Egon Zehnder Partners with Leadership Development Firm Mobius

Talent advisory and leadership development experts join forces to accelerate individual and organizational transformation. Egon Zehnder’s Elaine Yew discusses the partnership and how it will benefit clients.

September 20, 2018 – Now more than ever, the world needs great leaders. But for leaders to best transform their organizations, they must first embrace their own transformation and continually work on self-improvement.

In response, global search firm Egon Zehnder has formed a partnership with leadership development firm Mobius Executive Leadership. The alliance combines the firms’ proprietary methods for accelerating the personal and professional development of senior executives and for stimulating an organization’s ability to transform. It is a hot new area for executive recruiters and leadership providers.

“Readiness to lead at the top levels in business and society today requires leaders develop a willingness to understand who they are and who they can become so that they can unlock their full potential – and help their organizations unleash their potential as well,” said Jill Ader, Egon Zehnder’s chair-elect and co-developer of the Executive Breakthrough Program. “Together with Mobius, we have found success in doing that.”

Already collaborating for more than four years, the two firms’ new partnership formally combines Egon Zehnder’s leadership advisory experience to the world’s most influential leaders and Mobius’s expertise in developing those worldwide influencers through individual and collective transformation. The partnership will focus on three co-created capstone executive development programs: the Executive Breakthrough Program, the Executive Discovery Program and the Voyager Leadership Development Program.

The Executive Breakthrough Program and Executive Discovery programs – both bespoke, highly experiential and invitation-only leadership development journeys – are designed for current CEOs, CEO successors, C-suite leaders and those preparing to assume top executive positions. The Voyager Leadership Development program is an in-house executive development program for individuals, teams and functional groups, adapted to be relevant to the business agenda of each client organization.

“Through this partnership, we are pioneering an entirely fresh and bold set of leadership offerings,” said Amy Elizabeth Fox, CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership. “Our combined expertise and shared vision put us at the frontier of senior leadership development. We’re confident that these innovative interventions will meaningfully impact our executive participants and the organizations they lead.”


Egon Zehnder Elects Chairwoman in a First for Recruiting Sector
Egon Zehnder elected Jill Ader as its new chair. She becomes the first female chair within the global top five executive search and leadership advisory firms. Based in London, Ms. Ader is a senior partner and director of the Egon Zehnder’s board. 


All three programs share the foundation of Mobius’ president and chief thought leader Erica Ariel Fox’s New York Times best-selling leadership book, ‘Winning From Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living and Lasting Change,’ which synthesizes her 20 years of research at Harvard Law School and serving as a leadership advisor to senior executives worldwide, and Egon Zehnder’s proprietary Potential Model, a framework that identifies key drivers of potential and helps leverage them to unleash new levels of performance in current and future roles.

“The principle of ‘Winning from Within’ as a central driver of business transformation is an idea whose time has come,” said Ms. Ariel Fox. “In this turbulent world, senior executives are increasingly aware that leading society, leading your industry or leading your company, rests on the foundation of leading yourself.”

Related: Leadership Development, Key for Growth, Seen As Stagnating

Egon Zehnder says that the partnership and the development programs reinforce the firm’s belief that a new style of leadership is warranted today – one that catalyzes individual growth from within in order to succeed in transforming one’s organization. 

Leadership Offerings

The Executive Breakthrough Program helps executives discover their authentic leadership style while broadening the behaviors and mindsets to better engage and influence those you lead. During the program’s phases, clients identify what is holding them back, and how to strengthen those unique qualities that make individuals most effective in the CEO role or another executive position.

The Executive Discovery Program is a nine-month, bespoke and invitation-only program that takes an executive on a transformative experience to explore and deepen their self-awareness, understand their motivations and address the question: “Who am I and who do I want to become?”

Related: HR Leaders Overlooked for Leadership Development Opportunities

“The programs systematically identify limiting attitudes and behaviors and leverage rare or unique qualities to unleash the full potential of those in top leadership roles,” Egon Zehnder said. “By supporting a greater sense of purpose, the programs also help these leaders nurture the growth of their teams and, ultimately, the ability of an organization to transform.”

An Inside Look

Elaine Yew is a partner and member of Egon Zehnder’s global executive committee. Based in Singapore, she is an advisor to private and public companies on succession planning for CEO and other C-level positions. Ms. Yew also advises clients on team effectiveness, organizational culture, senior executive development, non-executive director search, and board effectiveness. She has particular expertise in working with companies that require leadership change while going through high growth or transformation.

Ms. Yew recently sat down with Hunt Scanlon Media to discuss the partnership with Mobius and how it will benefit clients. Here are some excerpts from that interview.

Elaine, what led to the alliance with Mobius and why did Egon Zehnder feel it was important to further extend its leadership development services this way?

This strategic partnership was formed on the shared belief that today’s leaders must prioritize personal transformation to accelerate their business’s transformation. To support this, a recent Egon Zehnder study of more than 400 global CEOs found that many lack this preparation – only 38 percent of externally appointed CEOs and 28 percent of internally appointed CEOs said they felt fully prepared for their roles. By combining Egon Zehnder’s deep experience advising the world’s most influential leaders and Mobius Executive Leadership’s expertise developing leaders through personal transformation, our programs take a unique and experiential approach to leadership development. We’re redefining the leadership development journey for leaders of today and tomorrow, from the inside out.


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For Hilary Pearl, founding partner of Greenwich, CT-based Pearl Associates, improving performance through executive coaching and organizational consulting resides at the center of her work. Executive coaching is now a $1 billion business sector, centered around the notion that all employees can improve their performance quickly if coached properly.


What services will Mobius Executive Leadership and your firm offer?

In collaboration with Mobius Executive Leadership, we have developed three programs – Executive Breakthrough, Executive Discovery and Voyager – that complement our suite of capabilities across leadership development. The Executive Breakthrough program is targeted exclusively at serving CEOs (and those on the successor path). Executive Discovery focuses on serving or aspiring C-suite executives, and Voyager is intended for cohort groups within an organization, or even entire organizations undergoing transformation.

“This strategic partnership was formed on the shared belief that today’s leaders must prioritize personal transformation to accelerate their business’ transformation.”

How will your firm implement these new offerings to clients?

Our leadership advisors identify the people (for Executive Breakthrough and Discovery) and organizations (Voyager) whom they believe would benefit most from these development journeys. Given Breakthrough and Discovery are invitation-only, we bring a small diversified group of leaders together who can closely connect as peers as well as through their own personal journey, establishing a strong community of like-minded leaders.

Related: SoFi and Korn Ferry Form Career Development Partnership

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Andrew W. Mitchell, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media

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