Back in 2014, when Diego Piovan was promoted to Chief Operating Officer of the Italian banking group Banca Carige, a trusted friend from the human resources sector recommended IMD’s High Performance Leadership program. Piovan, who was about to lead nearly 1,000 employees, signed up for it thinking he was just going to learn new leadership techniques.
“I was surprised that the focus of High Performance Leadership was me,” he said. “It was self-discovery, and it was fascinating.”
He pointed out that in the financial services sector, where he had held director roles for nearly a decade before his promotion, leadership is often very conservative and directive. The program gave him a new perspective and developed his self-awareness.
“You behave in a certain way – you have habits that have allowed you to achieve results and move up in your career, so you keep on going with the same behaviors,” he said. “I wasn’t really thinking about the impact I was having on others, what they were feeling, or how I could make them happier in their work. In High Performance Leadership, I had a week to think about myself, the leader I was, and the leader I could be.”
A turning point
The year that followed was “extraordinary” in terms of his organization’s results and the level of engagement from his teams. He attributes the latter to High Performance Leadership transforming him from “an overachieving manager” into “a decent leader”. In 2017, he left the bank to become a partner at the multinational professional services network Deloitte. Over the years that followed, he shaped and led technology-driven initiatives to transform regulatory, risk, and compliance operations in financial services.
When Covid-19 hit the world and lockdowns were imposed, Deloitte had to reinvent its way of doing business – a pivot that Piovan is proud to say was remarkably successful. His own life changed too. After years of frequent business travel, he suddenly found himself working from home and spending more time with his family. With space to reflect, he realized that something was missing from his life but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was.
“I was 53 and at a point in my rewarding and challenging career where I was asking myself if I was going to continue like that until retirement or do something different,” he explained.
During this period of reflection, he started to explore coaching programs and came across the IMD Executive Coaching Certificate. Although he wasn’t considering becoming a coach, he was keen to try something new and his High Performance Leadership experience had made him aware of the power of coaching.
“I trusted IMD because of the significant impact High Performance Leadership had on me,” explained Piovan. “I told myself that if I was going to put effort and money into a program, I wanted to go to one of the top business schools in the world.”
Piovan applied for the program and soon after a long conversation with Susan Goldsworthy, Co-Director of the IMD Executive Coaching Certificate, he joined the first cohort in 2022.
Finding purpose
The program’s four on-campus modules are spread over 10 months, with live virtual sessions in between and numerous hours of coaching, mentoring, and coaching practice. In addition to earning IMD’s coaching certification, participants clock up 160 hours of coaching and supervision that contribute to International Coaching Federation (ICF) credentialing if they want to go further.
“The program is useful for leaders, even if they don’t want to become coaches,” said Piovan. “You gain a huge number of tools and – very importantly – the coaching mindset that enables you to manage relationships with your people in a more effective way.”
During his learning journey, which also involved theory and experiential group activities, he was encouraged to conduct pro bono coaching sessions to practice his new skills. He discovered that his own professional background gave him credibility and meant he could understand the challenges his coachees were facing.
“I suddenly realized that I’d found a profound personal purpose,” he said. “When I coach, the impact isn’t on targets, it’s on people, sustainability, wellness, organizational culture, engagement, even on society. There was nothing wrong with the work I was doing but it was no longer aligned with my values. I wanted to do something that would have an impact on people’s growth.”
A new chapter
In 2023, he started exploring his options by contacting executive coaches and coaching firms. After a discussion with the CEO of Hermes Consulting, a Florence-based company active in the Italian market for more than two decades, he was invited to meet the team. He stepped down from his position at Deloitte in early 2024 and joined Hermes Consulting as a managing partner.
“The company is focused on the common good, leadership development, cultural transformation, and helping leaders to create more engaging, healthy work environments. It’s totally aligned with my value and purpose,” said Piovan.
“In this new phase of my life, I want to give back all that I’ve learned over the past 30 years to current and future leaders who sometimes struggle to get where they need to be. It’s still the same corporate world – just seen from a different perspective, one that’s more focused on people and relationships.”
