Who I Work With
- I coach senior executive groups wanting to boost their creativity, unity and results to what I call Real Team level within a few months.
- One characteristic is common to them all: they are serious about wanting to raise team performance for the sake of their business.
Clients' Typical Problems
It’s hard getting a bunch of high-achieving adults to perform a task together when they have different priorities, blind spots and opinions. That’s why clients see one or more of these problems in their teams:
- Low energy, creativity or participation despite an urgent need to improve results.
- Members agree to act on decisions, but execution is then slow, sloppy or doesn’t happen.
- Members put their selfish interests or department “turf” ahead of the team’s goals.
- Position, status or domineering behaviour stifles members’ potential to contribute.
- Cliques, politicking or a refusal to listen to others’ viewpoints drags down results.
These problems affect most teams, especially leadership teams. The trouble is, problems in your leadership team infect the rest of the organisation because together your hands are on the climate control dial.
Coaching Outcomes
I offer a measurable coaching process. The key to remember is that this is team coaching, not training. Unlike a trainer I don’t impose my goals on you. I agree the agenda with you, meaning you remain in control. Your specific goals, issues and rate of progress define the contents and pace.
You’ll quickly master the principles of teambuilding in action, working with live issues, so together you can think clearly under pressure, just like an elite sports team. That way you’ll keep your performance high without my help after we finish.
Here are before-and-after coaching profiles for two top teams I’ve coached in different industries:
Team Ratings on 25 Key Attributes & Behaviours under Pressure
As you see from the differences between the light blue bars (before coaching) and dark blue bars (after coaching), both teams upped their game. People outside the two teams confirmed that they’d changed. More important, both teams delivered results they’d struggled to achieve before. The second team, for example, managed to grow their sales by over 50% in three years – an increase that far outpaced their market.
Example: A Leadership Team's Story
The new President of a $500m company was worried. He suspected it would miss its main target of being #2 in Europe within 5 years, which would attract criticism from HQ. The trouble is, he wasn’t sure he was right. And he worried that any shift in strategy would be controversial because it might demand a new vision and fresh initiatives. His other problem? He and his independently-minded senior managers weren’t a real team. His people largely followed their own agendas.
So he called me in to coach him and his nine-strong group. Over a seven-month coaching process that often involved heated disagreement (and awkward silences) they:
- Agreed that they would indeed miss their long term target by $140m.
- Created a distinctive new vision that would more than plug the $140m gap.
- Agreed an action plan, which they went on to deliver, becoming #2 in Europe.
Above all, they transformed themselves from an opinionated group of senior executives working in silos into a real team. Their higher morale, unity and creativity meant that they didn’t stop at their original goal. The company is now #1 in Europe.
Free 90 minute strategy session
I’m offering you a free strategy session.
It has three aims. One, to help you detect the main issues in your management group. Two, to help you assess whether it’s time for you and your colleagues to become a real team. Three, to help you see where your chief challenges will lie as you climb the team progression curve.