Case Study: Team Coaching

Situation and Challenge

After completing a two-round coaching assignment with a senior leader for this innovative consumer products company, a new opportunity arose to help them create and launch an extended leadership team. This team would unify cross-functional leaders who were working in their functional silos, reporting to their respective functional senior leaders. The team saw this as an opportunity to create an important strategic entity for the organization, build greater leadership capacity, and begin a development process for their future leaders.

Services Provided

A colleague and I designed a custom three-phased team launch, the center of which was a two day retreat. There was a pre-meeting with the senior leaders to plan and help build joint expectations for their launch, a two-day off-site retreat that would focus on a variety of interactive events and learning, and a post-retreat session focused on a report-back from the new extended leader team. The retreat incorporated rich learning opportunities on team fundamentals like their vision, rules of operating, best ways to give feedback, call out counter-productive behavior, and how to run their meetings effectively. Sprinkled in were problem solving challenges, team-puzzling fun, and an expression of appreciation for one another.

Results

The group was able to establish a solid sense of identity and agreed to their rules of engagement. They had tools for better communication, managing conflicting situations, and even some their respective stressors. They were energized to take on a higher level responsibility within the organization, identifying new areas of business and solving strategic issues. They decided to display their new team and meeting tactics when we held the post-retreat meeting, as they reported back to the senior leaders on what they accomplished in their launch.