Building enterprise leadership in medical affairs

Client need

A leading global wholesale bank needed to increase its market competitiveness by re-defining and implementing a differentiated growth strategy. This required significant leadership alignment, increased collaboration across regions, products, and functions, and faster execution. To increase competitiveness, leadership needed to rewire old mindsets, lack of clarity and siloed ways of working that were limiting their edge in the market, and build a performance culture grounded in enterprise value, feedback, and accountability.

Solution

BTS partnered with the head of the bank and the leadership team to design and deliver a structured engagement through a series of leadership off-sites, strategy definition sessions, and high-performance team experiences across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas to rapidly align, commit to, and execute the new strategy.

The work focused on:

• Co-creating the wholesale bank’s must-win battles and driving their activation and translation to the country, product, and function level.
• Resetting performance culture through a growth mindset, "brave spaces," and a sharper competitive edge.
• Creating a blueprint for high-performing teaming, with a consistent approach and language across the organization.
• Systematically removing key silos by tangibly strengthening collaboration and co-creation across the organization.

Through a series of assessments, practical tools, and focused application, leaders created joint ownership and commitment to the organization’s strategy, a culture of constructive conflict, stronger stakeholder engagement, and enterprise thinking, while defining new operating principles, ways of working, and must-win battles to accelerate execution.

Results

The partnership engaged more than 320 senior leaders globally and helped align teams around shared priorities, new ways of working, and enterprise-wide collaboration.

Key outcomes included:

• Joint ownership of defined regional strategies and cross-functional workstreams across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas.
• Year-on-year improvement in the EMEA Leadership Team's High-Performing Team Assessment (HPTA) scores across every facet .
• Increased alignment between country, product, and functional leaders .
• Leadership team meetings were redesigned for greater focus on collaboration, co-creation, and feedback; "corridors of cooperation" were established to share best practice across WB regions .
• A shift from "safe spaces" to "brave spaces" that encouraged constructive challenge and accountability, driving breakthrough client solutions and competitive wins

Testimonial

"This group has never come together in one room to align on an EMEA set of priorities, tradeoffs, or commitments."

‍

Client need

A global fintech organization was navigating rapid growth amid increasing business and talent market volatility. As the company scaled, senior leadership recognized the need to strengthen leadership effectiveness and cultural alignment at the top of the organization.

The goals were to:

• Accelerate the effectiveness of critical C‑1/C‑2 leaders.
• Rebuild confidence and alignment around the company’s values.
• Gain deeper, actionable insights into the culture and leadership realities.
• Inform future senior‑talent decisions (selection, fit, succession).

The organization partnered with BTS to design a scalable approach that would both develop senior leaders in role while simultaneously generating insight to shape the future of the enterprise culture.

Solution

The result was a multi-year, integrated leadership partnership combining executive advisory and cohort-based simulations.

Together, BTS and the organization built a multi-year leadership partnership designed to accelerate senior leader performance while generating enterprise-wide insight.

The solution combined two core components:

• Executive advisory - targeted 1:1 engagements to shift behavior in real time
• Leadership simulations - cohort-based experiences to align leaders around operating principles and surface patterns at scale

By strengthening leaders in role while creating visibility into cross-organizational themes, the partnership supported both immediate performance and longer-term talent strategy.

Executive advisory

The work began with a six-month engagement for the top 7–8 senior leaders and expanded globally toC1/C2 roles critical to future success.

Each engagement:

• Followed a structured BTS advisory protocol
• Anchored development in the company’s values
• Focused on live enterprise challenges, stakeholder alignment, and decision-making

Because the work was grounded in real business priorities, impact was immediate. Themes across engagements provided leadership and HR with clear insight into strengths and friction points across the senior population.

Leadership simulations

Annual simulations reinforced enterprise priorities at scale.

These immersive experiences:

• Translated leadership expectations into applied decision-making
• Built a shared language across regions and functions
• Generated cultural and behavioral insight

Findings from both workstreams informed decisions related to selection, succession, and senior talent planning.

Results

During a period of growth and market pressure, the partnership strengthened critical leaders and clarified the future of the leadership bench.

Leader impact

Senior executives demonstrated stronger enterprise decision-making, clearer stakeholder alignment, and greater confidence navigating complexity. Leaders described the experience as one of the most valuable investments of their careers.

100% of participating leaders:

• Would recommend working with BTS
• Left with a clear development plan
• Valued their advisor as a thought partner on  live business challenges

Cultural insight and talent strategy

As the work progressed, patterns emerged across leaders, revealing cultural strengths and previously unnamed friction points. HR and executive stakeholders gained across-organizational view of how leadership behaviors were shaping performance.

Expanding the work together

What began with a small senior cohort grew into

• Ongoing annual simulations
• Expanded advisory across global C1/C2 roles
• A pilot to scale coaching capacity and flexibility

Today, the work is embedded in how the organization strengthens and advances its senior leaders, a core component of its leadership strategy.

Testimonials

“My coach was instrumental in helping me to align with my manager on where and how to create more focus in my role. They held me accountable for results and follow-through. They helped me think through how to work the system with all of its’ big personalities and ever-changing dynamics.”

“My coach helped me to learn and claim my superpowers and stay focused on spending my time and energy in that space and to let others do that same thing.”

‍

Client challenge

Wellstar Health System, one of Georgia’s largest healthcare systems, had already invested heavily in leadership development for senior leaders. But as the organization navigated rapid growth, a major acquisition, and the demands of a shifting healthcare landscape, it became clear that the greatest leadership challenges were happening at the front and midline.

“Some of the greatest leader challenges are really at the front and midline levels… we’ve invested heavily in leadership development, putting more emphasis on our front line and mid-level leadership in terms of outcomes, said Laura Dannels, Chief Talent Officer at the time.

We’re not an organization who believes in just investing in high performers… you’ve got to invest in your entire workforce.”

Wellstar partnered with Sounding Board to bring a more scalable, flexible coaching solution to leaders across the organization.

The solution

Partnering with Sounding Board, Wellstar designed a scalable, personalized coaching program to extend leadership development across the organization while maintaining the quality of one-on-one coaching.

A proprietary 360 assessment, aligned to Wellstar’s leadership behaviors, served as the foundation for each coaching engagement. This ensured development was directly tied to how leaders show up and lead in practice.

“We really wanted to ground the coaching to a framework that matters to our organization,” said Garry Gross, Executive Director of Leadership Development. ‍

“Helping our leaders create an environment where our mission, vision, and values come to life was paramount.”

Program goals:

• Develop leadership capabilities aligned to Wellstar’s mission, vision, and values
• Deliver personalized, relevant development for leaders at all levels
• Strengthen the leadership bench and support succession planning
• Foster a culture of innovation, learning, and engagement

Program overview:

• Personalized, one-on-one coaching for leaders at all levels
• Capability development aligned to Wellstar’s values
  • Serve with Compassion → Builds relationships
  • Pursue Excellence → Drives results, leads teams, and plans strategically
  • Honor Every Voice → Fosters inclusion and respect for differences
• Scalable delivery across frontline, mid-level, and clinical leaders
• Digital tools to track goals, capture insights, and measure progress

This approach made it possible to deliver consistent, high-quality coaching across roles and locations while keeping development relevant to each leader’s day-to-day work.

Results

As the program unfolded, Wellstar began to see a shift in how frontline and mid-level leaders showed up across the organization. Leaders in these critical roles had more consistent support navigating day-to-day challenges, and managers gained better visibility into how their teams were developing. Coaching became a more practical, embedded part of how Wellstar supports leaders in a complex healthcare environment.

Higher engagement and satisfaction

• 96% of participants said the coaching experience was worth the investment
• 99% said they could immediately apply what they learned to their day-to-day work

Measurable leadership growth

Participants reported double-digit growth across leadership capabilities including:

• Executive presence (+16%)
• Organizational collaboration (+14%)
• Strategic thinking (+13%)
• Time management and prioritization (+13%)
• Communication (+11%)

Stronger retention and mobility

• Coached leaders achieved a 90% one-year retention rate
• Retention for coached leaders was 31% higher than non-coached peers
• 3% of participants were promoted into new roles, exceeding organizational goals and industry benchmarks

Learn more about Wellstar’s leadership coaching journey with Sounding Board in this feature in Becker’s Hospital Review.