Top Team Development Program with Igor Kolomeysky

Igor Kolomeysky is a former Senior Vice President of Sber, Russia's largest bank, who led large teams for more than twenty years. Today he works with CEOs and leadership teams, mostly of large and mid-sized companies. Each of his projects starts with a long conversation with the leader and ends with a session with the team — usually called a strategy session, although strategy is not always what it is about. A CEO cannot always name precisely what is in the way, and the problem named is not always the main one, so first Igor and the leader look together for the real issue: what the leader wants to walk away with from the session. Once the leader answers this honestly, the team engages right away.

A team commits only to goals it has set for itself — Igor builds all his work on this. A consultant, in his estimate, contributes a tenth of the result and the team does the rest, so Igor brings no ready-made answers to a session; instead he moves participants from habitual rational thinking to creative thinking through group work, brainstorming, games and role-play. In a safe and trusting setting, depending on the issue at hand, participants reach agreements, see their weak spots or connect with each other.

Igor is convinced that hard times should give rise to a demand for meaning, and he sees the leader's dream as the answer to it: he places it above mission and strategy because a dream gives the energy for a breakthrough. Each of the team's key people has a dream of their own; the dreams differ, but where they touch, the team moves in one direction for a while. A company can do without a dream if its task is to do its job well — such a company can be efficient and profitable. Creating something new without one, Igor believes, is unlikely.

The program also includes my lectures — on setting a goal beyond the task and seeing it through together with the team.