FTSE 100 financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown appointed Pearn Kandola to work with a cohort of its future leaders to evaluate their strengths and encourage their development as they embarked on a six-month leadership development programme. Pearn Kandola partner Stuart Duff says: “Our role was to provide the participants with greater levels of self-understanding and awareness, both of their strengths and their potential risk areas. This meant that they were given deep personal insight before the programme started and guided to areas that they could usefully focus on.”
Online development and face-to-face coaching
Underpinning the project was Pearn Kandola’s leading-edge on-line iLEAD™ Development Centre. This combines a number of self-assessment and development activities with the iLEAD™ Toolkit, a suite of leadership tools that have been developed using the latest research and coaching models, and that cover the core areas of task, people and thought leadership.
The iLEAD Development Centre takes around four hours to complete and allows participants flexibility and choice as to when they complete the activities. Sophie Doherty, Training and Recruitment Assistant at Hargreaves Lansdown, says: “We wanted to make sure that this process was as easy as it could possibly be. We really liked the iLEAD Development Centre because it was all done on the computer, which meant that people could do it in their own time and it was very convenient.”
Simplicity and ease of use were important to Hargreaves Lansdown – a high-tech company whose people expect high-tech solutions. Sophie says that the system was very easy to use and contained a personal dashboard that made it simple to access the different components.
After participants had completed the assessment and development activities, they received detailed reports evaluating their strengths and risk areas. They then had a two-hour session with a Pearn Kandola psychologist, who gave them feedback and coached them to create a personal development plan.
Positive feedback
While the online nature of the system was a significant part of the appeal for Hargreaves Lansdown, the biggest highlight was actually the coaching.
Sophie says: “We had some really positive feedback about how easy the system was to use and the whole process in general, but the most positive feedback was about the one-to-one sessions based on the iLEAD development report. Everybody thought they were fantastically useful.”
She adds: “Overall, we were very happy. We were really impressed by the people – Stuart, Lesley, Rob and Padraig were absolutely fantastic throughout the whole process. All of them were on the phone or email whenever we needed them, and they were so accommodating.”
When asked whether they would work with Pearn Kandola again, Sophie replied: “Absolutely! We would love to work with Pearn Kandola again.”
