COACHING & MENTORING SERVICES : Transformation at Work- releasing people to perform

Leader in a Global Pharmaceuticals Company


Leader in a Global Construction Business


Leadership Team in a Global Pharmaceuticals Company

LEADER IN A GLOBAL PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY

The Company
Veronica led a department of scientific, medical and study process personnel involved in early phase clinical development. Her team resulted from a local merger that was part of a wider global merger of two companies.

The Individual in the Business Situation
As a result of these mergers, her people had to adapt working methods and personal attitudes in a period of intense change. Veronica's initial response was to protect and develop her people. She came under intense pressure from global management who saw her site as perfectionist and with poor productivity. She was seen as defensive but she did have a case to make that her people worked to different project definition standards and with a wider scope than other sites - both factors leading to a perception of poor productivity. Nevertheless, she was putting herself under pressure because she wanted her people and herself to be as respected globally as she was on the site. A powerful factor in the situation was her global VP's attitudes and behaviour. He needed efficiency and competence of high levels in every site and had a tendency to detailed management, so she felt under great pressure to improve.

The Individual's Response to Coaching
Some twelve months into the merger, Veronica started to address this situation with her coach. After developing a mutual understanding of the nature of her challenge, he helped her to reframe her approach to just about every issue she was facing. Over a period of six months she used her coach to start looking at situations and relationships in a completely different way. She was impressively open to advice, and eager and willing to move to take a different perspective of circumstances and events. Her ability to listen, to reframe, and to shift her attitude without discarding her principles, showed great flexibility combined with integrity. For example, moving to 'issue resolution' language helped her to reframe her thinking, and her perception by others. She moved from perceiving her manager as a source of pressure to his being a resource and aid to help her and her department to improve.

The Benefits
She complemented her passion for her people and her science with a more detached, businesslike assessment and judgement of issues and leadership challenges. She gave her coach the challenge, "How can I be successful, honest and not blue-eyed?" With his help, she answered the question herself. One measure of her effectiveness in doing this was her manager's unsolicited comment to her coach that she had changed dramatically in the period and that her department was seriously tackling the issues as he saw them. And her manager was not complimenting the coach!