Coaching

Coaching Caselet

A senior executive at a large national financial institution identified a high-potential junior executive within his department, and wanted to provide him ample opportunities for development. This rising star possessed remarkable technical expertise, and already had a reputation for being “one of the smartest people in the room”—even at the most senior levels of the bank. He struggled, however, with managing his staff. His tendency to avoid conflict often caused him to wait until problems on his team reached a boiling point.

OLG provided a coach who interviewed his team members to help this executive develop clear behavioral goals that focused on changing his longstanding patterns in relationship to managing people. Over the course of 10 face-to-face meetings across 5 months, the coach and this executive were able to experiment with a range of new behaviors to help him deal with conflict. The executive discovered which new behaviors felt most natural and authentic for him, and implemented those behaviors that had the greatest impact on his team members. By the end of the engagement, both the client and the members of his team during a follow-up interview reported significant improvement in dealing with issues directly and early. This significantly improved relationships within the group, and an improved working environment. This team developed greater capacity for collaborative problem solving. The group collectively decided to re-assign internal projects and tasks in a way that made more sense to everyone.