Function: C-suite

Adaption to the demands of a scaling business

The Brief

The client was a dual role COO/CFO at a medium sized private equity house, who had been with the firm since formation. They had a broad range of responsibilities that included not just finance and operations but also HR, IT and anything else inside of the business that needed doing. The client was personally overstretched and becoming a bottleneck. The brief was to change the way of working to enable more delegation to direct reports and an elevation of contribution to a more strategic level.

The Engagement

The engagement was a 12-month senior executive coaching relationship with a focus on developing the next level of leadership skills to succeed in the new role. It included a detailed 360-degree process of interviews with critical stakeholders and psychometrics followed by one-to-one coaching sessions. The coaching topics explored were time management, team dynamics and working through others.

The Outcome

The client found the process to be insightful and impactful, with a noticeable change in work habits. These changes resulted in a higher tempo of deliverables, a more engaged and empowered team, and the bandwidth to attend to higher-value activity.

Develop a more effective executive committee

The Brief

The client was the CEO of a regional bank. They were looking for independent leadership support and advice. Initially, the focus was around issues relating to their team and some particular people challenges, alongside some personal development areas around communication and confidence in professional authority.

The Engagement

The initial engagement was for a 12-month term, on a retained basis for ½ day per month. The engagement was primarily online due to location, with periodic in-person meetings. Over time, the scope of the work grew from team and leadership topics into matters of strategy and engagement. 

In addition, we started to work with the wider team in a facilitation capacity, and given we were in different countries, planned regular in-person gatherings where we could make the most of being in-person.

The Outcome

The client found the relationship to be of significant value. They have successfully resolved their team issues, stepped more fully into the authority of their role and are operating at a more strategic level in the business.

Repairing a broken executive committee

The Brief

The client was a national bank where relationships on the executive committee had become strained. This unfortunate situation was depleting energy and impacting the effectiveness of execution. The brief was to bring everyone together to ‘have it out’ and rebuild the trust between team members necessary to perform.

The Engagement

We partnered with the CEO to understand the issues and how they were presenting. This informed the process design to address and remedy the challenges within the executive committee. As a result, these were the actions we took:

  • One-to-one meetings with each executive committee member to establish trust in Goldcrest and the process, and to hear their perspectives
  • 2-day offsite to work through the Goldcrest high-performing team framework to establish a positive template to work towards and highlight the interdependency of each team member and their functions
  • Facilitated ‘clear the air’ conversations to work through issues and achieve recognition that the execution of strategy was being hampered by the lack of cohesion
  • Established clarity and commitment about roles, responsibilities, and rules of engagement necessary for success


The Outcome

Feedback from the client described the process as refreshingly honest and essential to moving forward. The executive committee are still using the tools and structures agreed upon to make better decisions, to address contentious issues and communicate more effectively with one another. Goldcrest provided ongoing support to cascade this into the individual executive committee members’ teams.

When trust is lost

The Brief

The client was a longstanding executive committee member at a global asset manager. The client was under pressure at work and feeling unsupported by their boss. Alongside this, there were significant demands on time and energy at home, which were stressful and depleting personal resilience.

The Engagement

The initial engagement was a 12-month executive coaching relationship with a focus on recovering and building resilience, talking through family challenges, addressing team dynamics and gaining clarity on internal relationships with other senior leaders. As trust built and the relationship deepened, the work then evolved to a full enquiry about values, purpose and contentment alongside talking through the ongoing challenges that work and home presented.

The Outcome

The client has found the coaching support invaluable at a difficult time and regularly extended the engagement to ensure they had the independent and dedicated resource they need.

Reconnecting a senior leadership team of an asset manager

The Brief

The client was the senior leadership team of an asset management business. Following the global pandemic, several changes had taken place with some leavers and joiners. The business faced significant headwinds and needed to ensure the leadership team addressing the challenges was as tight and high performing as possible.

The Engagement

Our solution was to run a high-performing team workshop for the group over a two-day offsite. We balanced the offsite to address the team’s characteristics, strengths, and gaps, with strategic discussion of the macro challenges. We used our proprietary ‘Conditions for High Performing Teams’ checklist as the basis of the gap analysis.

The Outcome

The process was a resounding success. The value of bringing the team together was palpable in the enthusiasm and joy at genuine human connection after such unnatural separation. Feedback from the CEO following the event described the team being more connected and aligned than ever, demonstrating strong examples of leadership and teamwork that were beginning to positively shift the organisational culture in the right direction.

Effective hybrid working for a digital bank

The Brief

The client was a US-based digital bank and card service provider that was improving its hybrid working model and seeking to address the leadership and teamworking challenges that come with this way of working. The client had a well-resourced and effective internal talent development function who had implemented a firmwide programme of ‘Team Days’, which were monthly in-person whole department mini-conferences that brought people together, allowed individual team time, and provided central presentations and learning for the c. 500-strong departments.

The Engagement

The engagement was to provide specific masterclasses pertinent to hybrid working, including high-performing teams, leading through adversity, the power of networks, the benefits of followership and how to put them into practice.

We participated in a series of the ‘Team Days’ to ensure consistency of experience across the firm.

The Outcome

Client feedback was good. The talent development team were pleased to be able to outsource some elements of the programme to an external provider to help manage their workload. The participants found the masterclasses informative and engaging. The business operates a highly effective hybrid working model, in large part due to how well they have developed their people.

Enabling an asset manager’s ExCo to implement strategy

The Brief

Our client was an asset manager which had not taken the executive team offsite or spent any time together beyond the boardroom. Having reached a significant strategic decision point, the firm needed time and space to consider where it was going, why it was going there and the journey it would take to get there.

The Engagement

Our solution was to design a process to allow the team to discuss the issues that mattered while spending time together, away from the office, getting to better understand one another and their challenges. Initially there was scepticism towards this new process from individuals who had heard the stereotypes around offsites and team building. However, as we demonstrated this was about a strategic conversation within a facilitated environment, the sceptics quickly became advocates and were fully engaged.

The Outcome

The outcome was two-fold: a refreshed purpose, vision and strategy in light of a fast-changing macro environment, and a more connected team.

Building a global team in private equity

The Brief

The client was a fast-growing midcap private equity house with global offices. They had grown significantly during the pandemic when in-person activity as a whole firm had been restricted. Relationships were functional at best and largely built on Zoom and Teams interactions. The executive recognised they needed to build social cohesion across the entire organisation of 80 people.

The Engagement

We began by creating, in partnership with the client, a three-day conference in a major European city. The objectives were to instil strategic messages and hold critical conversations, meet colleagues and build relationships and unite the firm around a shared experience that would serve as a cultural artefact.

The Outcome

The client was delighted with the event. It was the right balance of hard work and fun to energise and motivate the participants. The group left with a better understanding of individual and cultural differences, a strong sense of cohesion it created, and renewed strategic direction for the next five years.  We continue to engage with the firm to support their leaders and teams and embed the change in the culture.

Creating a culture for the next chapter of growth

The Brief

Our client was a leading UK wealth management firm. The new CEO engaged us early in their tenure to help them define the existing culture, establish the desired future culture and support in that change journey.

The Engagement

Our solution was multi-faceted. Initially, we needed to get to know the organisation and earn the trust of key players. Once that trust was built, we were able to explore the lived experience through a series of workshops, focus groups and one-to-one conversations. We started concurrently at the executive committee and the new entry levels of the organisation, working our way into the centre. It was vital to identify the individuals who had informal influence and were positive culture carriers and engage them early.

The Outcome

Over a period of six months, we built a picture of what worked well and what could be changed. We supported them to create a new set of values, helped roll them out and give them meaning. Finally, we developed a programme to build the senior management’s leadership capabilities and bind them together as a collaborative layer.

Succession coaching to support transition into a COO role

The Brief

The client had received a significant promotion at a large European asset manager and sought support to help them succeed in the new role. They needed to elevate contribution to a strategic level, establish effective ways of working with new peers and manage a heavy workload alongside other demands on their time and energy.

The Engagement

A Goldcrest coach with considerable experience working with COOs engaged with the client for a 12-month term to support the transition. Our approach was holistic with a primary focus on stabilising personal resilience before developing the leadership habits that the new role demanded. Themes of the coaching included managing anxiety, addressing perfectionism and procrastination, building confidence, setting boundaries and developing a more strategic perspective.

The Outcome

The client found the engagement to be an invaluable support during their transition before deciding that the new role was not right for them. The benefit of the coaching and learnings from the in-role experience have enabled the client to pursue a different opportunity that better suits them.