Mettle's Task

Swiss Re is a leading and highly diversified global reinsurer. Our task was to provide Swiss Re’s Life & Health management team in Australia with an unforgettable, innovative and exciting experience that would acknowledge, recognise and reward their stellar achievements, yet at the same time sharpen their already impressive leadership skills for the tougher targets ahead.

Key Challenges

• Maintaining and momentum of a team that was performing well and had exceeded its goals
• Motivating and electrifying the team to find their edge, to try something they thought impossible
• Boosting already effective leadership and coaching skills to generate even greater levels of staff engagement
• Defining and agreeing on the team’s future possibilities

The Program

The program Mettle devised was made up of six one-day experiences, each facilitated by Mettle, spread over 18 months. Every experience was designed to be both a reward to be enjoyed by the team and something new, tough, exciting, challenging, yet achievable. Each day was very different and addressed another of the team’s keys to achieving the tough targets ahead. The team members were supported in the program by one-on-one executive coaching.

• Leadership – the program opened at the Olympic Stadium and here icons of Australian sport immersed the team in some of their defining moments in Australian sports history and shared their secrets to leadership. What followed was a robust discussion on effective and ineffective leadership identity, strategy, tactics and behaviour. The team received and analysed their 360 degree Mettle Leadership Gauge results and they emerged from this experience with their own individual leadership action plan.
• Vision – with the unique skills of a graphic facilitator, the team set out to create a new vision, based on their values, of what it would take to raise their efforts ‘one more notch’. This extraordinarily powerful and emotional experience resulted in a truly shared vision that was the essence of what this team was about
• Teamwork – coached by three greats of Australian rowing, the team learnt to row and experienced what it takes to achieve synchronicity on the water. They experienced all the stages of gaining new skills and mindsets, including the discomfort of being unskilled and on show – preparing them well for effectively handling the challenges ahead. This experience set the context for receiving the results of their Team Effectiveness Survey and meant the team was eager to incorporate the results into their behaviour.
• Values – in the stunning setting of the Sydney Yacht Club the team made new distinctions on the meaning of values-based leadership and discovered the synergy when leadership, culture and strategy all work together.
• Coach – still at the Sydney Yacht Club, the team discovered how to be even better coaches in order to generate the levels of staff engagement required by the tough targets ahead.
• Inspire – engaging the additional skills of the Griffin Theatre Company each team member learned how to be true to themselves in their expression. They then used this new skill to inspire others with their own interpretation of the shared vision.
• Accountability – in a facilitated workshop the team discovered that for achievement to flourish leaders must create an environment based on the principles of accountability. Armed with these principles the team members completed their DiSC profiles and related their behaviour style and ability to engage others with their ability to create an accountable environment.

Outcomes

• High trust, high speed, low cost characterise the behaviour and extraordinary results of this management team
• A strong and sustainable team; the strength of the graduates’ bond, supporting each other to stay, has meant 100 percent retention in the four years since the program
• A communications package conveying he message to all HR people; supported by detailed guidelines articulating the business case, rationale and rigor behind the new HR framwork
• Time has not diminished the power of the program’s experiences
• Just over two years on, and now part of a team of twelve, the leadership style of the six program graduates has shaped the culture of the larger management team