What We Did
The incoming CEO instigated a customised development programme for his executive board, utilising a Deep C coach over a twelve-month period. Concerned about the board’s apparent lack of strategic alignment, there were some underlying differences of opinion regarding several regulatory and market-led changes facing the business.
Despite the current good health of the business, the CEO saw that much-needed change was happening too slowly; with efforts diluted by what was viewed as fragmented leadership from the very top of the organisation. The programme was informed by fact-find interviews with individual board members, several other senior leaders and NEDs. At its core, it comprised a series of one-day team coaching sessions, each of which followed one of the board’s monthly meetings.
There was strong buy-in from board members to the concept of such a programme, helped by their collective acknowledgement that they rarely had the bandwidth to focus on their own leadership development or to take stock of how they were viewed as change leaders within the business. Each one-day session provided some thought-provoking diagnostic and benchmark data for review and allowed time for reflection and discussion in terms of its implications.
There was a strong emphasis on experimentation; both in terms of identifying and building new habits in a ‘safe’ environment, as well as devising, implementing and reviewing action assignments that took place in between sessions. Each session also included some time to co-create a broad agenda for the following meeting, as well as a review of ongoing progress. The themes for the various sessions included addressing leadership paradoxes and blind spots arising from the company’s rapidly evolving ‘new normal’; creating the right organisational conditions for change; the role of the executive team in facilitating change, and self-leadership, change and transition
The Leadership Advantage
- The board were unanimous regarding the value of creating time to think creatively, away from daily business reality
- Board members’ awareness regarding their role as enablers of change in their evolving ‘new normal’ significantly increased
- There was improved understanding as to how conflictual positions were being driven by unseen group dynamics
- The programme provided a mandate for more extensive investment in how the people side of change was managed.