Topics: Leadership

Globalising an asset management business

The Brief

A UK Asset Management firm with an international presence planned to grow further and, in doing so, wanted to develop a truly global model of working. The aim was to shift from a centralised model of decision-making to a decentralised global model where decisions were made in the right location by the right people with knowledge of the markets, clients, and solutions. The premise was this would enable better decisions to be made and the organisation to move more quickly.

It was appreciated that this was a significant shift in both strategy and culture and the firm planned this on a 5-year horizon. It was also clear that the solution would be multifaceted and involve inorganic activity, change in reporting lines and a significant investment in technology. Our role was to work with the CEO and HRD on the people and culture elements.

The Engagement

There are many different aspects to globalising an asset management business, the highlights were:

Develop a global leadership conference, to be held outside the UK for the senior leaders in the business.  This became an annual event and was critical for building relationships and empowering new decision makers.

Develop and deliver a global strategy roadshow to all regional executive committee members, with the purpose of communicating the group strategy and establishing alignment. The delivery was consistent in structure and message, with allowance for discussion and debate.

Enhanced leadership development through designing and delivering a series of enhanced leadership development programmes for global leaders focusing on empowerment, autonomy and decision-making.

The Outcome

The firm is operating more effectively on the global stage. This was a huge project involving all aspects of the client’s business. However, we can say with pride that our part significantly contributed to the overall success of the strategy.

Navigating complexity

The Brief

The client was the CEO of a significant global real estate business.  The organisational structure meant that there were limited opportunities for conversations of a particular quality to take place internally and the CEO recognised they were missing an independent sounding board to talk things through and clarify their thinking.  They were looking for specific support and advice around the cultural challenges in the business and succession planning.

The Engagement

The engagement was for an initial term of 12 months on a retained basis for 2 days per month, covering regular one-to-one meetings and additional behind the scenes work on specific topics at the principal’s instruction.  The relationship encompassed conversations with the wider executive committee to understand the context and complexity, and presence at important meetings to observe dynamics in action.

The intensity of an engagement of this nature varies with periods of significant involvement followed by phases of less frequent meetings. Throughout the engagement our Goldcrest CEO Advisor was ‘on-call’ to support with any issues as they arose.

The Outcome

The principal found the relationship to be hugely valuable, that it provided them with the forum they were seeking and brought clarity to their decision making.

The Goldcrest CEO Advisor was able to bring to bear the full range of our knowledge and services to help the CEO to tackle issues across the organisation, making positive changes to culture, leadership, and teamwork while navigating complexity.

Elevating leadership behaviours in private equity

The Brief

The client was a senior partner of a US-based private equity firm. The brief was to support their transition from co-lead to sole lead of a significant investment strategy. The areas of focus included handing over deals to the others in the team, challenges with the team structure, and how to empower and engage their own direct reports.

The Engagement

The engagement was a 9-month 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 (both internal and external) followed by one-to-one coaching sessions.  Given the geography, these were all held virtually, and when the coach and the client occasionally were in the same country, they made the most of the face-to-face opportunity.

The Outcome

The client found the engagement to be valuable when it came to elevating leadership. Providing support at a time of change, insight about areas of strength and development, and the tools to take their leadership to the next level.

Design and facilitation of a global working conference

The Brief

The client wanted to bring together all its managing directors (c.80 people) from across Europe for its first in-person gathering in 5 years. Much had changed in that time, however. Due to various factors the opportunity to bring everyone together had not occurred. The cohort was mixed, with many recent joiners but the common theme was an absence on in-person connection.

The aim of the 2-day conference was 2-fold: Open debate about critical strategic decisions, inviting ideas and generating buy-in; build the network across the MD population to encourage collaboration and cross-selling.

The Engagement

Goldcrest was engaged to both co-design and to facilitate the conference.  Our key stakeholder was the CEO and we collaborated to help draft their opening session to set the tone. Additionally, we worked with the CFO, sector leads and others to coach them through the creation and delivery of their sessions.

The Outcome

The result was a highly engaged and enthused MD population with tangible messages to take back to their teams.  Some acknowledged that they arrived sceptical of such gatherings but left positive and delighted with the quality of the presentations, the conversation, the venue and the facilitation.

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 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.

Engaging senior managers through empowerment and autonomy

The Brief

The client’s executive committee recognised the way to harness the power of the organisation was by engaging more effectively with the senior management level. The programme would aim to activate their potential by creating an aligned and motivated cohort who not only felt empowered but knew what being empowered meant. The goal was to devolve responsibilities and decision-making to the part of the organisation where the expertise existed and free up the executive committee to focus more on the strategic issues requiring urgent attention.

The Engagement

The engagement was to commence a discovery phase, which allowed us to understand the organisational culture and identify the leadership strengths and gaps of the senior manager team. We used this time to get to know participants and learn what they felt was important to address. The solution we designed was a multi-modular programme over eight months with supported peer coaching and daily application to help put the learnings into practice and embed behavioural change. The executive committee played a vital role through their internal engagement and endorsement of the programme, understanding the change required of them and underpinning a successful outcome.

The Outcome

The programme ran for three iterations with 36 senior managers over a two-year period. There was a significant improvement in engagement scores from this population and a marked increase in collaboration levels across this group. The executive committee felt more connected to this cohort and were able to delegate more significant decisions, freeing up time for strategic thinking.

COO coaching to aid role transition and fuel professional growth


The Brief

The individual was a highly regarded and valued member of the organisation with strong support for their promotion to COO. It was recognised that the new role came with expanded authority and responsibilities which would require new leadership capabilities to execute well. Subject matter expertise and personal leadership style were strengths, senior executive presence and a more developed strategic perspective were the areas of development.

The Engagement

A Goldcrest coach with considerable experience working with COOs engaged with the client for a 6-month term to support the individual with their transition. The assignment began with an alignment meeting with the CEO and outgoing-COO to understand the organisational context, individual development areas and desired outcomes. The Hogan personality psychometric was used to generate self-awareness and combined with the feedback from an extensive round of 360 feedback to identify strengths and development areas. These insights were the foundation for a leadership development plan that was presented to the organisational sponsors and put into practice by the coachee.

The Outcome

The individual has successfully transitioned into the COO role, achieved SMCR approval and continues to develop the senior leadership skills and strategic perspective of an Executive Committee member.

Building bench strength in wealth management

The Brief

The client was a FTSE AIM 100 investment and wealth management firm with offices across the UK. The firm had grown significantly over the past 10 years and the new CEO wished to focus on developing the emerging talent within the business.

The Engagement

We were engaged to design and deliver a programme for the leaders who operated one or two levels below the executive committee. The programme’s aim was to furnish this cohort with the skills to be successful at the next level, develop leadership capabilities to support our succession plan in the short term and build a sustainable talent pipeline for the future. This was the first time the business had engaged in leadership development work and we were happy to guide and collaborate with the internal team.

The Outcome

We ran 4 iterations of the programme for c.40 senior leaders with great results. Immediate gaps in the executive committee were filled internally by programme participants. The longer-term succession plan became more robust and the general engagement of this population significantly improved. One outcome which was not articulated as an aim at the outset was that this population forged strong relationships and collaboration between functions in the business significantly improved.

Transforming the leadership of an asset manager

The Brief

The client was a FTSE 250 asset manager with a developing global footprint. The aim of the programme was to build the executive committee bench strength by working with the direct reports of functional and regional leaders. The mandate was to elevate leadership skills, mindsets and behaviours to enable delivery of a newly articulated strategy. That strategy included significant M&A activity and would therefore require the reinforcement of existing culture and adaptive capability to integrate new colleagues, teams and businesses.

The Engagement

The engagement was to build a global programme of activity. A series of in-person modules were delivered in the UK, the US, and Singapore, with the final capstone module in London. The programme was supported by virtual check-in sessions and a regular cadence of thought pieces and case studies to stimulate insights and learning.

The Outcome

We delivered three iterations of the programme to approximately 35 senior leaders. The programme contributed to the successful integration of several acquisitions. The acquisitions would have taken place regardless of the programme; however, the opportunity to plan for the cultural integration and the behaviours and mindsets required in this critical population made the process far smoother.

Why balance is the key to successful leadership

Look for a model of leadership and you’ll find dozens, if not hundreds, of books or articles extolling a single approach as the key to success.

It might be courageous leadership or empathetic leadership. It might be how to be a more creative leader or a more engaging one.

There are books about how the art of leadership is all about empowering people, for example, or providing a supportive environment.

Unfortunately, leadership is not so simple. If it was all about empowering your people and delegating responsibility, then why does command and control exist?  If leadership was all about support, then how would we hold people accountable and set standards?

Sometimes, we do need to take charge and tell people what to do. Sometimes healthy challenge has a place.

At its core how we behave changes depending on context. How we behave at a birthday party is very different to how we behave in a business meeting. How we behave towards someone who is upset is different to someone who is overconfident and taking risks. We haven’t changed, but the context has, and we modify our behaviour accordingly.

Leadership is about matching behaviour to context

It’s the same with leadership. Leadership is all about behaviour, and behaviour is shaped by context. Good leadership is when we as a leader understand the context and behave to get the best out of our people in that situation.

Take the example of empowering people, although most of the time leaders benefit from empowering their people, there are certain situations where the circumstance dictates that a decisive and directive approach is required.

The art of balanced leadership is to find the most appropriate leadership response in the circumstance.

The spectrums of balanced leadership

Our model of balanced leadership has 6 spectrums of behaviour which we believe are key to fitting the leadership style to the situation. We explore each of them in a series of articles to understand the range of behaviour and how to adapt and adjust considering the context.

For most leaders, this means developing a toolbox of leadership behaviours to choose from, so you have the right tool available at the right time. It also means starting to be aware of your natural preferences, so you’ll know which behaviours might be second nature (and perhaps overplayed) and which may need practise.

Achieving balance is a process, not an end state

The truth about balance is that we are always working to find it. It is a process, not an end state. Once we find balance, the context changes and we need to rebalance again.

We intuitively know how do this. We learned to walk, ride a bike, dance and perhaps something more adventurous like skateboarding, surfing, skiing. All of these activities require us to find the balance point and continually readjust.

The task for business leaders is therefore to take this pre-existing skill, this implicit knowing and apply it in a professional landscape.

We believe that, if you seek balance as a leader, you will benefit, as will your team and your organisation.