The Challenge:
- The CIO and Head of HR selected (from 6 types of potential feedback instruments) the Executive Leadership
Inventory to get feedback for 10 senior members of the Information Technology Services leadership team.
This inventory included 65 questions covering the following categories:
Business Acumen
Shares Information and Power
Builds Collaborative Relationships
Builds Teams
Manages Change and leverages diversity
Focus on the Future
Identify external factors
Creates vision for action
Determines urgency
Creating integrity and trust
Living values
Cognate ability
- Everyone nominated people (direct reports, team members, peers and members of senior management)
to provide feedback on the Executive Leadership Inventory. Brian Bonner approved the list.
- The Executive Leadership Inventories were sent out to the list of approved stakeholders for each of the
10 members of the leadership team.
The BigSpeak Consulting Solution:
December 2012:
- Bill Hawkins presented a half-day workshop based on the Marshall Goldsmith’s What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There to the entire team. The purpose was to familiarize everyone with the coaching model and set the expectations for the coaching process.
- Bill met individually with each person to debrief their individual 360 feedback results, identify an area for professional development and get him or her started on an action plan. For example one leader wanted to improve communication skills, another focused on managing impatience, and frustration, while another worked to build more effective cross-functional relationships and alliances.
- Each person was instructed to meet with Brian Bonner (within a week) to discuss the development item. The item selected had to be high impact for current job responsibilities and / or prepare this person for future responsibilities.
January 2013
- Joy Swartz met with everyone individually to finalize his or her personal action plan. Action items, target dates, and stakeholders were identified.
- Joy sent a copy of the completed action plans to Bill Hawkins
February 2013
- Bill Hawkins conducted 30-minute follow up calls to each person on the team. During this call he reviewed the action plans, answered questions, provided additional suggestions for tactics on the action plans and prepared everyone to schedule calls to follow up with their stakeholders.
March 2013
- Bill Hawkins conducted a half-day workshop on Situational Leadership for the entire group.
- Bill met with each person individually for one hour to provide coaching on the development issues and prepare each person for another round of follow up with key stakeholders.
May 2013
Joy Swartz met (several were telephone interviews) with people to provide coaching on their action plans and prepare them for the mini survey. The mini survey was going to be used to objectively track results of progress on the development items for each person. Additionally, Joy reinforced the importance of follow up with stakeholders.
June 2013
- Bill Hawkins scheduled 30-minute phone calls with each person. During these calls the stakeholder list was finalized and the wording for questions on the mini –survey completed.
- Mini –Surveys were sent out to the same people who completed the Executive Leadership Inventory back in November. They were asked (on a -3 to +3) scale to evaluate the progress on the development item selected for each person.
July 2013
- Bill met with people individually for an hour to debrief their individual mini – survey results and focus on the next step in professional development.
- Bill Hawkins conducted a half day workshop based on his new book Bring Out the Best in Every Employee and shared ‘group average’ results for the mini surveys. He pointed out that (on the – 3 to + 3 scale) very single person on the team achieved positive results. With 10 people participating, this result is outstanding!
The Result:
The results were dramatic. Every single executive improved on the specific issue he/she worked on over the period of a year. In the mini-surveys conducted, there was one question that was asked of everyone: “How would you rate any changes in this person’s overall leadership effectiveness?” The average improvement (on a -3 to +3 scale) from direct reports was + 1.6, and the average improvement from colleagues was a + 2.0. Much of the success of this process is the result of a team coaching effort. Because the individual one-on-one conversations were totally confidential, people felt comfortable talking to Bill about their perceived weaknesses and concerns. He had the experience of coaching over 60 senior level people during the past 15 years. This provided him the credibility to push people to try things outside their comfort zone. He provided context, offered practical suggestions, and shared success stories of others who have worked on exactly the same developmental issues using the same coaching process.
The results on the (-3 to +3) mini survey scale for this Texas Instruments team are in the top 20 percentile of all the groups.
