Success Story

GIA: Scaling People-Centered Leadership During Hypergrowth

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Company

Gemological Institute of America (GIA)

Division

Gemological Research

Location

India

As global demand for certified diamonds surged, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) experienced rapid growth, creating an urgent need to equip emerging leaders with people-management skills. Many new managers, promoted from technical roles, struggled to balance their technical excellence with the demands of people leadership. GIA recognized that sustainable scaling required developing a new leadership layer grounded in collaboration, emotional intelligence, and accountability.

KEY CHALLENGES

GIA's primary vulnerability was the capacity of its first-time managers to lead effectively in a hypergrowth environment. Sustainable expansion required a leadership development journey that went beyond theoretical understanding, focusing instead on observable behavior and mindset shifts.

The challenge was to transition emerging leaders across three critical dimensions:

Technical to People Focus: Shifting the core focus of managers from individual technical excellence to the complexities of team development and people leadership.
Accountability and Mindset: Instilling the necessary mindset, confidence, and emotional intelligence required for effective team management and conflict resolution.
Scale Readiness: Building a robust and unified leadership layer that could reliably manage and lead growing teams during a multi-year organizational expansion.

OUR AFERR BASED APPROACH

GIA partnered with the Evivve team to design AMTL (A Move Towards Leadership), a custom, two-year leadership development journey for over 50 emerging leaders across three cohorts. The approach fused AFERR-based organizational development with immersive experiential design and digital reinforcement.

The program followed the complete AFERR behavioral change cycle:

Activation & Forecasting: We sparked engagement by linking each participant’s growth to GIA’s mission. Participants assessed role expectations and identified the leadership capabilities requiring development.
Experimentation & Realization: We delivered workshops and immersive learning labs, using game-based simulations to allow participants to try new behaviors in psychologically safe environments. Guided debriefs helped leaders make sense of their actions, assumptions, and leadership patterns.
Reflection & Embedding: Participants committed to key mindset shifts and behavioral changes, supported by ongoing coaching and peer feedback.

Innovation: The Superhero Within Platform

To ensure learning transfer and long-term capability building, we deployed the proprietary Superhero Within digital learning platform. This platform acted as an interactive Learning Management System (LMS) plus a behavior validation system.

Virtue System: Participants earned "virtues" by demonstrating desired leadership behaviors on the job (e.g., coaching, resolving conflict).
Peer Validation: Behavior unlocks required feedback and confirmation from peers or managers, reinforcing real-world accountability.

“ The AMTL program helped us build leadership capacity from within, in a way that aligned perfectly with our growth and values. We saw people rise to the challenge, beyond their roles, in how they thought and worked together. ”

Head of Learning & Organizational Development

Gemological Institute of America

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACT

The AMTL program successfully accelerated GIA's talent pipeline, providing the behavioral foundation necessary to sustain hypergrowth. The program's integrated design ensured that insights moved beyond the classroom and were anchored in daily leadership practice.

Key Shifts Observed

Talent Pipeline Acceleration: 70% of participants were promoted or entrusted with greater responsibility within one year of program completion.

70%

Talent Pipeline Growth

Were promoted or entrusted with greater responsibility within one year of program completion.

Leadership Cohort Training: 85% of the organization’s emerging leaders were trained, with cohorts selected based on readiness and aspiration to lead during scaling.
Team Performance Uplift: Measurable improvement in output and collaboration in units led by AMTL graduates.
Behavioral Adoption Confirmed: The peer-reviewed "virtue unlock" system confirmed the actual adoption of desired leadership behaviors on the job.
Engagement Success: The program achieved a 100% completion rate with high engagement scores and no dropouts across all three cohorts.

Conclusion

GIA’s success with AMTL proves the power of a behavioral-first, integrated learning ecosystem. By using the AFERR model as a design backbone and deploying a digital platform for sustained reinforcement, GIA built leadership capacity from within. The program created embodied insight through simulation and ensured that participants were allowed to "fail forward" in a safe environment before being entrusted with real-life team leadership. This approach secured the necessary people-centered leadership to effectively manage and sustain organizational scaling.