Elevate Partners adds six services to help clients build teams. The new president of the unit, Christine Greybe, sits down to discuss future offerings, how clients stand to gain and new ways the business is looking to expand.
DHR International has expanded the offerings of Elevate Partners, its talent advisory business, to include six service areas focused on helping clients build strong and effective teams. The firm also appointed Christine Greybe as president of its advisory unit. She will manage the relaunch of Elevate Partners.
Elevate Partners was originally launched in 2016 to provide leadership assessment, succession planning and executive onboarding advisory services. The firm’s expanded line of offerings now includes: executive succession planning, team effectiveness, executive coaching, culture accelerator, private equity diligence and assessment. All service offerings are led by the Elevate Partners team who bring more than 40 years of collective experience in leadership development, succession planning and assessment.
“By adding these service lines Elevate Partners delivers customized solutions that improve a company and its leaders no matter the size or scope of the business,” said Geoff Hoffmann, CEO of DHR International. “As one of the top global executive search firms we’re positioned to increase our clients’ performance by helping them use data to better understand their talent and how to fill in the gaps to meet future needs.”
In Ms. Greybe’s new role, she will manage Elevate Partners and oversee the firm’s P&L. Along with Elevate Partners’ existing leadership team, including Jeff Cohn and Maryanne Wanca-Thibault, Ms. Greybe will implement the new service offerings and look to expand the business’ reach globally.
“After seeing the success of Elevate Partners’ initial offerings we wanted to meet our clients’ needs by expanding our services,” Mr. Hoffmann said. “With these new service offerings we’re able to increase the business performance of our clients by helping them understand their current talent and their organizational needs.”
Ms. Greybe joined DHR in 2004. In addition to her new role, she serves as the search firm’s president. She has spearheaded overseas growth, established and built out its Asia-Pacific and Middle East businesses, and driven the firm’s growth into Europe and Latin America. She was appointed president in 2009, and head of international just last year.
Ms. Greybe recently sat down with Hunt Scanlon Media to discuss what the firm plans to offer, how this will help clients and new ways the business plans to expand. Following are excerpts from that conversation.
Christine, why did DHR decide to expand its service offerings?
Over the past couple of years DHR invested heavily in our talent management subsidiary, Elevate Partners, to build state-of-the art tools for our executive search business. We systematically built sophisticated assessment tools, brought in top talent, partnered with academics from Columbia University, and spent hundreds of hours with clients to fully understand their specific problems and challenges. After analyzing the data, we were (pleasantly) surprised to find high demand for advisory services including coaching, succession planning, assessment and other talent management activities. In fact, these challenges are even more pronounced in mid- to small-size companies than Fortune 500 companies. This presented a perfect opportunity for Elevate Partners and reinforced the need to expand our service offering beyond search. Demand has been even greater than what we originally anticipated.
What has changed for clients?
Clients want a trusted advisor who can look holistically at their problems and think creatively about solutions that fit their unique culture. “Personal attention” and “creativity” are the top two pieces of feedback we regularly receive from our clients. Clients are also increasingly demanding expertise in a triad of competencies – search, talent management, and specific industry knowledge. Take just one piece away, and the value proposition doesn’t hold up. This is our sweet spot and long-term competitive advantage of the DHR (search) and Elevate (talent management) relationship. And finally, we are noticing that our clients want a partner-led, consultative approach to talent management needs. And that’s what we give them. Clients simply don’t want advisors handing off important projects to lower-level associates. Our clients would revolt, since their talent management challenges have a huge and immediate impact – like succession planning, helping them assess star performers and next generation leaders, and building great teams.
“We systematically built sophisticated assessment tools, brought in top talent, partnered with academics from Columbia University, and spent hundreds of hours with clients to fully understand their specific problems and challenges.”
Break down the six services that Elevate Partners now offers?
Succession planning minimizes leadership transition risks, is the No. 1 responsibility of the board and can cause enormous economic damage if left unchecked. Elevate Partners’ succession planning delivers insight that enables the board to make well-informed decisions. With business strategy as the foundation, we draw upon our expertise in executive assessment, leadership development, and executive search. Elevate Partners helps organizations understand their talent gaps, identify high-potential leaders at all levels and implement a process to ensure the right leaders are ready when they are needed.
Teams are a powerful driver for success, but high functioning teams don’t simply happen; they must be built and fostered. Elevate Partners helps companies ensure that their teams are maximizing individual and team potential. We do this by leveraging our proprietary multiple assessment approach to identify critical team competencies, assess the strengths and opportunities members bring to the table, and provide behavioral feedback and coaching that supports teams to create habits so they can perform at their best.
Based on our proven process that is specially customized, Elevate Partners executive coaching begins with identifying what an organization needs from a leader through assessment and gap analysis, setting a course to build future-ready leaders through education, stretch goals and assignments, and executive coaching͘ The Elevate Partners͛ coaching philosophy focuses leaders on honing the skills and preparing them for the experiences that propel leaders forward and minimizing the behaviors that hold them back.
“Clients are also increasingly demanding expertise in a triad of competencies – search, talent management, and specific industry knowledge. Take just one piece away, and the value proposition doesn’t hold up.”
After finding the right talent, it’s equally as important to correctly onboard new leaders into your company culture to ensure they can hit the ground running. Elevate Partners͛ approach takes what we have learned from decades of executive search one step further by providing a structured and more comprehensive onboarding guide for new leaders during their first 100 day. Our onboarding framework focuses on leadership, strategy, relationships, and work/life balance.
Elevate Partners conducts leadership due diligence for portfolio companies during the pre- and post-acquisition stages. This diligence provides firms with insight and clarity through a comprehensive profile of character and motivation, leadership, technical competence, and potential for success. Leaders have critical roles helping companies grow at a fast pace and leading positive returns for investors, and we help make sure they’re the best fit for the job.
When searching for the right leader, many executives go with their gut. Today, with data and predictive models͕ the subjective “gut feeling” now has the data and analytics to confirm, or disprove, the leadership potential of a new hire. The Elevate Partners assessment process creates a clear picture of an executive’s potential͕ readiness͕ and culture fit. Our extensive success using multiple methods to assess individuals includes the triangulating of data to produce a more objective perspective of participants, regardless of the situation or context.
How do you anticipate these services expanding in the next few years?
We will continually keep a pulse on the ever-changing demands companies have and how this will impact their talent management needs, tailoring our advisory services to support these needs. As a global organization, we will expand our services to support clients in Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Our goal for our clients: “We elevate business performance by adapting our talent management solutions to best fit your situation.” We will continue to be agile, and build on and optimize our services, tool kit and analytics to enhance our service offering.
Click here to read the article by Hunt Scanlon Media.