Coaching Case Studies & Testimonials

Coaching: Preparation for Career Break Case Study 1

Coachee in this case was a HR Manager in an international database company.  After four years in her current role, she decided that a career break would be useful.  We were asked by the organisational sponsor, the OD & HR Director to provide space and support to help coachee plan the transition to the career break and to help her clarify how she could get the most out of the break, before returning, refreshed to the organisation. Early in the coaching partnership, it became evident from listening to her language patterns and how she framed problems, that taking a holistic approach covering both work and personal aspects of her life was called for.  

Before she was able to focus on the future, she needed to explore blockages in her personal life that had been affecting her at work and reframe this in a solution-orientated way.   She was then more able to develop new strategies for communicating more effectively with people with whom she had previously experienced difficulties, take a more objective view of what she wanted to achieve during her career break and begin the process of letting go of her workload/responsibilities at work.  Feedback from her ExtendedDISC profile reinforced her strengths and clarified her preferred ways of working, areas for development.  This prompted her to take an active part in re-negotiating her returning role, before she left for her career break!  

Focus on the simple question  What is working well? enabled a significant shift in her mindset and approach, offering her a way to focus on the positives of her situation while providing relief from what had been a persistent focus on problems she had been experiencing in her life and career.    

Post Coaching Testimonials
Sponsor Comments "She has developed much improved relationships with senior managers and is representing our department in a much more level-headed way

Coachee Comments " I now know what I can, can’t, should and shouldn’t try to control.  I know now that my behaviour can change, enhance or control a situation. To others who are thinking about having Corporate Coaching I would say "  Embrace it, it can help if you let it"

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Low Morale & Team Alignment  Case Study 1 

A large IT service organisation had experienced major changes in a shared service centre through migrating part of their services to India.  The drive for change was clear from a business perspective and while the management had sought to ‘take the employees with us’ they hadn’t realised that staff felt differently. Following the redundancy process (caused by the decision to migrate the service) an internal re-organisation of teams took place.  This resulted in increased error rate, longer working hours, increased sick leave, loyalty to organisation was at an all time low along with morale.  In addition staff turnover was showing signs of getting out of hand and good internal candidates were not applying for vacancies.

The senior management team were aware that morale had plummeted and the business was in danger of not delivering.  Not delivering held the very real threat of the service being transferred to other location within EMEA, with the resultant implications.   We were called in to discuss strategies for working to stop the rot,  re-build morale, help the management team convince the employees how valued they were and demonstrate the organisation’s commitment to them and their development.

We devised and delivered a multi-level Action Learning Programme to address the following issues:
Senior Management Team (SMT) Level:
working with 6 senior managers, as a group and through 1:1 coaching to
-  explore perceptions of current and preferred corporate culture – and 
   implications for organisation moving forward
-  identify and resolve tensions between individuals within the SMT
-  develop individual action plans for managing individuals and teams more 
    effectively
-  develop personal learning contracts and implementation plans
-  nurture and expand their roles as  sponsors to the action learning sets and 
   to integrate the principle of ‘sponsorship’ in leadership development

Manager Level:
working with 5 groups of six managers (junior and middle) to:
-  examine current situation – surface dissatisfactions, de-motivators etc
-  explore perceptions of current and preferred corporate culture and 
   implications for them personally, and for organisation
-  deliver a business project, working in cross-disciplinary action learning sets

Individual Level:
-   working in parallel with the action learning sets, a coaching service was set up 
    and made available to all managers
-  develop and implement personal learning contracts - taking
   responsibility for identifying their own development and learning needs, and  
   taking action

for example: identifying gaps in experience/knowledge/skills that they would need to demonstrate to make the move to the next level or to achieve promotion; completing professional qualifications; achieving a more satisfactory work-life balance etc. 

Over a period of a year, a huge amount has been achieved and the work is ongoing.  Error rate is down, morale has improved significantly, individuals and teams are working more effectively, SMT-manager relationships are more honest and open.  While service at current level is maintained, threat of transfer of the service is neutralised.

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Coaching: Visibility & Influence Case Study 2
 

In a large local government organisation I acted as coach to the HR Manager, who was experiencing difficulties with her visibility and influence in the organisation, particularly with the senior management team. She reported she was unwilling to ‘play of the necessary political games’ she perceived others played and assumed this was what was stopping her.  It transpired that as a result, she stayed quiet at meetings, didn’t express her thinking or put forward her own case, in effect, she soon recognised that she detracted from her personal effectiveness by avoiding any kind of situation where she might be perceived as competing ‘with the big boys’.  Her language was full of metaphor, much of which put her at a disadvantage.  

Over 9 coaching sessions I was able to bring this to her attention, work with her on self-limiting beliefs and behaviours and eventually on projecting herself in a much more expressive and confident way.  We also used anchoring, visualisation, well-formed outcomes, future pacing among others.  Her success allowed her to take self-responsibility for her actions, develop her self-presentation skills and to write a career action plan to enable her to eventually gain promotion. This enabling process seemed to free her up to be able to access and utilise existing and new job competencies.  She is now HR & OD Director for a larger organisation where she is leading the way as the only woman on the board.

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Change Management  Case Study 2

 As a result of internal restructuring, opportunities arose for our client to promote technical specialists into managerial roles.  This production company ran a 24-hour shift operation involving shift crews and Shift Managers. Initially, I was brought in to mentor-coach two of the technical specialists who were experiencing difficulties with the transition to management and specifically with the issues they experienced with building effective teams.  Being highly qualified technical specialists with no employees to manage was quite a different role to managing teams of shift workers.  The managers’ confidence in their own abilities to manage, influence and deliver on objectives was decreasing and their inexperience of leveraging their positional power with personal influence non-existent. 

Over a period of ten months I worked individually with these two managers – and subsequently other Shift Managers – until the opportunity arose to work across the operation, with the staff teams.   It became apparent that working with one or two managers had impact on them and their individual teams.  In reviewing the coaching assignment with the senior manager who had sponsored the coaching work, it became clear that a more integrated approach, across the function, and to include the teams was necessary if the changes the organisation wanted and needed, was to be brought about.

We set out and produced a cross-function vision, developed a Development Strategy for the function. Working in own teams and multi-disciplinary teams for a series of ‘away day’ events, coaching and team building events over time, the function developed a sense of its own identity, conflicts within teams and across teams were resolved, new staff were recruited and inducted effectively.  As other training/development needs were identified, they were built into the change programme. The result was a highly effective set of teams who regained a sense of pride in their production achievements, a renewed motivation for work and loyalty to each other and the organisation.

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Preparing for Change  Case Study 3

Local Government is a challenging place to work and some time ago, one of my clients was faced with implementing a significant change programme driven by an imposed change in policy in service provision; moving from compulsive competitive tendering to best-value. With 150 managers and a huge staff across the city, the City Council were aware that in order for significant change programme to be effective, they needed all managers to have an opportunity to determine what it would mean for them, their service provision and the public they serve.  The Senior Management Team (SMT), advised by the very proactive and well experienced HR Manager were very keen to get as much buy-in as possible for the change.  

Working closely with the internal Transition Management Team (TMT) we developed a change programme which delivered the following :

- a two-day launch event, run using Open Space Technology principles, this set the scene for Best Value; managers signed-up to being involved in change-projects; began the process of taking ownership of the change; gave managers space to consider and share thoughts/strategies for implementation in their own departments/functions.

- training of internal facilitators across the organisation, working in collaboration with senior managers, their brief was to facilitate Best Value working groups across functions.

- development of BV Action Implementation Plans and regular reviews, with built in presentations to the Chief Executive

- regular updates to all staff via internal magazine, indicating both success stories and realistic statistics of where objectives had not been achieved.

- targeted consultancy to ‘problem’ departments, which overcame resistance to change and accelerated the change process

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Overworking & Re-building Confidence Case Study 3

  Working with an IT Manager, the first coaching meeting played out in a very surprising way.  I had been called in by the HR Director who explained that their IT Manager was experiencing stress in the managerial aspect of his role.  He explained that he had been working very long hours, was hugely committed to the organisation and his responsibilities, but he now needed some ‘space’ within his working day to think and plan.  The organisation wanted him to have help to think about 'some issues that need sorting'.  I agreed to an initial meeting with the IT Manager to determine whether we would progress further with coaching.  He started off in a coherent way, briefly describing his role & responsibilities and vague aspirations.  Asked how he thought coaching might help, he was less clear, as if he wasn't too convinced himself.  However, as he described his working circumstances, it was apparent that there were serious issues he wanted to address and interpersonal difficulties with a key team member.   He was highly stressed and anxious, that in agreeing to provide coaching, the organisation would 'engineer' him out of job or into some other role (his fear was that he might be demoted).  

In later  sessions, we identified where he was contributing valuably to the organisation and to how opportunities might exist to 'bring on' other members of the team who showed potential.   Asked if he had discussed his anxieties with his HR or line manager, he said no. He realised he wanted to do this and we prepared him for such a discussion. When he took action he was surprised how well it went and he came away convinced that they organisation were committed to his continued employment and development. Using a variety of approaches including the SCORE model and the 5QF framework, he approached his role with renewed vigour.  He completed a set of 8 coaching sessions feeling refreshed, refocused and with ideas about how to interact more effectively with his whole team.

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Getting through the Resistance Case Study 4 

  Earlier in the year I was asked to work with a team of six accountants. Without exception, they were a very highly professionally qualified group and most had achieved or were on their way to MBA or equivalent level qualifications.  Four had joined the team in the past nine months. A new company-driven competency framework had identified that the team, while very professionally competent, were poorly developed in the area of staff management and leadership.  Driven by explicit dual outcomes of personal development and learning for the individuals and return on investment for the organisation, I set about a parallel task of working with the group with the purpose of helping them develop as a team, and coaching them as individuals around their personal learning needs. 

One of the managers started out by saying he was very committed to taking up the coaching facility. In practice however, he was frequently ‘busy’ and unable to make our meetings. He produced an initial version of the agreed Learning Contract (part of the agreement I made with the team in the early stages) but failed to meet with his peers when it was time for feedback.  

One of the patterns that I noticed about him was ‘saying one thing, doing another’ – and always with ‘ legitimate business reasons’. With this insight in mind at our next meeting, I developed a metaphorical story and started our next meeting by telling it.  I then asked him what resonated for him.  He said ‘Nothing’.   However, at our next meeting he began by saying ‘I was thinking about that story you told me and about my situation ……’  and we had a turning point.  After that he was able to open his mind and heart to thinking about what is really important to him and to taking control of his career, rather than being a frustrated passive receiver of events within the organisation. Over a period of six months we worked together to prepare him for and support his team through a major change programme within the  organisation.  Stories of the other team members may be focus of a future case study.

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Testimonials

One woman admitted she had doubts about whether the move into management was a change she wanted to make.  She used the programme to help her clarify where she was headed and what she wanted. Three days after the programme, she attended the interview and was offered the job. Her career path now offers quite different possibilities.  She commented "I'd probably not have even gone for the interview if I hadn't taken part in the workshop.  I'm so excited about my new role, thank you,"

More recently, a participant emailed me after the November 05 programme to say " the course I felt inspired as I said at the closing session, more confident and viewed things with new eyes and definitely came away from the course knowing that I could and would be going into a management position, thank you Catherine I have never felt that good about a course in the 19 years that I have been working in the Council, well done you.

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