Case Studies
Case Study 1 : Developing as a leader – expanding communications skills
Client: A leading global oil company Exec
The focus for the coaching was the client’s wish to expand his leadership skills: he was moving into a wider arena of influence, and had been promoted into a more senior role, reporting directly to an Executive Director. He was particularly interested to explore how he could more effectively engage with people who were different from him, a common aim among senior leaders leading increasingly diverse teams.
At the same time the function was also going through a review of its effectiveness, so the coaching had to take account of this too.
Coaching Aims
Some aims for the coaching were developed, focusing on a number of core development needs:
- Becoming more effective as a leader by letting go of the detail
- Improving effectiveness of performance conversations with direct reports
- Developing active listening skills and encouraging diverse points of view
- Coaching the team to see the wider patterns and links between projects
- Energizing people – emotionally as well as rationally
After the first session, he undertook a feedback process (designed by Rachael Ross Coaching) in order to gather some 360 degree feedback on his leadership style.
This process provided rich material to deepen insights into his own strengths, and further clarified where he wanted to make changes, and focus his learning.
A sporting metaphor emerged during the first session, as part of his personal vision: a football coach who had successfully “moved from player coach to manager.” This gave him an effective way of recalling how he wanted to be and the overall shift in style he wanted to achieve.
At each session (a mix of face to face and phone coaching sessions), he clarified what he wanted from the session as well as moving towards the overall goal. (For example there were two key meetings which took place shortly before a coaching session, and he was able to build in immediate learning by reviewing those immediately afterwards in a coaching session.)
He worked through the development goals he had set himself, reviewing those he had been experimenting with in the intervening weeks, and developing a number of new practices to support his development goals.
Some of these goals included:
- Practising deeper listening
- engaging in “open performance conversations” with his team, (building on the very open exchange
encouraged by the feedback process) - making changes in how he briefed projects, by giving more clarity on standards required, and stepping back and
allowing team members to drive the agenda more often - showing own vulnerability by revealing more of “the full me”, and encouraging others to do the same
- developing an informality in meetings to encourage openness.
During the coaching process we were able to make a clear link between the development areas the client was working on, and how those tied into the overall model of excellence in leadership, recently launched by the organisation, which set out a number of competencies falling into “strategic” and “people related” competencies.
Coaching Results
The results from the coaching were:
- the Coachee felt he had created more space to reflect during his working day, now he had stepped back from the detail
- he was connecting more easily with a wider variety of people – emotionally as well as strategically / technically.
- feedback from colleagues that he had made some definite changes in his style, eg more useful input to teams re overview
- feedback from HR supplier contacts that direction given to them was clearer
- feedback from a key colleague that he had listened to her proposed approach and changed a meeting design as a result.
Case Study 2: Taking confidence to new levels
Client: Director, Global management consultancy practice
As part of her increased responsibilities as a Director of a global consulting firm, the client wanted to review her ability to sell onto new clients and win business. She explored some underlying beliefs about what selling meant to her and was able to reframe how she saw selling. She was also able to reconnect to her skills and experience as a consultant, and found she increased her confidence about work.
As a result she improved her performance at selling and over the coming months brought in a number of significant new pieces of business for the organisation. She was able to connect to the perspective clients in a new way, as she now felt she could sell to them from her standpoint of being authentically herself, rather than trying to be the “salesperson” she thought she should be.
“I just wanted to thank you for the coaching support you have given me this year. It has been immensely beneficial and professionally I have not felt this confident for a long time.
It is no secret that repeat business is a sign of successful consulting. Colleagues observed that I was beginning to sell on to existing clients with rigour and success. Coaching helped me to recognize my own strengths at selling; and also gave me a focus for fine tuning my listening and questioning skills. The proof is in the results I was able to secure £100,000 business in 10 weeks from two important clients.
Case Study 3 - revitalising the organisation’s values and working culture
Client: Consultancy wing of a Global Engineering firm
The consultancy wing of a leading engineering firm was taking a hard look at it’s culture and values - there was some negative feedback from younger members of staff - especially from women - which caused the senior management team to decide that things needed to change.
However this needed to be done in a sensitive way, which involved the whole team and allowed the firm’s many good features to shine through too.
We were commissioned by the MD to start with coaching sessions with key members of the team – senior managers and junior members of staff.
This was followed by a presentation and report of the key points about the culture – both the positive aspects, and proposals for change.
As a result, we were asked to design and run an awayday for the whole team, where we facilitated a review of the values and behaviours currently prevalent and how people believed these needed to change.
Throughout the project we worked closely with HR, training and OD, and the awayday was co facilitated with colleagues from HR in the organisation.
The end result was a new set of values with examples of behaviour which importantly, were fully owned by the whole team.
“Your style and credibility matched up well with our senior team’s needs“
“Excellent all round.. Extremely responsive and workshop was a direct hit.”
“We thought you kept our diverse group enthused, focussed and productive”
“The one to one coaching was a real success, in great part due to your fantastic listening skills”
Case Study 4 : Boosting innovation and creativity
Client: Global creative team
I was asked to create and facilitate a session focused on innovation for his team. Innovative and creative thinking is essential to this team – their role is to support the business in developing options for new power stations, both fossil fuel and new technology solutions.
The purposes for the session were:
- To explore a core value for the team–and the business: innovation.
- To do something creative and fun together as a team
- To draw out the learning about creative and innovative behaviour, and to challenge ourselves to do things better/differently
- To reinforce and build on the team spirit that exists between team members
“the session had great energy and a sense of fun. In the group task, people experienced being innovative in its purest form – no gadgetry - just the energy generated by the group and its ideas”.
Case Study 5 : Leadership : developing a new working style for an new role
Client: Director, Government Department, Central London
A senior manager in a large government organisation was taking on a number of new roles, and finding that he was spending long hours in the office. He was increasingly uncomfortable about the number of hours spent away from his desk, in what felt like unproductive meetings.
He had received some complaints about his management style, that it was too aggressive and demanding of subordinates and colleagues.
Over a series of face to face meetings and telephone coaching, he was able to review the current situation, and explore some of the underlying beliefs about his role at work.
Helping him to focus on his vision of the future, he was able to develop a set of goals for the changes he wanted to make. These included prioritising where he spent time, how he needed to restructure his work portfolio, and how to use the resources around him differently.
Other changes included setting goals re work life balance – agreeing some parameters about how much time he was prepared to dedicate to work, and cutting down the number of meetings.
“You have been very sensitive to my needs and have provided me with a framework on which I can work to improve my working methods”
Case study 6 : Deepening inclusive leadership capability
Client: UK Board of a Utilities Company
As part of an organisation wide programme a series of coaching sessions were arranged for the UK Board Directors, following up on a one day leadership workshop on Inclusion and Diversity.
These were mostly held face to face, with the exception of one US based Director, where we offered telecoaching.
The coaching was an opportunity for each Director to follow up on the workshop, and deepen their learning from it. It was a chance for leaders to explore any concerns too. The outputs included committing to a series of practical steps that would set the pace for the cultural change the organisation was looking to achieve.
Personal learning goals were set by each Director, including skill development in areas such as empathy, deep listening, and developing emotional resources around curiosity about people who seem very different.
Work was also done at a beliefs level – confirming resourceful beliefs which supported the aim of being an inclusive leader, and unpicking a few limiting beliefs and related anxiety around eg performance management of employees ensuring quality of delivery was tempered with an emotionally intelligent approach.
Some wider OD themes formed a backgrop to the inclusive leadership coaching, (eg minimising hierarchy) and the individual coaching could also boost the team’s collective energies and focus on these themes.