I feel privileged to have worked with some very talented people in the past.
These are just three of their stories.
Personal Development
When a highly talented young lawyer was recruited from a major City of London bank to be the Company Secretary and Head of the Legal Department of a large Building Society, he found some adjustment difficult to manage. Having previously only had one P.A. reporting to him, he now found himself managing a team of ten. He asked for business mentoring to help improve his skills in people management.
Our working together on his specific development needs proved so successful that the effects could be felt throughout the organisation. So much so in fact, he was promoted to run both the Society’s Property and Human Resources departments with a total team of over 200. We continued to work together intensively during a period of major organisational restructuring after a change of ownership. His results during this time proved so successful that he was again promoted. His view is that my mentoring had been pivotal in his progress.
At his recommendation I also mentored his deputy who succeeded him in heading the Property Department and again was successful in managing change in a dynamic situation. When he too was promoted he insisted on us continuing to work together.
Conflict at Senior Management Level
I was approached by the Chief Executive of a Financial Services Company to work with two of the company’s senior managers. While both very capable and experienced, they were so incompatible as people that they scarcely spoke.
There was concern that their poor working relationship was affecting their performance, their co-worker’s and the company’s. I coached them for a year towards achieving an awareness of how to understand and work synergistically with differing personality types. They then worked well together and their improved performance, in the CEO’s words, had a noticeable and consistently positive effect. (The younger of them has since moved on to take up successfully a more senior position in another Financial Services Company).
Improved Strategic Development Within International Insurance Company
A successful Regional Manager in a major international insurance company was transferred to a staff job in Head Office where she was charged with devising and progressing the strategic development thinking of the company. With her inventive, enthusiastic and humorous approach she soon captured the imagination of many, but struggled to make an impression on some of the most senior people. An excellent line manager, she was challenged by the difference between leading and directing a team and the more nuanced approach to influencing the thinking of people senior to herself.
We worked together over 12 months, during which time she led a major strategic review for the company and, at her review, received universal accolades from people at all levels for her performance: in the words of a senior colleague, “Good to work with – a great balance of challenge and openness to the contribution of others.” The company was so impressed with her that they appointed her as Chief Executive of one of their UK subsidiaries. After less than a year, during which I continued to work with her and to train her team, she has been asked by the parent company to lead a major restructuring of their operations in Australia.