How a Fortune 100 Technology Company Built Executive Presence for the AI Era

Client

A Fortune 100 technology company (hereafter, the Company) with a global executive population spanning the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The global leader executive development supports VP, SVP, and Executive Leadership Team level leaders across functions including engineering, sales, and HR.

Client Challenge

The company’s executive coaching program started from the inside with internal employees who were passionate about coaching. They volunteered their time while continuing to fulfil their regular roles.

As the coaching program grew, this approach became less sustainable. Internal coaches had conflicts with their day-to-day responsibilities and the program couldn’t scale to cover the number of executives. The company needed many experienced coaches with availability to deliver anywhere in the world and who the level of expertise its executives needed.

“When we started really scaling the program to all of the leader population, it became a real challenge to make sure that one, we were able to have coaches available in the Americas, in Europe and also in Asia Pacific. And then, we had to think about the level of expertise that the coaches had, which was a challenge as well. And last – factor in availability.”

At the same time, the company was consolidating several separate engineering teams under one organization to increase agility and break down long-standing silos. And across the entire leadership population, a larger shift was underway: preparing executives to lead through the transition to AI, not three to five years from now, but quarter to quarter.

Why Ariel

The company ran an extensive vetting process before selecting Ariel. Two things stood out. First, Ariel’s extensive coaching roster had the scale and geographic reach to match the program’s needs. Second, the coaches themselves had real-world leadership experience, not just academic credentials – an especially important distinction for executives at a Fortune 100 technology company.

“When we’re talking about supporting executives at a Fortune 100 technology company, especially the engineering functions, work experience is at minimum the equivalent of what they’re looking for from an academic perspective. And if there isn’t any work experience in that population, it’s really going to be a hard sell for our execs to buy into the [coaching] process.”

The relationship that followed confirmed their choice of executive coaching partner. As the company navigated changing priorities, Ariel proved to be a partner that moved with them.

Ariel Solution

Ariel provides executive coaching to the company’s VP, SVP, and ELT population across multiple functions and regions. Coaches focused on the capabilities that define leadership at this level: how to communicate with clarity, how to show up with presence, and how to move teams and external stakeholders toward a shared direction.

Especially in the era of AI, “there is constant and rapid change. We understand that [leaders] have questions, right? But, as a leadership team, we still need [leaders] to quickly get on board so that we can make sure that we’re positioned to be the AI infrastructure of tomorrow. And that’s the benefit that we’ve gotten from this partnership with Ariel.”

Outcome

A specific example of Ariel’s impact at the company was: for the engineering organization, coaching supported leaders through the consolidation of several teams into one product organization.

The consolidated engineering organization began breaking down silos that slowed the business. The primary reason for the shift was “to be able to move quickly … and to adapt quickly as well.”

The contact notes, “the impact that we’ve gotten from partnering with Ariel is that the executive coaches that have been supporting not only the engineering execs, but also the sales, the HR, and some of the other organizations has put us in a position to move quickly, to be adaptable and also to figure out how we can get the individual contributors, the middle managers, and the directors on board to get us all going in the right direction of where we want to position ourselves in this AI era.”

The partnership is now approaching 18 months and continues to evolve alongside the business.