So… you want to develop your leaders?

What will success look like for Bloomberg?

Jig is well placed to lead this assessment of Bloomberg’s own leadership assessment capabilities. With two degrees in psychology, his professional career started by assessing leaders for executive search firm GatenbySanderson. “It was the closest thing to where I am now,” he says. After his headhunting days, he had a fairly mixed HR career – spending almost a decade and a half working, and consulting, in reward and organisational design as well as on transformation programmes across the globe. He thinks this has helped him be a better leader. “It’s all very different to what I do now,” he says, citing the commercial and strategic skills this lattice-style career has given him, “but it helped me become a better leader and that helps me head up the leadership development arm.”

One of Jig’s key responsibilities, heading up Bloomberg’s Leadership & Talent Development team, will be adjudging if the scheme has been successful. One way will be if it can be used to effectively assess leadership capability. This is why creating central leadership characteristics that could be applicable to all of the company’s functions was crucial. It allows an individual to be benchmarked against these and to understand what they need to do to progress. “You [Bloomberg employee] should be assessed on Bloomberg’s leadership competencies – both from a future-potential perspective and a selection perspective.”

Allowing Bloomberg to assess individuals on these competencies allows the New York-headquartered firm to create pipelines of precious leadership talent – reducing attrition rates, unlocking the skills of incumbent talent, and attracting external high-potential candidates; something which even the biggest name employers are now beginning to struggle with on an employment landscape where candidates are increasingly in control. It will also allow them to move talent around, to plug gaps and assess where leadership skills are most needed. “It will allow us to get the most out of the diversity of skillsets, which can make us more effective as an organisation,” Jig says.

It’s not just about assessment though. For every individual at Bloomberg, Jig hopes the framework will “educate employees on how to be successful.” Being aware that there are multiple ways to display leadership characteristics, Jig explains that creating core leadership competencies was in order to “create a supporting framework to say, ‘this is what makes a great leader, but how you hone those skills can be quite different.’” This, Jig adds, allows individuals to “develop their own leadership skills, whether it’s becoming a subject matter expert, taking on a new skill, or just effectively leading a meeting.”

At the centre of the initiative is the online content hub, designed for team-leaders to access in order to develop the skills of their teams or for individuals to access so they can develop personal leadership skills. Described as a “content ecosystem”, it teaches individuals the skills associated with a Bloomberg leadership characteristic by pointing them to specific articles. “The hub will help to develop skillsets: how an individual will develop themselves; think about themselves; develop their skillsets; it is individualised and customised,” Jig adds.

Which all dovetails to ensuring the Bloomberg employees understand what leadership is – and can start to become a leader. “If we don’t educate our own people around what makes you a successful leader at Bloomberg, how can they know? The reality is: if you truly educate people on what makes you a successful leader, they’ve got a better chance of developing those skillsets and being prepared to take on that responsibility.”

How do you get buy-in for your leadership programme?
Jig is aware that success will also rely on how well they communicate the new framework and hub internally. “You can be the best designers of a service or a product – it can even be the best thing you’ve made in your career – but if you don’t communicate it in the right way, you’ll go bust,” he admits. “Success is about how you engage with your stakeholders and communicating things in a way that captures hearts and minds.”

To ensure that the new model sparks behavioural changes, the team have worked hard to secure Executive sponsorship as well as creating an internal marketing campaign – including cultivating a social media presence and hosting town halls, as well as sharing communication from Bloomberg's Head of HR about why leadership is important. Again, Jig is aware that top-down is not the only approach that works as employees respond well to their peers. “We’ve used some more junior people [as champions of the rollout] to talk about what has really touched them about great leadership. Sometimes just having senior leaders can invoke the response, ‘Ah, but that’s boring…’”

Lions led by lambs?
By allowing employees to take control of the learning, Bloomberg are tapping into current trends around getting employee buy-in. Furthermore, by communicating the scheme using peer voices, making the framework bespoke to Bloomberg and trying to ground desirable leadership attributes – referring to them as behaviours rather than couching them in abstract leadership jargon – Jig’s team are working hard to ensure it is applicable and accessible to every employee.

They must be doing some things right already. Michael Bloomberg, Founder and CEO, has a 98% UK-employee approval rating; if that isn’t a model for great leadership it’s hard to see what might be. The firm aren't resting on their laurels though. Jig understands that in this “volatile environment” leadership capabilities will constantly evolve as business needs do. HR must go along with this in order to help find the capabilities to succeed in a difficult environment. The benefit being this will also help the function itself. “We’ve got to be proactive,” he says. “Unless we incorporate that mindset, the HR function could continue to struggle to be at the focal point of any business strategy.”