Oakwood City Newsletter

Read our update on the current training and management development needs of global firms in financial services.  See how we worked recently with 3 major firms and how their businesses benefited.

Oakwood City is Currently Working with Many
Forward Thinking City Firms

Our team continues to work with forward-thinking global firms in the financial services sector to prepare their people for the future.  We know the City and we know the needs of city firms in the current business environment.

We specialise in "soft skills" training, management development, coaching and OD, for Banking, Finance and Professional Institutions worldwide. Our people - Associates, Consultants and Directors - have all held senior positions in the industry.

Clients include ANZ Bank, ABC International, Barclays Capital, Barclays Wealth, Cazenove, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Development Bank of Singapore, HSBC, ING, Liberty International Underwriters, MAN International, NAB, Numis Securities, Renaissance Capital, Standard & Poor's, Standard Bank

Investing in Leadership - Today's Development Agenda

In City firms, without doubt, the first casualty of a recession can be investment in people development.  Headcount and training budgets are cut and lay-offs for major city institutions in the UK this year have averaged close to 20%.

Recovery can be helped by thoughtful human resource management. By ensuring that those still with the organization feel trusted and their contribution recognized and valued, they are more likely to excel in their roles.

This is  why Oakwood City are now receiving increasing numbers of requests for executive coaching and tailored training on people management issues.  The best guarantee for getting people, and business, back on track, however, is enlightened leadership.  Proactive leadership is the way to a competitive future.  Building that leadership capability is today's agenda.

See more details of our services here.

"Soft Skills" - Hard Outcomes

At Oakwood City we take a professional, business-oriented approach to behavioural and management skills development.  Our starting point is always "What's the business need?"

Take the fixed income team from a fund management company we recently worked with.  Their business was pitching to local authorities to manage their investments.  They were good (a 40% success rate from their last ten pitches) but they wanted to get better.

So we met them once a fortnight, for two months, working on all aspects of their verbal and non-verbal communication.  We rehearsed how to meet and greet... how to pitch... how to sit (and where to look) when not pitching... how to close.  We rehearsed specific pitches - even down to researching the individuals to whom they'd be pitching.

We did not change their products or services.  We changed the way they engaged.

RESULT From the next ten pitches (following our work together), they achieved eight mandates.  That is a 40% improvement.

Meeting Your Needs: An Influencing Strategies Course for Managers

Oakwood City was asked to come in and revitalize the one-day "INFLUENCING STRATEGIES AND MAPPING Course part of a five day Management Development Programme for Middle Managers.  We offered a redesign that met the following criteria:

  • The strategies and mapping day would link directly to the rest of the management development programme. 
  • We would provide  information that busy participants could acquire in advance of the course.  - with a comprehensive workbook and pre-event reading and self-assessment inventories.
  • The learning on the day should flow back into subsequent programme modules. - The workbook was used to log experiences, reactions and future actions.
  • The day should be run in English and in French since programmes were run in Switzerland and the UK.  No problem for Oakwood City as we have a network of international associates.

The pilot course was a qualified success.  The influencing framework was robust, the practical exercises worked well but it was agreed that the mapping would be more useful in future as a post-course exercise.

RESULT - The one-day course and the workbook now work together perfectly as part of a more effective management development experience.

Meeting Your Needs: A Course on "Productive Relationships"

Oakwood City already has a long-established relationship with this client, providing management training programmes and executive coaching support.

The brief was to take over delivery of an existing one-day course on "Dealing with Difficult Relationships at work"

Our first suggestion was to re-brand the day as we felt that "Dealing with Difficult Relationships" had a negative resonance. We re-branded the day "Productive Relationships" and proposed that it would help participants to acquire ways of analyzing, and successfully changing for the better, key working relationships.

The analytical tool we chose was Transactional Analysis.  This is a tool that, with a few brief exercises, participants could use confidently and easily.  If they were to go on and change relationships they had to also learn effective interpersonal behaviours.  We did this through the use of role play in a range of authentic case-study scenarios.

To create the case studies would take extensive research and development.  So design costs would escalate. To reduce the costs, we suggested that the client should do the research and we designed questionnaires and interview questions for L&D staff to use with a sample of people in the target population.  They did the leg-work and the data was passed to us.  It was so detailed that we were able to prepare several robust case-studies of real dysfunctional working relationships.

The pilot course, run earlier this summer, worked well.  It gave us useful feedback on content and pacing - and proved the value of the case studies.  The first proper course will run in November.

RESULT - The course had a number of benefits.  The L & D team feels that in the process of conducting their interviews, they got to know people in the business much better.  They also learned a great deal about the business itself.  And isn't that exactly what you want from the people providing your training?

We Do Not Run Open Courses

We provide a comprehensive range of development solutions to clients in banking and financial services: from behavioral skills training, at every level, through management and leadership development to executive coaching and organizational change consulting.

We tailor our learning and development work for clients to make a perfect fit.  A perfect fit between business needs, culture, objectives, people and the reality of their work.  We do not therefore run open courses

Who Needs a Coach?

In banking and finance, we demand and expect the best from our elite performers.  Big hitters in the sector - senior people who make key decisions in a volatile environment - are no different from the sporting elite.

A great coach will provide an elite performer with the support they need to reflect on experience and plan for success. 

Oakwood City has a track record of providing excellent coaching to successful City players.  Recent and current assignments include:

  • Supporting a Director to achieve a promotion to MD, having failed to make it twice before
  • Helping a senior manager newly appointed to a rating agency to make an effective transition, having spent twelve years with a competitor
  • Helping a (female) Head of HR become more influential with her (all male) board members
  • Supporting a client make the transition from European Head of Trade Finance to Global Head
  • Working with a COO through a big merger

Maybe you need a coach or you know somebody who does?  Get in touch with us to learn more.

You Can Now Brief Us Online

Whether you are helping your staff to deal with people or work pressures or nurturing the leaders of tomorrow you can now tell us the challenges you face, your goals and your ideal timescales.  Go to Online Brief

We'll get back to you within 48 hours.