In part two of our special report into talent management, Santander’s Caroline Curtis tells Liz Hall why the commercial bank is putting coaching at its very heart
Caroline Curtis, Santander’s head of talent and people development, believes coaching is “the most effective intervention with people”. Since joining the commercial bank four years ago (she joined Abbey, which was then acquired by Santander), she has ensured that coaching and mentoring have been at the heart of its talent management strategy, as well as its entire learning and development.
“We use coaching a lot as part of our leadership and talent development; it’s integrated into everything we do. I look after remedial coaching but coaching is viewed as positive – they all love it,” says Curtis, who works with three coaches on different things. Even board members have embraced coaching, she says.
TAPPing into talent
Over the past few years, Curtis has been busy fine-tuning and revamping the business’s talent management strategy. The processes vary for different segments of the working population. One is the Talent and Potential Pipeline Succession (TAPPS) planning process launched last year.
The aim of TAPPS, which according to Curtis has drummed up lots of interest from other financial organisations, is to facilitate focused decision-making around developing individuals and identifying talent in a way that’s fully integrated into the performance management process.
Although there are variations, unifying threads do run through the different processes. One is Santander’s model of potential and the belief in working with people’s strengths, another is the overall framework for development inspired by the book, The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company1 by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel, which examines the competencies required at all levels. Its model of potential is based on research by the Corporate Leadership Council and has three elements: ability, aspiration and commitment.
The bank’s talent management strategy seeks to map performance and potential, reviewing top-level leaders through one process while using a different process for those in critical roles.
The process
More than 300 senior leaders have gone through the Santander process. A corporate committee deals with the top strata of the organisation – some 130 or so directors. First Curtis interviews the director, looking at their strengths, career aspirations, mobility and performance, then a committee of relevant decision-makers, makes a decision about the individual’s career and mobility needs and where to place the employee on the talent grid.
Curtis goes back to individuals with feedback, often involving the relevant HR director. The individuals are frequently offered coaching and assigned a mentor, typically a board-level director.
Santander brings in mentors and coaches for a very broad spectrum of development areas. One of the key areas is to help them work on their leadership gravitas and influencing skills to help them be even more effective. Currently, more than 60 leaders are coached individually by external coaches.
Santander primarily uses external coaches although it is training 15 of its HR professionals as internal coaches on an in-house designed course accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management. Curtis herself coaches senior leaders.
Coaching is also very much on offer to the next level down – some 250 leaders. However, Santander needed a tool to help it cascade the same principles further down the pipeline – enter TAPPs.
TAPPs helps Santander forecast whether it has the key talent capability for its future needs and ensures it has a continuous pipeline of individuals in key roles by providing structured and focused development opportunities to support growth.
The focus is heavily on the individual, who is encouraged to take responsibility for their own development and to keep their line manager informed of their mobility and career interests. Santander looks at the whole employee life cycle, identifying key actions for those involved.
Although currently TAPPs applies to critical roles only, including branch managers and those with key positions in HR, risk, finance and distribution, it is likely to be expanded, says Curtis.
New curriculum
Three years ago, Santander created a new leadership and management curriculum, identifying six circuits, the first being for those new to management. Curtis says the circuit model is proving really successful. Next to be targeted are those considered talented and high potential.
Coaching and mentoring is interwoven throughout, and to avoid people leaving the building, Santander uses Virtual Learning Environment, Moodle (www.moodle.org)
“It means people don’t have to go out of the office. They can look at their learning styles and have all their course notes and development plans on there in one place.”
Through TAPPS, individuals’ performance and potential are rated using the ratings: exceptional, outstanding, successful, close to successful and improvable. These are then plotted against potential ratings on the talent grid and calibrated by the talent team, which makes recommendations to the different business areas.
“Individuals are tracked against a score card. There are very tight actions that they need to take. It means we’re very clear about our own pipeline of talent and where the gaps are,” says Curtis.
Line managers are expected to play an active role, identifying talented individuals and ensuring they have the right development plans. However, individuals must take ownership of their personal and career development, informing their manager of mobility and career interests.
To date, around 2,000 leaders in critical roles in these bands have “been TAPPed”.
Career coaching is a frequent offering, particularly at director level. Senior managers and anyone else deemed talented are offered 90-minute career planning sessions with coaches from Blue Edge Consulting. Some 22 have been through it so far.
“We find careers coaching very helpful. It’s fundamental and it’s all about getting you to think about yourself. There’s lots of Positive Psychology and we do a strengths inventory and Career Anchors2,” says Curtis.
High potential and talented leaders in Bands S4, S3 and S2 are invited to attend a half-day careers workshop. Nineteen such workshops have been run to date, for 196 participants.
“It aids engagement and the most important thing for talented people is for them to feel engaged,” says Curtis.
The aim of the workshops and coaching sessions is to help participants gain clarity on their career direction and options, know how to build their personal/leadership brand, be aware of their strengths and areas for development, and increase their skills and knowledge in career and development planning.
Participants typically report that they feel much more able to think about where they are and where they want to be.
Thanks to these different strands of work, talent is very part of the lingo, says Curtis. Everybody talks about talent and succession plans.
With one of her internal coaching clients, Curtis was able to speak to the client’s boss and change their perception of her client, persuading them to embrace the client’s creativity. This was an example of how coaching had helped the organisation not miss out on hidden talent.
Mentor training
While internal coaching is housed in HR, mentoring has been spread widely. Some 2,000 out of 3,000 senior leaders act as mentors and the organisation is currently piloting a mentor training programme through Clutterbuck Associates.
Some 12 mentors and 12 mentees are taking part in the nine-month programme. The aims are to develop a structured approach to mentoring within Santander, establish and develop a growing pool of experienced mentors to help drive business performance and link into the “development and mobility process”, encourage cross-functional mentoring and expand the mentoring culture in Santander.
“People don’t come to work to do a bad job. They come to do a good job and they need to be well supported in that, they need to know what they need to do and they want meaning. Through coaching, you can create a meaningful approach. You get meaning if people play to their strengths. We’re systemic and the system likes to work in harmony,” says Curtis.
So why do people love coaching so much? “People respond very well to one-to-ones. I love it because it gives the person an opportunity to sit down and talk to someone with no agenda and even just opening up in that way means they subconsciously change as a result,” she says.
“In a fast-moving business like ours – we’ve just taken over RBS, for example – people need it so badly. They have so little time to focus on themselves and to reflect.”
References
- R Charan, S Drotter and J Noel, The Leadership pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, Jossey-Bass, 2001
- Career Anchors: Self-Assessment, developed by MIT Professor Edgar Schein, Pfeiffer, 2006
Coaching at Work, Volume 5, Issue 6