Improving leadership of top talent through EI

Client challenge

In a business as diverse as British Gas, managers operating at a ‘leader of people’ level are each accountable for the performance of between one and 300 people. Knowing that high Emotional Intelligence (EI) is one of the determining characteristics of the greatest leaders, and having successfully identified individuals across the business with high potential, Talogy was commissioned by British Gas to promote succession into ‘leader of leader’ roles by maturing talent pool leadership capability using our expertise in Emotional Intelligence.

Solution

‘Leading through Emotional Intelligence’ comprises a three-day module delivered by Talogy, plus follow-through EI coaching provided by British Gas. Bringing together leaders from British Gas’ diverse businesses, the three-day module develops leaders’ ability to:

• foster a climate of active emotional engagement around them;
• create a culture that thrives on trust, openness and performance;
• develop effective levels of self-awareness, expression, resilience, self-regard and personal power;
• sustain high levels of energy and impact in such a fast-paced business without adverse impact on their health;
• avoid career-limiting derailing behaviour and exercise greater choice in responses to emotions, conflict and stress and interactions that trigger defensiveness in themselves and others.

British Gas is a Talogy Platform Partner: our Emotional Intelligence profile and Centrica Behaviours 360 are the diagnostics used to bring the real-world into the programme. To promote the application of learning in the follow-through period, Talogy was asked by British Gas to train members of the leadership development and talent teams to interpret, feed back and coach using the Emotional Intelligence Profile.

Result

Neil Miles, Leadership Development Manager, described the results of working with Talogy as follows: “I’m getting a real sense of a step change from task-centric to people-centric leadership. It is clear that guys on the springboard journey are talking a different language: they’re not just focusing on tasks any more; they communicate what it means to them, interpret why they feel the way they do and how that impacts their actions. The amount of ‘check-ins’ in the business is unbelievable! Our leaders are connecting with their teams on a very different level. When our leaders talk, they articulate a clear understanding of their own engagement on a day-to-day basis.

The lights are turned on: leaders are more genuinely interested in their people and I notice how much [Leading Through Emotional Intelligence] this has helped everyone from a health, well-being, relationship-building and management point of view. More leaders are now able to coach themselves through difficult personal and interpersonal territory. The result is that we and they can make some genuinely informed decisions about where their energy and future talents lie.”