Case studies
CASE STUDY: Lifting leadership in a fast-growing media business
What was happening:
This client is a highly successful and fast-growing media organisation. An internal restructure promoted many of the function heads to the senior management team where both their personal leadership qualities and their strategic capabilities would be tested to the full.
To take the business into its next growth phase, the management group needed to develop a common purpose and be accountable for making it happen. They also wanted to create a culture of performance.
What we did:
We created a development programme which combined offsite group workshops, with on-site 1-to-1 coaching and 360° feedback, and covered the following:
- Awareness – understanding what it takes to be a leader and awareness of leadership strengths and limitations
- Personal Challenge – how to develop skills and behaviours and lift these to the next level
- Team Challenge – how to operate more effectively as the senior team and use collective ‘wisdom’ to grow the business
- Business Challenge – identifying current business issues, exploring root causes and agreeing solutions
- Momentum – how to build support in and outside the business and ensure action
- Measurement – how to recognise success and track progress
The results:
The leadership team worked together to jointly understand what their shared challenges were and then created a collective purpose and clear goals.
Crucially, they translated their understanding of effective group behaviours into a kind of ‘code of conduct’ that has helped them to have more productive operational and strategic meetings.
The programme also helped them personally to lead their teams with more purpose, confidence and skill, which this has improved.
CASE STUDY: Lifting leadership capability
What was happening:
This organisation is a market leader in its field, having grown from a handful of people to a multi-million pound business. After a period of rapid, aggressive growth the organisation needed to consolidate and put in place the structure, processes and capability that would enable the business to thrive as successfully in the future.
Some of the issues included
:
- A static leadership layer – with little movement, no structured personal development and a reluctance to rock the boat
- Lack of shared vision or strategy; with little involvement for up-and-coming leaders in strategy formation and a lack of collaboration around implementation plans.
What we did:
Working with senior management, we developed a six-month leadership programme aimed at the organisation’s Vice Presidents. The aim was two-fold: to develop the personal capability of this level to lead their own functions, and to create impact in the organisation by increasing the collective leadership of this level.
The programme focused on four dimensions of leadership:
- Collaborating – tapping into the knowledge and emotions of others to lift performance to higher levels
- Thinking collectively – using effective processes and behaviours to build innovative solutions for the future
- Inspiring – communicating ideas with impact, building support and commitment, creating confidence and energy
- Delivering – ensuring the right things happen at the right time to deliver the right result
The results:
The individual participants felt more confident in their leadership skills, and reported increased performance and morale.
The business reported a variety of projects that were succeeding as a result of collaborative thinking – the sort of cross-functional initiatives that were previously prone to floundering. Participants attributed this to the communication processes and creative forums they had instigated.
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