Company type: Public • Size: 275,00 employees • Topic: Addressing blindspots
A global bank with dangerous blindspots
A large global bank concluded that continuous scandal and malpractice was the result of blindspots in their company culture. Employees had become passive and silent as a result of feeling like they had to fit in, that they had to blindly follow rules and that they needed to look good above all else.
“Building self-awareness”
In partnership with a global team, MOVE Leadership worked with this client by facilitating workshops for over 250,000 manager and customer-facing employees. The workshops, between 50 - 200 people in size, used a wide range of experiential, interactive, playful and reflective exercises. This engaged employees in understanding the connection between their thoughts, emotions, behavior and decisions.
“Shifting towards a speak-up culture”
As a result of these workshops participants became more aware of how their attitude and unconscious bias impact their ability to stand up for what they believe in and make ethical decisions. They learned tools for how to ask for feedback and make better decisions. Participants found this impactful on both a professional and personal level. One participant shared at the end of the session that, “This workshop has changed my life. I never realised how much I would shut down when I was stressed and the impact this had on me and my colleagues.” Another participant felt strongly that, “This experience has changed the way I view my organization. Absolutely every employee needs to go through this if we are to change our culture for the better.” Employees have reported feeling more confident to speak up, more openness to challenging rules and decisions that don’t make sense, and participating in a more active feedback culture.
Company type: Venture-backed startup • Size: 100 employees • Topic: Communication
A small company notices its first communication problems
A small and rapidly growing venture-backed start-up in New York needed to explore some key strategic scenarios for the upcoming year. However, a rise of communication issues among the staff and silo building between departments were preventing them from having the kinds of strategic conversations necessary.
“Uncovering the acupuncture points behind the symptoms”
As we dove into understanding the client’s culture, topics emerged like fear of failure, divisions between client and non-client facing departments and lack of trust among staff who felt they wanted to know one another more personally.
"Building a culture from the ground up”
We worked together with the entire company to surface existing patterns and behaviours around resistance to feedback, not helping out other colleagues, and fear of admitting to mistakes. Together they put to practice their learnings and immediately noticed a difference in performance and connection with one another. Having dissolved their own barriers, client-facing and non-client facing staff openly shared their knowledge with one another and gained an understanding of the complexity of their company. By the end of our session the role they each play in the larger strategy and system became clear. They committed to behaviors and structures that would keep this openness and information flowing between them. Since the workshop they have been benefiting from this active collaboration as they put together their next year's strategy.