Case Studies

Crown Corporation – Developing effective teams

Challenge

Our client was a multinational American company with a small executive team of four reporting to the CEO. They were highly ambitious, but instead of working as a team, they operated individually and were very protective of their roles and responsibilities. The task was to get the management team to work more effectively as a team and promote initiative-taking, risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking, while challenging and changing the behavior and attitudes of each individual.

Process

The coaching program ran for nine months and was made up of seven coaching sessions and a one-day change workshop. At the outset, the individual agreed their goals and objectives for the program and articulated exactly what value the results would be and associated milestones for each. Each meeting lasted one and a half hours, in which a particular goal was chosen and focused on for the session.

Result

Initial changes could be seen after just three months. This included a measurable difference in both the quality and number of contributions to the monthly management meetings, as well as on an individual performance level.

With all four executives participating in the coaching program, this created an awareness of change on a very personal level. This was supported with the coaching sessions being fully confidential between coach and client, meaning they shared their own views, opinions and short-comings with the coach, who was able to comment in an open and frank manner while getting them the result.

“ I was astounded to see them present to me on average two pages of ideas on how to drive the business forward, as compared to a few paragraphs in previous reviews. The fact that they enjoy the coaching and the significant effort they have to invest to get the results, is perhaps the key here. In addition, we are significantly ahead of budget in terms of sales (20% ahead) and profitability (25% ahead) and I hold this bottom line result directly attributable to the coaching process”.

David Kerr, CEO, Crown Corporation