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 HEAVY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY

The Company
John was the Financial Director of a company formed out of five companies that had enjoyed a relationship of aggressive competition within a loose group organisation. The new company was losing money heavily.

The Individual in the Business Situation
The Senior Team realised that they needed to heal the animosity of the past and forge new relationships and co-operative working methods. John inherited five incompatible financial reporting and analysis systems and was reliant on an overloaded IS/IT department to develop a new one. His team were organised around the component parts of the new company that reflected the old independent companies and they came together reluctantly. On the Senior Team he was practically invisible as a result of his disinclination to speak until he had fully analysed the topic. As the company continued to lose money John became the scapegoat of the Senior Team. He was criticised for the lack of integrated financial information. He was condemned for not kicking people and bullying the project teams for immediate improvements. He was despised for his silent, almost timid, role in a Senior Team of hard men. His Chief Executive was considering when to replace him. At the same time, his own team were increasingly fragmented on a day-to-day basis whilst coming together on the task of producing the new system. They were barely a team in the interdependent sense of the word.

The Individual's Response to Coaching
During this period John was working with his coach who was giving him practical help on the issues confronting him within the context of developing his advocacy skills - as a leader and as a member of the Senior Team. However, he continued to look to the day when his new systems would be operational and to underestimate the degree to which people looked to and responded to personal intervention and leadership. He continually drew back from taking a strong, and risky, place in the system. Then, John's marriage faced a crisis and he used his coach to help him determine how to react. One key decision he made was to be more proactive. His coach used this response to his marriage crisis and said "Don't you need to do exactly the same here in your work John?" He said, "Yes". The effect was immediate and significant.

The Benefits
He stopped the Senior Team in their tracks several times by challenging their logic and their behaviour. So unused were they to his confident challenges, and so great their growing respect for his analytical and principled approach, that he became a significant and creative member the Senior Team. As the leader of his team, he displayed a stronger sense of command whilst retaining his dominant tendency to servant leader rather than autocrat. His team showed a change of attitude and worked together in a way that shared experiences and techniques across the company. They pulled together all the new systems on time, and this led to a further increase in the confidence and effectiveness of him and his team.