people edge academy
RAISE THE PEOPLE SKILLS YOUR TEAM USES EVERY DAY
The key hiring condition for investment professionals is their outstanding intellectual capacity. What sets them up for long-term success is complementing that with the soft skills required to get things done, collaborate with portfolio leadership, and build relationships that create value. While IQ is stable, EQ can be trained. Our Academy strengthens these skills through tailored training and performance coaching – specifically designed for PE, facilitated by practitioners who know the context.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Your deal teams may be your highest-leverage asset.
PE firms invest carefully in due diligence, in advisors, and in the leadership teams of portfolio companies. Investing in your own investment professionals follows the same logic – with relatively small investments and returns that compound significantly across all activities in the holding period.
While analysis becomes more automatable, the human work – building trust, reading management, making decisions, resolving friction – is what increasingly sets one firm apart from another. Our Academy has a unique offering with solutions tailored to investment professionals, making them stronger across the full investment cycle.
What stronger internal capability gives you
- Investment professionals who deliberately build trust in their relations with management and other stakeholders.
- More impactful communications, whether in 1:1s, team interactions, meetings with management, or presentations.
- Structures and tools to make discussions about management team quality explicit and measurable – through DD, the hold, and exit.
- A firm-wide high performance culture, with shared norms for how teams effectively work together internally and with portfolio management.
- Greater self-awareness and resilience, so that your professionals can grow and sustain their impact in the long run.
Tailored Training for Investment Professionals
Five interactive workshops, built around the skills that matter most.
The workshops are tailored to the work context of private equity professionals. They are designed for investment professionals with up to ten years’ tenure – taken standalone, or sequenced as a development arc across the team – with practical application and meaningful exchange to enable peer learning. Delivered in-house by quality-assured facilitators with relevant sector experience and based in many global locations.
Personal Leadership
Thrive in the high-stakes context.
Grow self-insight, self-management, and resilience with actionable models to thrive as a relative junior in the high-stakes, high-pressure context of private equity.
Building trust
From investor to trusted advisor.
Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders through a formula for enhancing credibility and alignment – quickly becoming a trusted advisor to portfolio company management.
Impactful Conversations
Make every interaction count.
Make every interaction count with simple structures to create open, valuable, and goal-oriented exchanges – in 1:1 and group settings, from preparation through to follow-up.
High-Performing Teams
Foundations for firm-wide performance.
Explore the foundations of team performance to enhance the impact of investment teams and foster a firm-wide high performance culture across deal teams and portfolio engagement.
Management Assessment Intro
Evaluate management, in and out of the room.
Get tools to evaluate and discuss management ability to deliver the investment thesis – individually and as a team, both outside and inside the formal interview setting.
Performance Coaching
Coaching at PE pace for investment professionals and business function leaders.
Coaching at PE pace requires coaches who know the context – the stakes, the cadence, the language. Performance Coaching is delivered by accredited coaches, with relevant sector experience. Available for individuals, investment teams, and groups of professionals – with formats that are actionable and enable peer learning. Engagements are tailored to the individual or team, with clear goals, defined cadence, and visible progress.