Aspire work with businesses and their leaders and teams across a range of sectors and industries, in the UK and globally.
The work we deliver equips teams, individuals, and leaders with the tools and skills to cope with change and deal with today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities. We have worked with businesses in retail, construction, engineering, professional services, transport, telecommunications, and healthcare, amongst other sectors.
Here we have included a few client success stories from the work we have delivered recently.
Leadership and team development for a top 100 professional services firm
Having enjoyed a period of extensive fee and client growth, the firm had begun to experience a variety of operational challenges – an increase in staff turnover, declining client satisfaction levels, and raised stress. This was further exacerbated through a series of senior level changes, including the retirement (and replacement) of a long-standing partner, and promotion of several senior managers.
What we did
Our initial priority focused on understanding the firm’s change journey – where it was going and why. This helped us to prioritise which aspects of our leadership and team development frameworks would be most relevant to the client’s needs. Individuals within the firm’s Leadership Team were observed, assessed and supported at a number of different levels, including as a Board member and within their own delivery function. Our work included:
- Observing the leadership behaviours of each member of the Leadership Team, providing feedback on how to become more effective;
- Assessing each member of the team in areas including emotional intelligence (EQ-i) and management of conflict (SDI);
- Producing a summary report, outlining the results of our preliminary work and recommendations for further leadership improvement; and
- Delivering training, intervention and 1-1 feedback sessions to all members of the Leadership Team.
The outcome
Following our initial interventions and assessment activities, a series of key benefits were noted:
- Each member of the Leadership Team had a more informed awareness and understanding of their own level of emotional intelligence, and how their behaviours were likely to impact others;
- Improved clarity on how the team responded to conflict, and why their chosen behaviours may create tension or pressure for others across the firm;
- Behavioural changes following extensive feedback at both a 1-1 and team level. These included how each member of the team challenged one another, and improvements in communication style; and
- Enhancing how key meetings are conducted, minimising unnecessary team sessions and duplication of effort.
Beyond the initial period of work highlighted above, we have continued to work alongside the Leadership Team during an extensive period of change for the firm as a whole. This has included the implementation of further tailored solutions across the firm’s teams.
Aspire quickly understood and empathised with our challenges. It was important that they had experience of working alongside an accounting firm…..they made suggestions that were tailored specifically to our needs. We were also impressed with how well they deployed their leadership and team development frameworks. This helped everyone in the firm understand the importance of strong teamwork and how our behaviours as leaders are pivotal to driving change. I would recommend the Soft Skills team and their approach.