Our Experience
Here are some one line examples of the kind of work that we have completed in the recent past
Work with a very wide range of clients helping them to discover, implement and deliver the type of transformation journey that will exceed their business ambitions. A range of clients include:
- Major oil company – develop high performing leadership hypotheses and implement on a global basis, executive coaching, team development
- Government department – devise and implement change journey, coach executives and facilitate teams
- Central Government – Director of Executive Coaching for transformational performance
- JobcentrePlus – design and implement cultural change initiatives
- Multi national retailer – advise on Eastern European Supply Chain Strategy
- PricewaterhouseCoopers – advise/implement procurement strategy
- Walt Disney Corp. – implement procurement savings
As An Executive Coach
- Assist in the “reset of the organisational strategy” which included team and individual coaching. The team coaching included the identification of core purpose of the organisation and the identification and coaching of the behaviours that support the purpose, values and culture that support the delivery of the business requirements. The outcome was the achievement of these “purposes” and linking the values and culture to the strategy.
- Executive coach to main board director helping in the development of strategy, the management of stress and developing emotional intelligence. Movement in the development of emotional intelligence was measured using the Bar On Eqi and supported by anonomised feedback.
- Executive Coach to the leader of a European business unit as they prepared for promotion from country manager to regional general manager. I employed skills in coaching, Gestalt psychology, MBTI and communication styles. They succeeded in being promoted into the Senior Executive Group (population of 260) of the MNC.
- Coach to global head of refining and production (Executive Vice President) who wanted to inquire into their personal leadership style to move performance from middle to upper quartile. They changed their particular style through a cathartic fierce conversation with their team and then dropped their ego and asked for help in turning around the business. This led to a much more inclusive apporach to solving business problems which resulted in a conversation not only about the particular refineries but about the whole business portfolio.
We facilitate multi-national teams and individuals at all levels to achieve a range of outcomes including definition and creation of strategy and improving team effectiveness. We use a wide variety of tools and techniques to support the facilitation including MBTI, NLP and Gestalt Psychology. We have a challenging and supportive style to encourage the client to safely explore and resolve issues that are stopping the organisation from achieving its goals and ambitions.
- Explore how and why a team is apparently functioning well in separate silos but is unable to come together to develop the incremental value that could be released
- Make explicit interpersonal dynamics in a team which is getting in the way of effective working together
- In an international team where there were as many nationalities present as there were people. Conduct a two day exploration of how their cultural referencing is always present and needs to be considered in order to work in a highly effective manner.
Research
We collaborate with academic Universities (Henley,Warwick and SouthamptonBusiness Schools) to identify the factors that make the real difference in leadership for performance and integrate these into my coaching work.
We have contributed to a work published by D. Rowland and M. Higgs of Transcend Consultancy entitled Sustaining Change, leadership that works.
We have conducted research with D. Rowland of Transcend Consultancy into leadership practices of the three major Party Political Leaders published in September 2009. The article is published below:
We’re delighted to share with you an article posted on FT.com written by Anthony Goodman, the FT leadership columnist, it provides a thought-provoking perspective on the party conference season and the critical importance of leadership.
The article is based on an analysis by Transcend of political speeches by the three main party leaders together with comparisons of Angela Merkel and Barack Obama.
The analysis uses Trancend’s ‘Change Leadership Practices’ framework, designed to assess and steer change leadership capability in large organisations. FT.com’s editor Robert Shrimsley congratulated Anthony on the piece and will be pushing it on the FT home page over the coming weeks.
Read it below or on:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d74429ca-ac45-11de-950b-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Leading change is a challenge for Britain’s party leaders
The UK political season has begun. Each year the key activists in the three main political parties gather to applaud the rhetoric of their leaders. This year has special relevance because it is the last party conference season before a general election. Each party leader has an opportunity to set out how they will change the country if elected.
The Liberal Democrats kicked things off last week with a speech from Nick Clegg mentioning the idea that he wanted to be prime minister twice, asking us to imagine a Lib Dem cabinet, and repeating the word “change” 38 times in 47 minutes. It was a performance that seemed to provide evidence that Mr Clegg had indeed taken hallucinatory drugs in his youth.
The Labour party will defend its 12 year governmental record in Brighton this week, followed by the Conservatives attempt to portray themselves as a government-in-waiting in Manchester the week after.
Which of the leaders has what it takes to lead Britain through the inevitable changes required to deal with massive debt and national decline?
A thought provoking new analysis of the three major party leaders produced exclusively for Leading View by Transcend, a UK based change leadership consultancy, shows the flaws each leader must overcome in order to successfully lead change.
Transcend’s methodology was outlined in the 2008 book, Sustaining Change: Leadership That Works, in which Transcend’s CEO Deborah Rowland and chairman Malcolm Higgs set out to identify the leadership behaviours that lead to successful change in the business world.
Companies that have made use of the ideas include Royal Dutch Shell and EDF Energy. Even the Church of England, once seen as the “Conservative party at prayer”, is building Transcend’s approach into its coaching and development programme for bishops.
Rowland and Higgs identified four behaviours that are needed to ensure transformational change is effective: the ability of leaders to attract people towards a shared organisational purpose; creating opportunities for change to manifest itself in the ‘here and now’ moment; providing “tension” by naming and confronting tough issues; and by setting boundaries and expectations to channel energy in the direction of change. Only the top fifth percentile of world class leaders they studied demonstrated all four behaviours.
In the business world, leaders’ successes are assessed through a method called “behavioural event interviewing” that probes for specific examples of behaviours that related to the major changes required by the organization.
With politicians, this type of interviewing is impractical. First, they would be unlikely to submit to the questioning. Second, evidence of their success is longer-term by nature. Who can say whether Gordon Brown’s Afghanistan strategy is a success or a failure at this particular point in time?
Instead, of Transcend analysed the change leadership abilities of the three British party leaders by assessing substantive speeches that outlined policy proposals, or reviewed progress against existing objectives. For each party leader a selection of three to five recent speeches was reviewed against Transcend’s four successful behaviours.
How did the party leaders do? One area where they all performed poorly was on considering how the speech they were giving was itself an opportunity to motivate the audience to help with the change required. According to , both Chancellor Merkel and President Obama demonstrate this ability, but it is rarely manifested by the British party leaders.
As one might expect, the analysis of Gordon Brown reveals a strange inability to use his natural authority as prime minister and party leader to confront tough issues or attract people towards a shared purpose. He is good at setting rules and boundaries, but that is all he does. There is very little balance in his approach. observed, “He is a backseat control freak.”
Transcend’s reasearch predicts that unless Gordon Brown changes his approach and begins to connect with people at a personal level, he will not be a successful leader. Compared to both David Cameron and Nick Clegg, Mr Brown’s speeches reveal a man who Ms Rowland describes as “too personally egotistical. He can’t reinvent himself, or show vulnerability, or take ownership.”
David Cameron, on the other hand comes across as an amalgam of sibilant adjectives: slow, steady, stable and secure. Unlike Mr Brown, his speeches are very personal and attempt to connect with his audience. He often talks about people he has met and how he can transform their lives. By contrast, Mr Brown’s speeches are mostly about the mechanics of a situation or policy.
However, the challenge for Mr Cameron is a seeming inability to identify what change consultants often refer to as “a burning platform” to create excitement and energy needed for substantive change. No wonder he replaced the Conservatives’ traditional symbol of a flaming torch with that of a stiff but solid tree.
Given the party’s approach to reining in public spending this could be a serious flaw. believes Mr Cameron is “trying too hard to be OK”. While Mr Cameron’s speeches are in Ms Rowland’s view, “not interesting, but relevant,” Nick Clegg’s orations are “interesting, but not relevant.” Of course, the same might be said for their prospective parties’ policies.
Given the economic situation in which the UK finds itself, and the weakness of the political system to galvanize popular support for change, how the party leaders perform is critical. If the party leaders are serious about transforming Britain, they – like many business leaders before them – will need to rethink their personal approach to leading change.