Coaching Leadership Teams To Exceed Their Targets

One of the largest multinational medical devices companies in the world with a turnover of 30 billion dollars needed to address some significant challenges in one of their senior leadership teams.

This leadership team was responsible for large parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East with high profile clients such as Ministries of Health, major hospitals, the military and large Public Health Institutions.

The Challenge

The COVID19 lockdowns had left 15 leadership team members representing ten nationalities, stranded and working mainly online in different countries.

This team was struggling with multiple challenges:

1. New Leadership from a vice president who no one knew or trusted

2. Slow decision making and implementation (in part due to the matrix management structure)

3. Cultural diversity issues with team members representing ten nationalities

4. Isolation, with team members separated from their peers and their teams, across seven countries, as COVID forced them to work from home

5. Limited resources and a pressure on individuals (rather than the team) to meet ambitious financial targets.

The question on everyone’s mind was “how does this Leadership Team do anything other than add more pressure to my life?”

It was clear that the leadership team had to learn quickly how to work together in an Emotionally Intelligent way to improve relationships, accountability for managing the COVID-19 response, whilst driving forward and delivering the progressive business outcomes that had been previously set.

The goal was to unite the leadership team with a common purpose, a clear identity, and a commitment to open and effective communication in spite of their matrix management structure.

At the outset, this seemed like an impossible task...

The Solution

Above: The EBW Team Map

Firstly, secure stakeholder buy-in at the CEO / President levels of the organisation through in-depth conversations to identify key concerns and desired outcomes to ensure the team gets the resources it needs.

Respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic by designing an ONLINE programme, which would normally be completed face to face, to engage and unite the team to address key concerns of the team and the challenges they were facing.

Build trust and insight with the individual team leaders through confidential online coaching sessions using Business Emotional Intelligence Reports generated from the results of their EBW assessment.

Prepare team leaders for the high level of disclosure produced by the Team Maps generated from the EBWt team assessment (see image of Team Map).

Run a 2-day Online Team Effectiveness Workshop with micro sessions, using EBWt Team Maps to identify relationship challenges and examine team performance metrics in terms of Vision, Trust, Identity, Commitment, Communicating and Working Together.

Results

Almost a year later, a comprehensive performance review was completed comparing leadership teams across the organisation and this team was the only leadership team that delivered financial growth and expanded online sales by 20%

So what did this team do differently and what was the impact?

The solution put forward by Fay Niewiadomski (EBW Global Certified Partner) and accepted by the new Vice President was to focus on 3 measurable but interconnected areas, leadership, team dynamics and business processes.

Leadership

All the team leaders received coaching using EBW Business Emotional Intelligence Profiles to deepen their awareness of personal behaviour and leadership styles. This resulted in leaders practically understanding how their intra-personal as well as the inter-personal intelligence impacts their emotional behaviours, their choices and their peer relationships and the effect this has on their business results.

Here is what some of the leaders said:

• “I got a full understanding of what drives our EI and related behaviours, Interactions (barriers and enablers) - building an efficient team based on team EI, understanding the team picture of EI and how my EI influences the team dynamic."

• “For me, it is the 1st time we focus on ourselves and not only on the tasks and numbers we are accountable for - I'm personally very thankful for that.”

• “The content is so relevant to our work environment and addresses the issues we face in a “down-to-earth” manner.”

• “I recognized the importance of being specific about carving out at least some time in my day to reflect and develop myself. Going from one virtual meeting to the next does not help one develop and we should realize this for our team members as well.”

Team Dynamics

The leadership team undertook a series of team coaching workshops using the EBWt Team Assessment to explore team relationships, transparently, compassionately and pragmatically.

Each team coaching workshop had three interrelated themes:

• How does team members' Buiness Emotional Intelligence impact team and stakeholder performance?

• What drivers of effective teams can be changed to improve the team’s performance and their impact on their stakeholders?

• How will the team measure change in performance (KPIs) from an individual, team and stakeholder perspective?

The EBWt Team Assessment framework provided a baseline measurement of the team performance drivers and had a profound impact on this team because it motivated them to create, their own “Code of Honor” defining how they would work with one another but also how to support other teams. The EBWt team coaching workshops deepened their understanding of the team performance drivers: vision, trust, identity, commitment, communication and working together, plus revealed a blue print how these drivers impacted key stakeholders and organisational performance.

Team Performance Metrics Definitions

Above: Measuring Team Effectiveness

• Vision: Level of understanding and agreement about team’s purpose and goals

• Identity: The desire to be part of, and within a team that works together towards a shared purpose

• Trust: Feelings of confidence about team members’ behaviour and goodwill

• Commitment: The drive and belief in the team’s ability to achieve its’ goals

• Communication: The willingness to collaborate, to listen, to share ideas and encourage discussion

• Working together: The level of cooperation and participation within the team

The combination of better self-understanding and more supportive team relationships, plus the ability to measure the improvement in the team performance drivers, enabled the team to take a pragmatic approach to their team activities to ensure they were always focused on achieving the ambitious financial targets they had been set.

Business Processes

Using the Business Emotional Intelligence approach enabled the team to unite under a common purpose, developing their own bottom-up execution strategy based on commitment to a high performance culture, accelerated growth, a clear plan and structure with well defined milestones and agreed accountabilities.

To make this happen, the team re-organised and re-deployed sales talent for smarter, faster, better aligned decision-making, more suited to their 3-year strategy.

What was the impact of this 3 part solution?

Here are the results this team accomplished:

1. Financial Performance

• Exceeded 2020 YTD Targets by USD 3M.

• Missed a couple of targets by only 1.3% in Q4 2020 due to COVID 19.

• Reduced Inventory by USD700 K more than was targeted.

• Overall Performance: 1st and best in Central Europe, Middle East and Africa in bottom line and best performer in its business line with 30% growth.

2. Solid improvement in the Organizational Health Survey across the board, with a record response rate of 85% and improvement points in all four parameters: *

• Engagement: +5 points.

• Innovation: +3 points.

• Inclusion: +4 points.

• Ethics: +3 points.

Average scores were all above 75%.

3. Initiated comprehensive digital transformation of the marketing function to drive the 3 year strategic initiatives with a dashboard of clear metrics and KPIs for timely and effective decision making.

4. Established, for the first time, a Commercial Excellence function using data-driven decision making to secure critical quick wins.

• CRM deployed & linked with GSR (Global Sales Reporting) in countries with direct business operations to enable accurate performance measurement of sales force.

• Remote Sales was deployed and immediately paid off with 19% sales growth in South Africa.

• Market Segmentation and sales force allocation enabled the leadership team to measure C&S (cost to serve) businesses in KSA.

EBW Global View - How can you benefit from this?

Whether you work in a family-owned business, an SME, an NGO or a multinational corporation, the Business Emotional Intelligence approach enables you to focuses successful Emotional Intelligent behaviour backed by solid performance data and benchmarking that can be applied to your leaders and your leadership teams.

Here are the 3 essential steps for you to get started:

1. Understand the context in which your business is operating and define a clear strategy for measuring and benchmarking individual behaviour, team dynamics and business processes to results

2. Map out a clear developmental process focused on individuals, teams and business processes that will transform your business into a more profitable operation.

3. Correlate Business Emotional Intelligence* results with your business performance indicators so you can measure your Return on Investment (ROI) based on the individual, team and business results.

* Use the EBW Business Emotional Intelligence Assessments Profile and the EBWt Team Assessment Profile for this purpose.

Discover How Business Emotional Intelligence Transforms Leaders and Teams

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