Case Studies

Partnering with a large global bank for Leadership Development

Industry: Global Financial Services


Project: Equipping Leaders with Tools and Strategies for a Cultural Transformation

The Challenge

A prominent multinational bank, renowned for its extensive financial services, strong global presence, and dedication to community development, approached Kirke Leadership with a few challenges:


Enhancing Work Culture: Employee engagement scores indicated a need to improve the workplace culture and the perception of leadership among team members.


Leadership Development: The senior leadership team identified that their financial leaders, often promoted for their technical skills in finance, would benefit from tools and learning opportunities to enhance their emotional intelligence, leadership capabilities, and influence.


Equitable Talent Strategies: With global operations, it is crucial for this large organization to ensure that their talent strategies align with their values of equity and inclusion, enabling them to effectively manage a global workforce in a complex, dynamic, and fast-paced environment.

The Partnership Approach

The official partnership commenced in late 2019 when Kirke Leadership Inc. (KLI) engaged with the Bank’s Learning and Development leads to discuss strategy, objectives, target audience, and desired outcomes. With the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, the context drastically shifted. We swiftly adapted, transitioning to virtual meetings to plan and deliver the leadership program throughout the year. The programs were modified for virtual delivery, fostering opportunities for participants to learn and grow together despite the challenging circumstances. Throughout this journey, KLI developed robust programming for the virtual space and increased our leadership toolkit with even more engaging tools and simulations to ensure that the development programs would have a global impact and that each participant felt personally invested in the outcomes.

KLI’s Competitive Advantage

Kirke Leadership (KLI) is recognized for our expertise in leadership development along with our ability to partner with consistent warmth, professionalism, and a relentless commitment to success for our clients. We deliver exceptional quality content and leading-edge simulations, assessments, and resources for leaders to navigate through change in both the in-person context and the virtual environment.


Our process involves the following steps to ensure every learning experience is relevant to the client context:


  • Program Discovery (to understand your objectives)
  • Program Design (based on our Discovery findings)
  • Program Toolkit for each participant
  • Virtual Kick Off Session with organization sponsor and Kirke Leadership
  • Information for Leaders of Leaders to support participants
  • Program partners identified
  • Assessments + debrief
  • Workshops that align with program objectives
  • Mid-way check-in to ensure success, alignment
  • Learning partners are assigned to practice applying new concepts and provide feedback to each other
  • Certificate provided for the program

The Solution


With the input from the Learning and Development Leads at the Bank, KLI designed and successfully delivered 2 levels of leadership programming. One 6-month program for the Leader/Director level and one 6-month program for the Managing Directors/VPs.


A sample of the Leadership Program:


Leadership Program Slide 1

A sample of the Senior Leadership Development Program:


Senior Leadership Development Program Slide 2

The Outcome

Kirke Leadership’s approach ensured that Leaders at both levels were equipped with the skills necessary to lead effectively, drive innovation, and foster a positive organizational culture. KLI’s programs, tailored to the specific needs of the Bank, have resulted in significant improvements in leadership acumen, employee engagement, and overall organizational performance.

Post Session Feedback

“KLI helps us orchestrate and provide an engaging, thoughtful learning journey for our participants—while providing coaching sessions in-between workshops to further their understanding. They have implemented and presented various methodologies to help facilitate conversations and have provided and applied assessments to show participants their strengths and areas of growth and development. The feedback has been resoundingly positive from participants and business partners. Joanna’s high energy approach, along with thorough understanding of leadership and facilitation has been a great fit for us and our participants.”

- Senior Manager Learning and Development

“Joanna, you led the most fulfilling and practical leadership program I’ve participated in. Your passion, expertise, and preparation made the mid-transition to digital seamless. Thank you for the tools, principles and values you embody and share with the entire MD cohort. It emanates from your character and goes beyond business leadership - it has given me insights and inspiration in my personal life as well. Thank you!”

- VP Global Business Payments

“Joanna led a 6 month Director Leadership training program at Scotiabank where I was a member of the program. Joanna's in-depth expertise in the subject matter created a well diversified set of material including theories and use cases. Joanna coached the program with energy, patience and enthusiasm - we were with her all the time even during the challenge of pandemic. Joanna's delivery skill made the use cases live - I was going through those cases instead of being a passive observer. This program was very effective and has made a big impact on my leadership improvement.”

- Managing Director, Head Equities

Book a free consultation with Joanna at Kirke Leadership to learn how our tools and expertise can help you make an immediate impact.

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