of leaders with both unique – as well as shared – challenges. The program included customized assessments, 360 feedback, individual coaching, classroom training, offsite experiential experiences, action learning projects, and working sessions with senior leadership to tackle key business issues.
The client experienced accelerated readiness levels for key leadership positions (including several actual promotions), increased collaboration and alignment across previously siloed departments and divisions, and higher confidence among senior leaders in the overall talent pipeline and its ability to delivery against new strategic goals.
Regional team within Financial Services firm drives performance through leader and team development
Sustain and build on strong team performance in a rapidly changing environment.
Avion conducted multiple forms of leader and team assessments (including interviews with regional president and all team members, as well as online 360-degree feedback and psychometric assessments) to identify strengths and areas for development at both the team and leader levels. The client received action planning at the executive. leader, and team levels based on key themes coming out of assessment process. Executive coaching was provided over the course of one year with the regional president, as well as feedback, leadership training, and coaching for other leaders within the team. Ongoing team development work was put in place to lead to the identification and execution of strategies and tactics to help ensure leader and team effectiveness.
The client achieved demonstrable improvement in executive leader credibility based on a follow-up leader effectiveness survey process, as well as high levels of employee engagement based on a highly respected measure of employee engagement (overall organization health score in the top decile when compared with a global sample of roughly 3 million employees). The client continued to see high levels of team financial performance.
Successful specialist insurer develops internal talent pipeline
Geography and size of company make attracting new, high quality people a challenge.
Avion designed and delivered a year-long high potential program, targeting less tenured people to both develop and assess their abilities.
The client noted improved skill sets of participants, which resulted in increased retention and promotions to broader responsibilities.
Fast growth company develops consistent leadership practices to support anticipated future growth
Lack of knowledge and consistency around leadership and management best practices created inefficiencies and conflict in the management of the organization. In addition, the concern was current leadership practices were not scalable and that the issues would only worsen as the company continued to grow. Employee burnout and cross functional conflict were particular issues of note.
Avion conducted a needs analysis to assess specific leadership competencies in which the organization needed to have a more aligned set of management practices. Insights were translated into a customized curriculum for senior leaders. Over the course of a year, the senior leadership team received 8 days of facilitated leadership training focused on developing skills against a consistent set of core management practices (e.g., feedback, coaching change management, interviewing skills, and performance evaluations) and emotional intelligence attributes (self-awareness, managing emotions, navigating conflict, flexing to different personalities, and demonstrating empathy for others). Avion presented leadership best practices and provided leaders with the opportunity to practice leadership behaviors in a classroom setting. Participants received a peer coach to support on the job implementation. Finally, participants received 360 feedback and one-on-one coaching at 2 different points over the course of the engagement to focus leaders on what they specifically needed to focus on and to measure change over time.
The client developed a consistent set of practices and a language around leadership. Each participant had a personally relevant action plan to guide his or her professional development. Follow up 360 feedback demonstrated a 22% improvement in perceived leader credibility, with 17 out of 19 participants exhibiting meaningful positive improvement in their follow up 360 feedback results.
Real Estate developer navigates change amid merger
Leaders of a nonprofit real estate development company desired change management and culture development to build lasting change resilience ahead of a company merger.
Avion partnered with key stakeholders to develop and facilitate targeted working sessions to address group challenges, define culture and values, and leverage group strengths. One on one coaching was provided to a select group of managers to reinforce learning and individually support these leaders through change.
The client achieved an increase in preparedness for change, and individual managers demonstrated an increase in role clarity, a reduction in change-related turnover, and an increase in cross-team collaboration.
Professional Services firm transforms from a collection of high performing individuals to a high performing team
Professional service firm was being triangulated by their largest client, causing them to be in frequent conflict with one another. Employee burnout levels were high due to challenges in setting reasonable expectations with the client.
Avion brought the entire leadership team together to openly discuss their challenges (and successes) as well as the underlying root causes. The team agreed to a focused set of principles regarding how the team would function (a team charter). Over the course of the engagement, open dialogue and feedback between team members was promoted to create accountability against these principles.
The client greatly reduced team conflict and the team achieved an aligned voice to utilize with their own clients. In addition, engagement levels of employees went up considerably due to senior leadership placing more emphasis on the employee experience.
Corporate and investment banking division increases employee engagement
With the goal of increasing engagement and retention of junior bankers, rolled out a multi-faceted leader development initiative…
Corporate and investment banking division of a large, global bank achieved substantial increases in junior banker engagement.
With the goal of increasing engagement and retention of junior bankers, Avion rolled out a multi-faceted leader development initiative focused on the development of senior bankers (at the VP, Director, and MD levels). This initiative extended through the course of the entire lifecycle of a first-year junior banker (Analyst or Associate). Quarterly small group coaching sessions focused on effective onboarding, goal-setting, feedback and coaching, mid-year reviews, career development, and year-end conversations. A pulse survey was used after each group coaching session to measure improvements in overall engagement, as well as leader effectiveness relative to practices taught during a given quarterly small group coaching session.
The client achieved measurable and substantial increases over the course of two years (two cohort groups of firm junior bankers), both in terms of overall engagement and in terms of leadership effectiveness of immediate managers and senior banker mentors.
