Our engagement with the client began with an invitation to facilitate an annual strategy meet with his Leadership Team (LT). With an aspiration to become one among the top 50 companies in its vertical in India, the CEO foresaw the leadership team’s calling to be ready for the next phase of growth by going beyond their silos, collaborating with each other and becoming one team. For more than 2.5 years, before we were approached, the CEO had been building the India business. Initially, the work of attracting talent and building a presence in the marketplace was difficult. However, both the CEO and the HR Head, who was one of the first to join, had slowly managed to attract industry professionals who saw the potential and came onboard. The CEO’s style of setting direction, giving people freedom to do what they needed to do and holding them accountable for results had worked very well. The CEO now wished that his functional leaders:

1. Establish department vision statements, linked to the larger organization vision and not to the CEO.

2. Got better at building effective teams, dealing with ambiguity, developed strategic agility, improved decision quality and drove for results.

3. Engaged others to collaborate and communicate more effectively, and better understand their own and others’ unconscious drivers and mindsets.

4. Learnt to address repetitive conflicts and disagreements that broke things downs.

Our first set of interviews with the LT revealed the way the company’s highly specialized product portfolio and scientific legacy was at the center of its identity. Entry and establishment of reputation in the Indian marketplace was a result of such ethos. With its sight on the huge potential in the Indian market, the Founder’s son, at the helm of the global business, was encouraged by the progress. His vision for the future included greater investment, including setting up an R&D and manufacturing unit as part of its network of such facilities around the world.

The Indian CEO had led the way so far as he mediated across HQ and regional office, and built the office in India. However, we discovered major obstacles to the journey forward - first, its highly specialized product portfolio had 4 x potential in the market and was being marketed to local retailers and shops and not to specialized health care centers, who had the capacity to store it and administer it. Second, the CEO was perceived to be avoidant of facing the reality of interpersonal and group dynamics leading top team members to also avoid having difficult conversations - after being together for 2 years, the team had never "stormed.” As a result, financial discipline was weak and coordination across functions superficial. In other words, the CEO’s leadership seemed to have failed to re-evaluate strategy, re-organize resources and capabilities. Most of the responsibility for instituting direction was left in his hands and his leaders chose to remain being functional specialists and performance achievers; they were not autonomous decision-making managers working across the enterprise. His approach had channeled employees’ energy efficiently into growth, but was not apt for shifting to growing a diverse and complex organization. Over the years, members had come to possess more direct knowledge about the organizational machinery and the customers and markets, thereby creating a crisis of autonomy. The solution appeared to be one of moving to more delegation; not abdication. Yet, the team faced difficulty - leaders who have been successful at being directive, struggle to hand over responsibility to managers and become facilitators and coaches. And, managers are not accustomed to making decisions for themselves. The danger in such situations is adhering to centralized methods, while lower-level become disenchanted and disengaged from the organization.

We began the work of better understanding the LT members and their developmental requirements. MBTI, an introspective self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological preferences in the way people perceive the world and make decisions, had been globally deployed, incl. with this LT. Some level of self awareness and learning to communicate and collaborate with each other more mindfully had begun. The way LT members thought differently, and made the differences in how they approached problems or came to possible solutions, had created some awareness in the relationships. The fact however, was that people seemed to be more stereotyped instead of empowered. Our analysis of the reports of all members revealed that as a group they tended to be organized and orderly and to make decisions quickly. Except for one member, their preferences were for:

1. Noticing and trusting facts, details, and present realities.

2. Making decisions using logical, objective analysis.

We sensed that the group may appear to work like a pack, instinctively looking for ways to alleviate its members’ collective anxiety. They could unconsciously ascribe unwanted roles to this and/or other members and lapse into skewed interactions—for example, directing its energy toward taking flight, pairing two members up or fighting. We concluded that we needed to design experiences that would first and foremost improve awareness of these preferences, and uncover implications for others and the organizational outcomes. Second, this would lay the foundation for exploring aspects that were being overlooked, and begin the work of integrating the minority capacity of:

1. Dealing with ideas, pictures, memories, and reactions present in one’s inner world.

2. Weighing what people care about and the contrarian points-of-view of persons involved in a situation.

In the offsite we helped the group to explore their life stories and their aspirations for the future. This set the stage for them to go beyond their preferences into a whole range of life experiences, revealing other parts of their personalities. Such sharing helped build trust and created a safe space for all, including that one member who was bringing perspectives that were critical for the group to move forward, yet was being rejected, mocked and set up to act out. His views brought to surface deeper fissures and breakdowns among LT members on matters related to the dilemma of living the purpose of the organization and dealing with practicalities of the market, people, and resources. Through creating boundaries and facilitating various exercises we set the stage for members to begin having difficult conversations and discover the way preferences were leading to entrenchment in repetitive breakdowns. Members shifted stances and began to expand inner mental and emotional maps. Experiences of this kind were way beyond the transactional nature focused on achieving performance and managing their functions. The workshop had helped break new ground.

The CEO and HR Head noticed a big shift in the way the team began working after returning to the office. A few months later they reached out and invited us to help their LT change their culture from managing to coaching. The CEO further clarified that he saw coaching critical to performance and a “way of living”. He wished to help them develop personally, realize the potential of the organisation and become capable of responding to imminent changes.

We inquired further about the need to introduce and implement coaching, as against “managing” - what exactly did they mean by coaching, what was this a solution for, and how would we go about changing culture. We understood that:

1. Context - There were two major shifts taking place: the pace of change was rising, and the level of complexity and interdependence was increasing. Both demanded the development of greater organizational agility” — organizations that anticipated and responded to changing conditions by leveraging highly productive internal and external relationships. And for this, greater leadership agility was needed with the LT and throughout the organization.

2. Coaching, managing and leading - “Managing” was being distinguished from coaching. We defined coaching as a process in which managers facilitated problem-solving and encouraged employee development through asking questions and offering support. This stood in contrast with exercising expertise - tactical, problem-solving orientation, or focusing on achievement - strategic, outcome orientation. Coaching, we proposed, would positively contribute to elevating the level of leadership and organizational agility. We brought in the third element of leadership. Both managers and leaders are two very different, but complementary aspects of organizations. Managers’ goals arise out of necessities rather than desires; they excel at defusing conflicts between individuals or departments, placate all sides while ensuring that an organization’s day-to-day business got done by following a set of well-known processes, like planning, budgeting, structuring jobs, measuring performance and problem-solving. All of these processes help the organization to predictably do what it knows to do well, day after day, week after week. Leaders, on the other hand, adopt personal, active attitudes toward goals. They look for the opportunities and rewards that lay around the corner, inspire subordinates and fire up the creative process with their own energy. Their relationships with employees and coworkers are intense, and their working environment often chaotic. Every business needs both managers and leaders to survive and succeed, with coaching as the bridge. And together, they aided leadership agility.

3. The changing of culture - Because any group or organizational culture is really expressed in the rules about how its members behave, communicate, tackle problems, and relate — or don’t, the coaching model had the power to shift how everyone in the organization interacted with one another in their everyday conversations. And building a coaching culture meant building a culture of conversations that creatively solved problems and developed capability. Hence,we planned for various types of conversations. That is, professional coaching - making formal objectives or goals as well as measurement of the results of a formal coaching engagement; management coaching - making normal managerial conversations more productive, whether about career planning, performance reviews, or job scoping; third, team coaching - making groups and teams invest time in exploring group identity and obligations to each other and stakeholders on a consistent basis; mentoring conversations - making mentoring more valuable by working together to think through and explore alternatives; and fourth, coaching in the moment - that is, conversations that generally took place in hallways and across tables throughout the organization. In such conversations, focus was usually on current, temporary problems about performance, relationships, morale, and engagement.

We designed a four phased leadership development journey - Coaching Conversations, for the CEO and the LT. The phases were: Awareness, Visioning, Experimenting and Delivering.

Phase 1 - Here we created understanding and awareness of LT members’ current mindsets and behaviors through writing Life story and 360-feedback. Specifically, we explored four distinct arenas to support the four major opportunities for building bridges between management and leadership:

1. Self management in emerging situations: managing self in the “here and now” moments.

2. Engaging in pivotal conversations: person-to-person discussions with important outcomes at stake

3. Improving team performance: initiatives to improve a team and/or its relationship with its larger environment

4. Leading organizational change: initiatives to improve an organization and/or its relationship with its larger environment.

The exercises revealed most of the LT to be operating at the transition between Expert and Achiever and at the Achiever level. The CEO however was primarily experienced working at the Catalyst level.

Phase 2: Here we assisted the leaders, with the aid of individual coaching sessions, small group coaching sessions with the CEOs and large group coaching sessions, in

1. Identifying and crafting their goals, developing insights into hidden competing commitments and beliefs, and planning experiments to test assumptions and try new behavior.

2. Designing initiatives across 4 key arenas critical to changing culture: Leading Organizational Change, Building High Performing Teams, Pivotal Conversations and Self Management

The leaders courageously began crafting vision and articulating it to the CEO and their people. This allowed them to refine and get feedback. Through it, the first step of transforming vision into reality by becoming more strategic and facilitative in their orientation had been taken.

Phase 3: In this phase, they began to practice and experiment with new behaviors through their cross-functional initiatives, thereby building a stronger LT. We also facilitated a 3 day offsite and conducted individual coaching sessions in this phase. The leadership team was slowly gaining space for the genuine practice of initiating leading and coaching of team members. Team members shared more openly, and even gave feedback to each other for the first time. The leaders had begun developing a team culture of greater openness and trust. This was a departure from the old model where the team was managed by the leader on a one-to-one basis.

Phase 4 : Here, we facilitated the final 2 day offsite to deepen the practice of coaching conversations by developing greater accountability and delivery of results through and with team members. Overall, these initiatives were a marked departure from supervising team members to drive results to leading and coaching team members to deliver results.

Over the duration of our engagement, our client’s reputation in the marketplace had changed significantly and they were now able to attract top-talent. Additionally, for the first time in the past 6 years their financial results improved dramatically. A whole plethora of developments had taken place. The CEO had begun to create an agile leadership team consisting of the CFO, the HR Head, the three Heads of Sales verticals, the Chief Medical and Regulatory Head, the CMO, and himself:

1. The leadership team was working together as a team for the first time - openly challenges and questions each other and is willing to enter difficult conversations on important issues. And all of them became more strategic in outlook

2. Sales leaders became open to feedback and improved their ability to communicate their vision and intent. They were less judgmental and more open – creating an environment where team members could share their concerns and have open discussions. They also began coaching Zonal Business Managers (ZBMs) and expanding their horizon beyond targets, challenging them with new projects. All sales leaders also began engaging with each other to identify areas of improvements and aim to become best-in-class. As a group, they took a more proactive role in defining recruiting, development, performance and rewards & recognition practices that supported the complex nature of their products and business.

3. The CFO also became more open to feedback and was engaging in difficult conversations related to performance. She established a open monthly forum for the teams to share, propose solutions to problems, promote participation and bring more openness. And she brought in a culture of cost consciousness and was working more closely with the CEO.

4. The R&D leader began intervening in team conflicts and facilitating new conversations. He also began coaching and developing his team to become more business sensitive and to set a bigger vision, higher engagement and interaction with each other and with stakeholders in India and globally. R&D also diligently began integrating with the rest of the business in India – HR, Marketing, Sales, Medical and Finance and working with global to support development of products for the APAC.

5. The Medical & Regulatory Affairs head began holding Sales teams accountable for improving scientific knowledge and acumen. He also started having monthly dialogues with his team to track progress and to cross-pollinate ideas. He put in place skill development programs for his teams.

6. The HR leader became less reactive and began to resolve old differences with regional peers. He spent more time in developmental conversations with this team and became more assertive in driving accountability and outcomes. Organizationally, he took charge of building a high performance culture by driving leadership and coaching conversations, and building the second line of leaders.

7. The Marketing leader also became open to feedback and shifted from being reactive and critical of others to being more open and approachable.

8. The Quality leader began providing new opportunities and freedom to work on project and engage the team in interdepartmental interactions