Anika Gakovic

Senior Consultant

Anika Gakovic, Senior Consultant

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Anika Gakovic is a Trusted Coach and Business Psychologist who helps leaders and their teams to achieve results for their organizations. Through advising leaders, building team capabilities, and advancing talent management, Anika has been enabling organizations to achieve their mission, and their leaders and teams better serve their customers. Distinctive ability to problem-solve and deliver learning and change solutions that create impact based on client priorities. Highly regarded for building long-term relationships, navigating stakeholder complexity, and adapting to ambiguity to deliver results. Expertise areas include: Coaching leaders for peak performance, aligning teams for collaboration and inclusion, optimizing employee experience and talent management. 

BACKGROUND & INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE

Anika has twenty years of experience building skills and creating change in high-performing enterprises. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as Director of Learning, Anika modernized the learning platform and enabled the people side of digital transformation for the organization. As Executive Director for Leadership Edge at JPMorgan Chase, Anika designed and executed global management programs to drive culture. Previously, as Head of Organizational Effectiveness for OppenheimerFunds and Talent Executive at New York Life Insurance Company, she enabled strategic alignment through coaching for executive leaders and high potentials, salesforce transformation, and facilitating senior team offsites. Earlier in her career as talent program manager at HSBC Private Bank and UBS Wealth Management, Anika created and implemented professional development, employee engagement and change solutions.

Prior to her corporate experience, Anika worked as a consultant developing selection tests for Hess Oil and the Chicago Police Department while teaching psychology courses and completing her MA and PhD in Industrial Organizational Psychology at University of Houston. Anika has presented at the Conference Board, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), Association for Talent Development (ATD), and Chief Learning Officer Exchange. She published articles for the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Organizational Development Journal, and International Journal of Coaching in Organizations. Anika’s presentations and publications focus on a range of topics including executive development, employee engagement, and driving people strategy through learning and change management. Anika served on the Board of Directors for New York HR Planning Society (NYHRPS) and participated as a coach for the Entrepreneurs Challenge Competition at New York University Stern School of Business.

Coaching Approach

Anika thrives in working with clients who are driving high performance and navigating transformational change. Her approach is anchored in balancing the strategic and the operational realities, the short-term wins and the long-term priorities and trade-offs. Anika takes a relationship and trust first approach to collaboratively help clients gain insights through developmental feedback, set realistic and relevant goals for growth, and partner with stakeholders to accomplish progress. Assessments are a tool for self-awareness that is complimentary with intentional clarification of purpose and values, exploring mindset assumptions and testing behavior habits. Anika ensures that clients gain support for sustainable growth and development from their organizational systems.

Facilitation & Teambuilding Approach

Anika’s training in business psychology with a focus on systems theory, in addition to her experience as a talent leader, are anchors to her practical approach in working with teams. Anika helps teams clarify values and direction, set norms and behavior expectations, explore effective team dynamics that reinforce collaboration and that promote learning, and engagement by all members. Her teambuilding approach is based on creating psychological safety, leveraging collective dynamics, and creating change in the flow of work. Anika has designed and facilitated a variety of workshops and programs, often incorporating an organization development focus to align teams with the organization’s business and talent strategy.

Relevant Assessment Assignments

  • 360 Feedback and multi-assessment feedback: Facilitates 360 and multi-assessment feedback sessions with leaders and managers. As part of leadership development programs at a mutual insurance company and at a global bank, Anika worked with executive leaders to help improve their awareness and accountability through understanding competency based behavioral feedback and personality assessment results.
  • Skill assessments: As part of a consultative selling development program at an asset management company, Anika helped create a mobile skill assessment for sales field-force and their managers that enabled behavior change in alignment to business strategy.
  • Knowledge and selection assessments: Anika developed tools for candidate selection for Hess Oil Company and detective promotion testing for the Chicago Police Department

Relevant Coaching Assignments

  • Enhance executive presence: Anika helps leaders activate their ability to influence people and cultivate authority. Leaders who master themselves and their emotional intelligence are better able to navigate their environments to accomplish objectives. She coached a female leader who needed to establish her credibility as a successor in a male dominated and results focused environment. Client worked through imposter syndrome and expanding her communication style flexibility.
  • Prepare for succession: Anika supports clients through transitions to maximize impact and build successful teams. Clients develop skills to understand stakeholders, communicate value proposition, and set direction. She coached a CEO successor who was an established functional expert and needed to operate more strategically. Anika worked with the Board on a role-based assessment and helped the leader rebrand the mission focus, restructure the organization to align roles with organizational objectives, and manage change of onboarding as the new CEO.
  • Empower decisions and alignment: Anika’s whole-person coaching approach helps leaders under pressure to think, plan and execute strategically. Clients experience improved confidence, clearer perspective on choices, and increased collaboration towards shared outcomes. Anika’s coaching prepares clients for managing challenging conversations to create shared team direction, including delivering feedback and effectively discussing wellness, diversity and inclusion.

Relevant Facilitation & Teambuilding Assignments

  • Executive Education and Leadership Development: At an asset management company and at a global bank, Anika led the discovery, design and delivery of integrated leadership development programs, including weeklong programs and multi-session delivery as part of a learning journey. Topic examples include Inclusive leadership, Influence, Innovation, Leading consultative sales, Next generation wealth.
  • Teambuilding and Team Alignment: Anika’s design and facilitation work helps leadership teams to function more effectively. Focus areas include Psychological Safety, Appreciation of Inclusion, and gaining Clarity and Accountability needed to help the team Collaboratively Achieve its Objectives.
  • Coaching Culture and Coaching Skills Workshops: Anika assessed needs, designed, and delivered leader coaching skills training and transformation initiatives designed to help organizations build coaching cultures at a mutual insurance company and at a global bank.

Education & Professional Affiliations

  • PhD and MA, Industrial Organizational Psychology, University of Houston
  • Certifications: Bates ExPI, Hogan, FIRO-B, DiSC, MBTI, Lominger 360, Appreciative Inquiry
  • Publications: Journal of Organizational Behavior, Organizational Development Journal, International Journal of Coaching in Organizations
  • Presentations: Conference Board, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), Association for Talent Development (ATD), Chief Learning Officer Exchange