In this role, you will lead Barclays’ High Potential Development Programmes across Vice President, Director, and Managing Director levels, acting as the Product Owner responsible for the design, content, and strategic impact of all three High Impact Executive Accelerator Programmes. You will shape the end‑to‑end experience by designing high‑quality content, ensuring strategic alignment, and maintaining clarity of purpose for each senior population. Supported by embedded Project Managers for operational governance, you will retain ultimate accountability for outcomes, investment, and the overall effectiveness of these programmes, ensuring they meet the evolving needs of high‑potential leaders. You will play a key role in delivering the Senior Leader Group (SLG) events, working directly with MDs, ExCo members, and senior partners across Barclays to shape agendas and deliver high‑impact experiences for bank’s most senior leaders.
As a highly visible leadership role, you will navigate complex stakeholder landscapes, manage significant High Potential Programme investment, and oversee nomination cycles and reporting across the organisation. You will build credibility with ExCo‑level sponsors, manage expectations across multiple senior communities, and ensure the consistency, quality, and strategic integration of all high‑potential offerings. You will also lead the launch of the new MD High Potential Accelerator Programme and drive ongoing evolution of the Vice President and Director programmes, enhancing design, increasing impact, and aligning development with Barclays’ strategic priorities. With responsibility for a significant programme portfolio and large‑scale senior‑leader populations, you will operate with confidence, precision, and influence, ensuring that Barclays’ most talented leaders are identified, elevated, and supported to reach their full potential.
To be successful as a Head of Leadership Development Executive Programmes, you should have experience with:
- Deep expertise in Executive Leadership Development, particularly at senior levels.
- Experience with high‑potential talent elevating and preparing leaders for bigger roles.
- Exceptional senior stakeholder management with ability to operate comfortably with ExCo‑level visibility and complexity.
- Experience running or designing large‑scale leadership development programmes at senior levels.
- Understanding of budgets and investment management within talent development.
- Ability to translate organisational strategy into impactful development curricula.
You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills
Purpose of the role
To design and implement programmes and initiatives that support the growth and development of the bank’s employees and leaders.
Accountabilities
- Development and implementation of training and development programmes and initiatives, including creation and execution of training sessions, workshops, and other learning opportunities.
- Collaboration with HR and hiring managers to analyse the current and future development needs of the organisation.
- Design and delivery of classroom and digital based training content, programmes and associated User Experience.
- Management of onboarding programmes including training, onboarding materials, introduction meetings and providing support throughout the onboarding process.
- Analysis of data and metrics to measure success of talent development programmes and initiatives.
- Development and implementation of coaching and mentoring programmes, train the trainer programmes for facilitators and relevant educational materials.
- Develop and implement talent pipelining processes, identifying, managing, progressing and promoting talent capability across the bank with succession management and career progression’.
Vice President Expectations
- To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
- If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
- If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others..
- OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
- Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
- Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
- Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
- Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
- Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
- Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
- Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
- Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.
All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.