From Data to Strategy: How European Financial Leaders can inspire their Teams

By David Allison

Across the glass towers and heritage bank buildings of European—inside Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Erste Bank, UBS, ZKB, Raiffeisen, Julius Baer, PostFinance, and others—something remarkable is happening. While the global finance sector contends with shifting regulations, digital disruption, transformation and talent wars, we can now clearly identify what employees want from their work and their leaders. They’re telling us through their values.

My company has conducted a million surveys, and with hundreds of millions of data points we’ve turned shared human values into actionable data. Our mission is simple yet radical: uncover and quantify the shared human values that unite us—and use them to engage, inspire, and lead more effectively. Because values are the neurological drivers behind every decision, emotion, and action. They’re the most powerful force on earth. And for the first time in history, they’re measurable insights. I speak to organizations around the world using this data-rich approach, and our findings are included in textbooks used on university and college campuses globally.

Let’s Talk About European Financial Institutions

We recently analyzed data from employees working inside some of European’s largest and most respected financial organizations. What we found among other things, were two core values that these professionals over-index on—by significant margins—compared to the general population:

Influence – over-indexed by 23%
Loyalty – over-indexed by 21%

Understanding what these values truly mean to your workforce can revolutionize how you lead and engage them. Let’s unpack each one and explore practical strategies.

Value #1: Influence

What it means: For every one of the possible 56 values in our database, there are hundreds of meanings. So, for these particular employees, we know that the value of Influence isn’t about power or status: it’s about participation. they will feel values-aligned when they are included in important decisions that affect their work and outcomes. They want their voices to be heard and their perspectives valued.

Leadership Strategy: Build Decision-Inclusive Leadership Models.

Co-create with your teams. Include representatives from all levels in strategic planning workshops, especially when designing new workflows, policies, or organizational changes. Even symbolic inclusion — like task forces or employee advisory boards — can generate exponential trust and motivation when done authentically.

Employee Engagement Strategy: Launch “Voice of the Team” Initiatives.

Create recurring, structured opportunities for employees to weigh in on key issues. This could be monthly town halls where feedback is actively used to shape priorities, or internal platforms where new ideas are crowd-sourced and recognized. When people feel their influence is real, their engagement soars.

Value #2: Loyalty

What it means: For these employees, Loyalty is all about loyalty to people, not brands or ideas. Specifically, they will feel values alignement when they can be loyal to those they know and have shared experiences with.

Leadership Strategy: Design Leadership Through Relationship-Building.

Prioritize trust-based leadership. Encourage managers to invest time in creating shared experiences with their teams (think about retreats, collaborative projects, even informal gatherings will help). The more relational capital leaders can build, the more influence and loyalty they’ll receive in return.

Employee Engagement Strategy: Strengthen Team Bonds Through Shared Experiences.

Think about employee learning journeys, cross-functional projects, or storytelling exercises that let people bond over common values and experiences. Consider creating internal networks or buddy systems to help teams deepen these connections over time. This taps directly into the loyalty value that matters most to your people.

A Unique, Data-Driven Approach

While these ideas may not seem earth-shatteringly new, what’s different is this is not guesswork anymore. We know with academic accuracy that these values will engage and inspire these people. Behavioral scientists have always known that values drive behavior—we just made it measurable and therefore actionable. Today, we help organizations across every sector—from PayPal to the United Nations Foundation—build values-aligned strategies that make work more
meaningful, and change more sustainable.

It’s important to remember that the most motivating values will be slightly different from one organization to another: the values I’ve focused on in this article are for a cross section of employees from across all the organizations we studied. When we work with a particular organization we can be very granular, and look at the different buttons you need to push to move the needle for senior staff vs new hires, for different departments and functions, and even for the future workforce: the talent pool you will be recruiting from.

Values are the answer. Because when you align your strategies to what people value, they change from being employees to inspired ambassadors of success. Values are the answer. We just have to put them to work.

Book David Allison for a presentation plus workshop for your next management conference. Call us or write directly to david.allison@premium-speakers.com