Developing Managers to build a High-Performing Team & Culture
As part of an organisational effort to drive employee engagement and create a performance-oriented culture, a global consulting company sought to create and roll-out a tailored development program for all managers in Global Marketing Services across the globe.
They needed a strategic partner who could design, develop and implement the customised solution and related services to approximately 97 managers across 7 business verticals in just six months.
Leadership Tribe took on the assignment with a customer-centric approach and commitment to deliver value.
Leadership Tribe Values:
- Customer Centric
- Open Communication and Honesty
- Learn and Progress
- Teamwork and finding complementary skills
- Commitment
- Trust and Mutual Respect
The Challenge
In the highly competitive Information Technology industry, it takes more than just a great CEO to drive company success. Our client understood the importance of developing a robust leadership culture to drive the organisation’s performance. And Leadership Tribe helped it to design the leadership development programs to deliver its aspiration and improve the leadership skills of its managers.
The team goals were to look at improving the management skill sets of more than 80% of the managers participating in the development programs in areas of leading and coaching. It clearly defined what it means to be a good manager and five key competencies were considered essential to having a successful team:
- Decision making – setting direction and strategy
- Team leader – leading and coaching people
- Focusing on what matters
- Personal leadership
- Executing and making things happen
In 2018, our client was committed to identify the potential development areas for its managers in the Global Marketing Services division and help them to improve toward the specified benchmarks. The challenge was that it needed to evaluate and provide personalised feedback to its managers around their development and core behaviours and that any development instruments or coaching frameworks had to link to the division’s way of working and common goal.
Furthermore, the development of instruments and coaching services would have to be applied in multiple locations. Any business partner engaged to help with its manager development program would have to provide coaches in different sites. And as a high-priority organisational initiative, executives wanted to ensure that the partner they turned to had the bandwidth to deliver measurable, high-quality results on time.
Their Human Resource & Development has strong competence for internal resource development capabilities, and they have also used a variety of external providers for various training and development programs. They turned to Leadership Tribe to design and implement the Manager Development program for its proven track record of service excellence and value-added.
“It is always critical to ensure the best quality in our implementation of initiatives, and a global player that has the capability, expertise and commitment to deliver value for us is a must.”
– Strategic Leader, Global Marketing Services
In May 2018, Leadership Tribe signed an agreement to implement a customised development initiative, delivering a 360-degree developmental instrument and a creative coaching program to all the management staff in the Global Marketing Services division.
Signing the agreement was just the beginning of a dynamic journey of collaboration in an ambitious timeframe. They would develop and roll out the program in waves across the country and all the development instruments and subsequent coaching sessions would be completed.
The Solution
The Management Development program was rolled out to 85 General Managers and 12 Senior Executives worldwide.
A webinar included the Senior Executives was held to kick off the program for all participants in May 2018. It was then rolled out across 7 business areas in the following months. Leadership Tribe onboarded new team members and deployed its coaches to various locations to ensure complete coverage and local focus.
There were two tiers in the training program, one for General Managers and the other one for Senior Executives. Both groups have been assessed for their particular development needs and mapped to the desired competency benchmark, to generate specific coaching solution for each management tier.
The General Managers attended three hours of coaching fortnightly, consisting of a two-hour face-to-face session with a Leadership Tribe coach followed by a one-hour virtual alignment meeting with their boss and the coach. Their development plans were captured in an individualised development map. Similarly, the Senior Executives received two hours of coaching weekly, an one-hour coaching session followed by another one-hour meeting with their boss to link coaching with their development plan, review progress and course correct for the next session.
The clear focus on the company’s management development initiative encouraged the change of behaviour of its managers – individual development plans were tied to managers’ performance reviews and check in sessions were set up between coachees and their bosses to engage the senior members of the team and get their buy-in.
The results were valuable in advising surfacing areas for further development:
- Communication skills
- Building collaborative relationships
- Leading teams and Taking Actions
Outcomes and lessons learnt
Over the course of the development program, coaches delivered coaching services to 97 managers. The participants who have been coached, as well as organisation senior executives who oversaw the program, confirmed that it delivered significant value for the company and improved its overall performance.
The client and Leadership Tribe faced two critical challenges as they implemented the program:
- They had to design a development assessment and coaching solution that would map closely to the desired key management competencies while constructing the development program leveraging on the latest research and know-how. Leadership Tribe’s experience in conducting research and applying that to corporate leadership team development was an important contributor to its ability to create an effective team program for this global consultancy enterprise.
- Problem solving and logistics had to be diligently managed thanks to the timeline and the number of people involved. Leadership Tribe’s project manager monitored every detail of the program closely, from distributing materials to recruiting new coaches. Leadership Tribe and the client held weekly calls to ensure the program stayed on track and on target.
“Leadership Tribe worked closely with our key stakeholders to understand our needs and implemented the management development program successfully within our specifications in a limited time-frame. The initiative was a great success and we are looking forward to sustaining the impact.” – Human Resource & Development Manager
Improve Your Team Today: Contact Leadership Tribe
Characteristics of high performing teams can vary quite a bit. There is no one silver bullet to uplift leadership and team culture and they are several ways to train and coach management.
To find out more about how we can add value to your teams and organisation by driving constant improvement, empowering employees, providing better and faster customer services at a lower cost, contact us to arrange a session where we can help to carve out strategy and bespoke programs in an practical and measurable way that suits your team dynamics and team needs.
