WATCH: Coutts' Claire Foy on building enduring resilience

With HR professionals under an unprecedented level of pressure, now is the time to share lessons and impart strategies which have driven organisational and team success. In our new video series, Leadership Learnings, HRD Connect meets with senior leaders to discuss an experience in their career which helped to develop their professional practice.

It could be an effectively executed reform, a high-level discussion with the C-suite, interactions with employees – or something entirely different. It’s safe to say that HR has been forced to deal with an unimaginable array of opportunities and challenges, so leaders’ perspectives – why they made their decisions, what other leaders can learn, and why it matters today – could help encourage much-needed creativity, flexibility and determination.

In the third episode of the series, HRD Connect meets with Claire Foy, executive director and head of learning and professional development at Coutts, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious banks.

As the firm’s most senior HR leader, Foy is used to addressing and overcoming immense challenges; in her Leadership Learnings profile piece, Foy discusses an experience in which a planned L&D programme failed to gain corporate approval at the last minute, and the way she responded. Foy discusses:

0.16 – The new challenges that come about when reaching a senior level role

0.50 – Planning to implement an innovative programme

2.27 – Running into difficulties with corporate approval

3.29 – Receiving support among colleagues, boosting wellbeing

3.59 – Relaunching the programme and the success that ensued

4.53 – Utilising resilience and what leaders can take away from the ordeal

Watch the video to find out why the experience had a personal significance to Foy, and discover how leaders can derive positive, career-building knowledge from even the most tumultuous circumstances.