How TransforMe Supported StoneX’s Global Leadership Transformation

StoneX set itself one of the more audacious targets: to grow fivefold in five years. There was a clear strategy behind the goal and the next step was to strengthen the leadership layer so they’re better prepared to hold the business together as the company scales. 

393 managers. 13 cities. Bangalore to Buenos Aires, Singapore to São Paulo. All of them are technically strong. A shared leadership language was all they needed to align better. 

This was also one of the most ambitious global leadership development journeys TransforMe has delivered. It has since been recognised with the Brandon Hall Group Gold Award for Excellence in Leadership Development. What earned that recognition was the rigour with which the problem was understood before a session was designed.

The problem beneath the problem

StoneX had grown significantly through mergers and acquisitions. Talented people had come together from different organisations, cultures, and business environments. But talent without a shared leadership standard does not automatically produce aligned performance.

A diagnostic phase — focus group discussions with managers and senior leaders across regions — surfaced two patterns that kept appearing regardless of geography. Managers were confident technically but hesitant when it came to influencing senior stakeholders, holding structured performance conversations, or leading their teams through change. And relationships between functions began to feel transactional.

Training was not the answer to their challenge. This needed a tailored leadership development programme built around StoneX’s actual challenges — one that could hold a consistent standard across 13 cities while remaining grounded in the cultural and operational reality of each one.

Built for the business, not borrowed from a shelf

Before the first workshop was designed, every participant completed a behavioural leadership assessment — establishing a baseline across four success capabilities. 

44.8% were at foundational level.
53.7% at intermediate.
1.4% at an advanced level. 

That data shaped everything that followed.

The Global Manager Development Programme was built around three capability pillars that emerged directly from the diagnostic: Communicating with Impact, Driving Performance Excellence, and Inclusive, Collaborative and Change Leadership Team Development. Generic competency frameworks played no part in the design.

Delivery required a network of global facilitators who understood the cultural dynamics of the regions where they worked. In South America, sessions ran in Spanish and Portuguese while following the same global curriculum. The result was a programme that felt locally relevant without losing global coherence — a balance Australian organisations operating across geographies will recognise as exactly the right problem to solve.

What made it stick

A workshop, however well designed, is only as valuable as the behaviour change it sustains. TransforMe built the reinforcement architecture in from the start rather than attaching it afterwards.

Every participant left each session with a 30–60–90 day action plan co-created with their line manager. Four to five weeks later, cohorts reconvened virtually — revisiting commitments, sharing early wins, peer coaching each other through challenges. Over 12 weeks, personalised learning nudges arrived through an AI-enabled platform: short, interactive, calibrated to individual capability gaps.

Leadership effectiveness is demonstrated through behaviour, not attendance. The architecture was designed with that principle as its foundation.

What the data showed

Against an industry benchmark of 10–15% upward capability movement, the programme achieved 14.8% progression — placing it in the high-impact range.

The behavioural shifts across 393 participants were significant. 

77% demonstrated stronger active listening and empathy-driven communication. 86% reported greater confidence in cross-functional collaboration.
71% showed enhanced customer orientation beyond their immediate teams.
62% demonstrated greater proactive ownership of new initiatives within their functions.

Beyond the numbers, five qualitative shifts emerged consistently across all 18 cohorts: a move from informing to questioning, stronger confidence in difficult conversations, practical adoption of feedback frameworks, peer learning at scale, and a desire to lead from the inside out.

Something less tangible but equally significant also took hold. Managers across StoneX — from Warsaw to São Paulo, from Bangalore to New York — began to see themselves as part of a single global leadership community. A shared identity, a shared language, a shared standard. That is the foundation of any genuine leadership transformation.

What this could mean for your organisation

StoneX’s journey is not unique in its ambition. It is unusual in its approach.

Most organisations invest in leadership development after the gaps become visible — when decisions are slowing, when teams are misaligned, when the business has outgrown the leadership layer holding it together. StoneX invested before that point, and invested with diagnostic rigour rather than good intentions.

For organisations navigating growth, post-merger integration, or the challenge of building leadership capability across distributed teams, the same principle applies. The question is not whether your leaders are capable today. It is whether they have been deliberately prepared for what the business is about to demand of them.

Organisational performance improves when companies invest in developing their leaders at the same pace as the business — through structured leadership development programmes, rigorous leadership assessment, and the kind of sustained executive coaching that turns programme insight into daily leadership behaviour.

That is what TransforMe builds. Get in touch to start a conversation.