E. Powers & Associates observes a policy of strict confidentiality concerning executives we coach, the responses of those we interview, and the situations we encounter in client organizations. The descriptions that follow have been altered to disguise the actual persons and organizations involved, but they are accurate representations of the situations, the actions we took in response, and the outcomes of the assignment.

Case Study

Helping an Executive Adapt to a New Organization

Situation
After considering potential internal candidates, our client went outside to find a director who could bring new life and a new way of looking at things to its financial services group. Following the new director’s arrival, however, it became clear that his considerable financial insight and strategic perspective on the business came with a leadership style significantly different from the one the client’s management team had expected.

In the director’s former organization, employees were expected to be self-starters, outperform each other on the basis of individual initiative, and challenge every decision to minimize the chance for errors. While social skills were valuable, there was no penalty for staying to oneself, and many employees left their offices and cubicles only to attend weekly update meetings or make calls on vendors and clients.

By comparison, the client organization was highly social; the members of the group gave each other positive feedback even when performance was poor; and there was a strong “go-along, get-along” ethos in the culture and in the director’s workgroup. Not surprisingly, then, preliminary interviews with the director’s manager revealed that many of his fellow managers and several key employees in the group found him cold, overly critical of their ideas and work, and not a “team player.”

Action
Esther interviewed the director and found that he, too, was troubled by his difficulty fitting in and his inability to motivate the group. To help him better understand the situation, we administered a Birkman management style assessment; asked the members of his workgroup, his manager and peers to provide feedback via an online survey; and interviewed representative respondents to validate and elaborate on the issues the feedback instrument had identified.

Coaching based on the interviews and output from the assessment instruments helped the new director see that his preferred management style had been a natural fit with his old organization: he felt most comfortable when he could work alone much of the time, set high standards for himself and for others, and otherwise stay clear of group activities. In the new environment, however, his natural work and leadership style led the members of his group to assume that he didn’t like them. And the fact that when he did interact with them, he seemed only to question their judgment and find fault with their work only made things worse.

During his coaching sessions, we helped the new director better understand the strengths as well as the liabilities of his new organization’s culture. We also provided him with specific, proven techniques for interacting more productively with his workgroup. In this way, we were able to help him maintain his personal strength as an insightful, strategic thinker and highly competitive, financial professional and at the same time overcome the misunderstandings that were blocking his progress as a leader and a standard-bearer for higher performance in the group.

Result
Six months after the close of the assignment, the online assessment we had used originally showed that the director’s manager, peers, and direct reports now saw strong, positive differences in his behavior as a manager and leader. And the output from the group, measured on the basis of benchmarks we helped the director establish and communicate, had clearly improved as well.

Leadership Team Coaching

Situation
Our client, a Fortune 500 company with global operations, bought a large-scale production facility in the United States with over 2,000 employees. After a year, the plant was performing well below expectations: entire runs of key products had to be recalled, some more than once; and a culture survey, performed by corporate HR, revealed low morale and poor respect, dignity, and trust—all key corporate values.

Our own preliminary evaluation, based on interviews with management and a representative sample of employees, showed extensive siloing, lack of documented processes, and–where processes did exist–lack of adherence to them. There were few if any metrics in place to help align processes and outcomes with corporate objectives for the plant and very low awareness of the objectives that did exist and why they mattered.

Action
Following corporate-level decisions about the makeup of the plant’s management team, E. Powers & Associates provided individual and then group coaching for all members of the team. In the process we used Birkman data to look at

• Each individual’s fit with the role he or she had been assigned in improving the plant’s performance
• The collective strengths and developmental needs of the management team as a whole and their fit with the plant’s overall goals and objectives, for both productivity and adherence to corporate cultural values

During a custom-designed off-site workshop, E. Powers and internal HR helped the group look at its collective profile, then decide how it could best take advantage of its inherent strengths and address its greatest potential liabilities. The managers also worked together to build a model of the business and its systems, define measures they felt would reflect corporate goals and objectives, and assess their collective ability to meet those goals based on the group’s profile.

Following the off-site, we continued to work with plant managers, individually and as a group, to design new processes, fine-tune outcome measures, and define individual managers’ goals and career plans. We also provided coaching on leadership skills, managing frictions with other members of the management team, and building high-performance work teams within the various functional units.

Results
In less than two years, the plant had built a network of interlocking systems and a management structure that made it a model for other plants in the division. Its practices became the benchmark for manufacturing facilities worldwide, and its managers were instrumental in cascading key systems and insights throughout the corporation.

Managing a Career Change for a Successful Vice President

Situation
An executive with more than 20 years of successful experience at a major corporation had begun to withdraw emotionally from her work and responsibilities. The client’s HR organization asked E. Powers & Associates to evaluate the situation and work with the executive to resolve whatever issues were affecting her productivity.

Action
A series of interviews with members of the executive team and with the candidate herself quickly brought the core issue to light. Some months earlier, she had presented an idea for a new business to corporate management. While the idea was clearly exciting and seemed to have significant potential, corporate management rejected it for reasons that had never adequately been explained.

None of that, however, diminished the executive’s excitement about the idea, and the glimpse of a new role and a new challenge made her other responsibilities seem mundane by comparison.

To help resolve the problem, we first asked corporate management for permission to explore alternate career paths with the executive, including careers that would allow her start the business on her own. With their permission, we helped the executive

• Evaluate careers inside and outside the company
• Examine her strengths based on past performance reviews, Birkman data, and comments from those who had worked with her closely
• Match her profile with the various alternatives careers we identified and select the ones that seemed most promising
• Assemble a “vision board” to imagine how the success of the new business and her role in it might look
• Formulate a transition plan that included re-energizing and re-engaging with her established responsibilities while she took the first steps on the road to a new career
• Arrange a series of informational interviews with others who had followed similar paths

Results
The executive re-engaged with her work and became more productive than ever. At the same time, the informational interviews and the visioning process quickly led to funding for the business venture and a venture partner. The executive’s former corporation is now a customer for her new company’s service products.