Susana Sagi-Vela - Talent, Learning & Development Director

Leadership is strategic within the Bank. Leaders are a super critical group within Bankinter, and for us it is essential that they are prepared and trained for any challenge that comes their way. They must be at the forefront of trends and of what is coming in terms of leadership.

For us, it is a sign of Bankinter's identity that leaders work on their self-knowledge so that they can be the kind of leaders they want to be. At Bankinter we have this leadership DNA. When people think of a Bankinter leader, they should see a person who is a point of reference, who sets an example and provides service. An example of the purpose, culture and values of Bankinter and capable of transmitting them, of living them with passion, so that he or she can pass them on to the people in his or her team. And of service to our team. Because for us leaders are responsible for making these teams grow, for generating future leaders. This implies bravery, generosity and courage.

In addition, we want them to be people who are open to change, to relationships, to diversity. Mistakes in themselves are a source of learning. Innovation and non-conformity are also a source of learning. With all this, let us become leaders of Bankinter and benchmarks of vision.

In 2021, we sat down with about 1,300 people who were responsible for other people and we worked on designing that Leadership from the new leader to the management committee. We wanted to understand what different moments there were in a leader's career, what different needs, what different challenges, what different issues, and thanks to these conversations, we were able to segment into four major moments. And one of them is where we wanted to place our coaching skills program. And this is where we called you.

We wanted to bring the philosophy, values and coaching tools, to the day-to-day life of the leader. We wanted them to incorporate behaviors and use new tools.

And, above all, to accompany teams in their development, to help them grow, how to do appropriate questions, open questions, questions that we call powerful questions to generate in the person of my team not only a new perspective, but action, to move them to action. And that is what we wanted them to incorporate in the Coaching Program.

Becoming certified was a before and after for me. A personal and professional transformational moment. It felt like a gift to be able to tell them that they were going to do a coaching skills program.

Since 2022, 120 out of a collective of 300 have passed. We took great care in communication and it was each member of the management committee who communicated this to the people in their area, highlighting why they had been chosen and conveying the value of the program. This is also very easy because the program has all the quality you can imagine. This generated an extraordinary word of mouth and people were eager to be called to the coaching skills program.

This program, if we focus only on the quantitative indicator, has a 78.2 (out of 100) cumulative NPS. It is pure excellence. But beyond the numbers, the feedback we have been receiving from the beginning has been excellent. It's because of the experiential, transformational nature of the program.

One thing that was particularly important for us from the feedback was that they told us that everything from day one to the last day was new. This is a real treat. It's an approach to the program that they had not seen or experienced before. They live it... it has been super practical from the very beginning. The program has all the quality you can imagine and then that causes a word of mouth that people are looking forward to the Coaching Skills Program. They're looking forward to it.

In addition, many of these people have had a process of internal coaching and mentoring. We were looking for internal mentors and we found people with a management profile, who did not have this knowledge and who, to the best of their knowledge and understanding and with the utmost affection, acted as mentors.

Now we have a pool of 120 people within the bank, very well trained in coaching, with knowledge, skills and tools that other people do not have. When we called for people who wanted to be mentors in the group mentoring process, a lot of people raised their hands. And the evaluations of the mentoring processes of this program have been very, very high. They know that now they have a responsibility to share it and leave that legacy. So it's having an impact that goes beyond what we might have imagined at the beginning.

One of the lessons we have learnt is that we can exploit this network much more, that we want to generate a coaching culture, a style of Leadership that is more focused on coaching upwards, and that it will have a greater impact downwards. That it also has an impact upwards.

We still have to go further up, not only the layer of the management committee but also the intermediate layer, which is another 80 people. What we want is to reach the 350 that I mentioned before.

When I think of coaching, the reference for me is the Escuela Europea. We wanted a boutique approach, like you, who have had all the expertise in coaching for 20 years. And for me, talking about the Escuela Europea de Coaching in coaching is like talking about Real Madrid or Barça in basketball.

The content of the program is very tested, the content is very well reviewed, you have a very stable and diverse pool of facilitators, of very high quality. And this is also reflected in the evaluations. We also zoom in on each of the facilitators, the evaluations are very good. The academic direction is extraordinary. You build the programs very well, you are at the forefront, you incorporate the latest developments in the market. And then the accompaniment is also very good. All of this comes together in a cocktail shaker and makes us want you to be the chosen ones, because of the references we had, because we knew you were of the highest quality.

I am a firm believer in the need to train business leaders in coaching, which will also have an impact on other aspects of their lives. To generate that leader-coach culture, in addition to having other skills, seems to me to be a completely differential value. I would tell them to identify what their priority is and if it is to prioritize quality, they should go to the expert and the best option.

I would recommend that they adapt the program to their reality, that when they choose a partner it should be with facilitators who have been around for a long time, with flight hours, as you say in coaching, who already have stability, experience in the world of coaching and in the world of business, because they are training leaders. That they are put in the hands of the best and you've been at it for 20 years..