CASE STUDY
Revitalizing a Leadership Team
Background
A global company's US based leadership team, newly formed and composed of recently promoted functional leaders faced a myriad of challenges. These included ambiguity in decision-making authority, unclear roles and responsibilities, and interpersonal issues that hindered collaboration and progress.
The team was also oversized, which further complicated communication and decision-making. Additionally, there was a lack of clarity regarding who was responsible for setting enterprise goals, leading to confusion and misalignment between global and local leadership.
Intervention:
Leadership Team Coaching
Duration: 6 Months
Bright Arrow, an Executive Coaching and Leadership Team Coaching firm, was engaged to provide team coaching. The engagement included:
Discovery: Immersion in the culture to gain outside-in and inside-out perspectives:
- Team meeting observation
- Artifacts review and analysis
- Team & stakeholder interviews
- Team member skills evaluation
- Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS)
Workshops: A series of workshops focused on refining the team's purpose, defining and committing to measurable results as a team, establishing effective working rhythms, and implementing tools for prioritization and decision-making. These workshops utilized dynamic, live exercises to engage the team and tailor the solutions to their specific needs.
Bi-Weekly Team Coaching: Ongoing coaching sessions to support the team "on the field" as they worked towards their goals. These sessions addressed emerging challenges and necessary upskilling, including trust, agility, risk, and prioritization.
Outcomes:
The coaching engagement resulted in substantial improvements
Enhanced Team Dynamics:
The team developed a clearer shared purpose, improved communication, and increased trust and collaboration. They also established norms around candor, enterprise thinking, and accountability.
- Take more risks and speak with candor
- Move from functional to enterprise thinking
- Think and act strategically
- Level-up team meeting agendas and collaboration
- Set measurable results and hold the leadership team accountable
- Clarify decision making authority
- Cultivate an environment of respect, comradery and professionalism as we work toward our program goals
Team of Teams (ToTs):
Support for ToTs to deliver on their unique initiatives with greater agility in 4 month sprints. Bright Arrow taught the team how to disband ToTs as they complete work and how to form new ones when they need to. The ToTs bring their work back to the broader team when they need feedback or decision and to keep each other aware of progress and roadblocks.
Ongoing team of teams coaching to help them deliver on their unique items. Three team of teams were charged with:
- Creating a centralized tool and review process that would establish enterprise priorities and help the team integrate emerging priorities and reprioritize/deprioritize as needed.
- Culture: What are our company’s renewed values as we transform our organization in preparation for expansion and greater agility? And once established, how do we drive those in our organization?
- Capabilities: What capabilities does our talent need to have in order to support our future ready organization? How does this impact our hiring and talent management process? Raise the bar on performance.
Improved Business Performance:
The US division exceeded its plan goals, including sales performance, demonstrating the positive impact of the team's improved effectiveness.
Effective Working Practices:
The team implemented tools for prioritization, decision-making, and managing changing priorities. They also established clear norms and practices for accountability and utilized the ToTs model to deliver on key initiatives.
Functional Area Reorganization:
The coaching indirectly led to positive changes in functional areas, which underwent reorganizations to better support enterprise goals.
Conclusion
Through structured coaching and development, the US Leadership Team overcame its initial challenges and achieved significant improvements in both team dynamics and business outcomes. The coaching engagement provided the team with the tools, support, and guidance needed to navigate complex challenges, enhance collaboration, and drive business success. The team's ability to deliver on additional high-value work demonstrates the impact of effective leadership team coaching.
