Memorable Skills. Unforgettable Presentations.
How The Ariel Group helped a global consumer bank’s leadership gain their voice and streamline their presentations.
The Client
Our client is a global consumer bank (denoted as GCB) and operates four geographical business lines — Branded Cards, Retail Services, Retail Banking and Commercial Banking — in GCB’s four regions: Asia; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); Latin America; and North America.
GCB is also an existing client, having worked with The Ariel Group on multiple occasions and across departments.
The Challenge
GCB had undergone a global assessment of all 1st and 2nd line managers to determine skill and/or knowledge gaps, as well as identify “high potential” candidates for advancement. Upper management determined that many of these employees lacked basic supervisory skills and experience. The mission was to get underneath the “why” those skills were missing, and determine what management they could do to build those skills and improve employee performance.
For example, a number of Senior Vice Presidents (SVPs) were not effective at making truly highly impactful presentations. Their intent was not properly conveyed and the SVPs weren’t able to achieve their desired outcomes. Across the board, these SVPs received consistent feedback that their decks were too long. Acting on the feedback, some SVPs cut the number of slides, but many of them still rambled on during their presentations.
Overall, GCB wanted the intent of all presentations to be clear and more focused. They needed their leaders to inspire action with clear and concise messaging up front about what they need, who they are, and what the direction is. These SVPs needed to be able to walk in and set the agenda rather than being pushed around.
The Ariel Group was challenged with helping this select “high potential” group of GCB employees find their voice. Specifically, skills they were lacking included:
- Focused presentations
- Impactful speakers
- Could not convey clear, concise messages with a clear understanding of next steps
…many [GCB] employees were hesitant, almost fearful of having a voice, especially with those with higher rank and title – and that confidence gap had a negative effect on the impact of their presentations. – Participant
The Solution
Owing to a number of previous successful engagements with GCB, The Ariel Group was a known (and trusted) solutions provider.
The Ariel Group conducted a Leading with Presence workshop with Vice Presidents and Senior Vice Presidents who were nominated to attend after being defined as High Potentials by GCB.
The Outcome
In Leading with Presence, GCB team members learned about passionate purpose (i.e. how to get their information across in the way they intended).
Specifically, they left the workshop with the ability to:
- Utilize vocal variety, emphasis, and other storytelling techniques
- Get their audience to think, feel, and do what they intended for their presentations
- Listen to their staff by going through a series of role playing exercises with job-specific situations
- Become situationally fluent with presence for presentations, leading meetings, working with colleagues and customers, and influencing virtually
