How EBRD’s Journey with Digital Coaching helped empower their leadership

The challenge

The EBRD is an international financial institution founded in 1991. The multilateral developmental investment bank uses investment as a tool to build market economies. Urgency and the ability to respond to momentous events swiftly and decisively, whether it be the end of the Soviet Union, financial crises, the ‘Arab Uprising’ or the coronavirus pandemic have been among the EBRD’s hallmarks from the start.

Before 2020, the bank had been quite skeptical of digital learning. The global pandemic brought a massive shift to that, with people having to learn overnight to nearly exclusively rely on digital means of working. Through this boost, EBRD was able to push their digital strategy forward and since classroom trainings were unable to take place, digital coaching was the best alternative to provide knowledge and learning to employees.

The challenge EBRD set for themselves within their digital learning programme was finding a way to promote sustainable leadership. They wanted sustainability in leading the bank population as well as the capability to perform in any environment. Wellbeing was another focus area. The organisation wanted to meet people where they were and get a good understanding of what their staff was dealing with. It was important to make sure leaders connect with the employees making sure they have provisions from the bank and can continue working well from home when they have all kinds of pressure going on.

The coaching programme

EBRD started the learning programme with a definite mission: to have 50% of the names on EBRD’s succession plan be women. The target group consisted of high potential and high performing women, who were expected to progress through the organisation.

EBRD is currently partnering with CoachHub across two populations. One programme targets the future female high potentials in their corporate leadership group. This project is part of the Minerva programme, which was launched in the beginning of 2021 and runs similar to an academic year. Within this programme, the participants get together virtually for two hours every two weeks. Focus points in the trainings are interview skills, self-confidence and personal interactions.

The programme concentrated on areas where the organization felt women
were not as proactive as their male colleagues. The goal was to build up the confidence of their female talent and empower them to use their strengths and skills in places where they will have the most impact.

CoachHub manages to focus on those personal areas of improvement by offering support to the participants when they need it most. The female leaders were able to work on areas they are still having difficulties with and tune in to their individual needs.

The result

One of their female vice presidents had a virtual fireside chat with the coachees and there was some palpable shock when she gave out some fairly hard-hitting messages. The coachee revealted that it was not going great as they were working very hard and feeling like little was being accomplished. They also revealed that there was a question as to what was going to be the key to their success and advancement in the organisation. Coaching showed that there was clear value in each session. One of them being able to allow the coachees to speak up for themselves, name the contributions they’ve made and strive and stake a claim for the opportunities that they want to have.

For some women the coaching was really a mind-set shift. One of the participants applied for a new position just before christmas and was successful and has now been promoted into that new role and she credited her success to some degree to what she’s learned on the programme because she said otherwise she would not have spoken out in her interview about the things she’d done and contributed to.

EBRD credited CoachHub as a very easy set-up and easy partner to work with. What is offered is a good product and excellent levels of support as well as experience with many companies. They especially appreciated the opportunity to talk with one of the existing clients before starting the program and felt that they had the same positive experience as the one that convinced them to sign up.