Broadridge Financial

Supporting the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 High Potential programmes.

A bespoke 2.5 day programme of team-based personal development for the global HIPO Group comprising individuals from the Europe, the US, the Middle East, Far East and Australia.

Event detail

• Location: Wokefield Park – The Mansion House, Reading
• Style: Team-based personal development, incorporating experiential activities, facilitated input and discussion-based sessions, personal reflection and action planning
• Group Size: 15, plus senior manager involvement over the duration of the programme
• Duration: 2.5 days

Objectives

The programme was designed and developed through a period of in-depth client consultation led by Maximillion Lead Facilitator Mike Tierney over the last quarter of 2012.

Mike and L&D Consultant Sandy established with the CEO and HR Director a shared understanding of expectations and a set of defined outcomes for the team building element of the overall 2012-2013 HIPO programme. Through an iterative and highly responsive approach we created a stimulating and participative programme of team-based personal development. The programme was aligned with the scope of the wider HIPO programme, as well as with three live business topics that the group, working in three separate’ Network teams’, was focusing on.
The content and flow of the programme provided an ideal platform that linked back to the workplace in the following ways:
• providing participants with opportunities to reflect on their development in relation to organisation’s competencies, and the outputs of a personality profiling tool, through individual and team learning logs specially designed for the programme
• engaging participants to work on some of the programme’s team challenges in their respective Network teams, each one focused on one of the following topics; Communication, Innovation & Change and Brand.

The event comprised of three activities that were created by Maximillion.

Facing New Challenges

Circus Skills. Each participant started the programme by learning 4 new skills through accelerated learning techniques; Juggling, Plate Spinning, Flower Stick and Diablo and a Blindfold Scimitar Throwing finale. This provided a tangible experience to stimulate self-reflection, resulting in individual development goals being set and refined and aligned to each participant’s personal development plan.

Checkpoint Challenge

An orienteering style outdoor challenge, specially designed around the grounds of Wokefield Park, that combined team-based problem solving activities, photo, scavenge and information hunt – all in a foot of snow! The afternoon activity offered a blend of physical and mental challenges that tested team working and stimulated reflection on team performance and interpersonal relationships. Individuals and teams were able to develop the discipline of reflection on process as well as content issues, as well as practice the implementation of improvement plans.

The Apprentice

On the last day, the three Network teams were tasked to use their creativity to design and plan an innovative solution against a stretching brief. Specifically, the challenge was for the teams to think which new markets the organisation could enter, using existing products, technologies and their own team members’ talents. They were required to follow a structured planning & development process which culminated in the creation of a promotional video production for potential investors. This was presented at the end of the day to The Boss – Sir Colin Sucrose – and his trusted advisers (as played by the CEO and HR Director!). The project required planning, cooperation and strategic execution under time pressure and the observation of senior colleagues, as well as an acute appreciation of each of the three topics of Communication, Innovation & Change and Brand. It also provided a context for the group to identify preferred team roles of individual contributors and the assessment of the effectiveness of their contribution.

Feedback

The value to the business of well-targeted and designed team development interventions was well demonstrated, and the success of the programme was very much echoed by the feedback kindly provided by the UK CEO:

“Many thanks for the last 2.5 days. It was superbly organised and met our brief extremely well”.

Maximillion was also retained to support the client’s 2013-2014 HIPO Programme, with the team-based personal development component delivered in June 2014 at Wotton House in Surrey.