Case Studies (also see feedback)

A Managing Director Struggling to motivate his younger team

In the face of some very pressing business challenges a talented managing director was struggling to turn round his business's fortunes and bring his team round to his way of thinking.

Working with him allowed him to raise his awareness of himself and his impact on others and develop some alternative influencing approaches.

He has now passed the M.D. mantel to one of his team and he takes a much more facilitatory role as Chairman.
Read what he said about the experience.

• The coaching programme, in which I engaged with David Wilson, has been very successful. In three short months, it may be too much to say it has changed everything for me, but it certainly seems that way. I have realised it's not about finding better, more efficient ways of doing things, but it's about doing things differently!
• I am now much more relaxed and feeling confident about the future. The investment has more than paid for itself and will add huge value to the business in the near future. We continue to monitor the return on investment between us.
• It is paradoxical that in the face of some very pressing business imperatives, it was necessary to step back. The sessions gave me the confidence to do that. Also, in terms of managing my team of 14, I am now able to let go and take a more hands-off approach. People have been released to manage themselves. All of us now seem to have more clarity about what things are important.
• I think I was trying too hard to make them be just like me. The standards of product and service I wanted them to deliver seemed inextricably bound up in the way I do things. I saw every problem as a nail because I only had a hammer in my toolkit. Now, I am starting to develop other tools and approaches but I think the main thing is that my interactions with people are different.
• For example we are now talking freely about account managers taking total responsibility for their own areas of business revenue, something which would have been unthinkable 12 months ago. They now understand that clients belong to them, supported by the company, rather than the other way around.
• I have used successfully the psychological contract model in my dealings with all my direct reports. Showing people they are valued is so much more effective than telling them, no matter how sincerely expressed for I have discovered that motivation is an indirect science.
• One technique used by David enabled me to see how a direct report would feel in dealing with me and it left me speechless for a bit.
• There is more to do, but with David's focused and pragmatic approach, we have agreed a finite number of sessions to address the most appropriate leadership styles, motivation and teamwork to improve productivity and business development.

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