Client: Texas Instruments
Information Technology Services
The Team Coaching Process:
November
Brian Bonner (CIO) and Joy Swartz 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 a 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.
December
Bill Hawkins presented a half-day workshop based on 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 on current job responsibilities and/or prepare this person for future responsibilities.
January
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
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
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
Joy Swartz met with people (several were telephone interviews) 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
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 to evaluate the progress (on a -3 to +3 scale) on the development item selected for each person.
July
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, based on the – 3 to + 3 scales, every single person on the team achieved positive results. With 10 people participating, this result is outstanding!
Summary:
Much of the success of this process is the result of a team coaching effort.
Joy Swartz was the inside coach. She knew the people, understood everyone’s responsibilities, work environment, and relationships on the job. Knowing the area of development selected by each person, Joy could observe him or her in action on the job and provide “real-time” feedback.
Bill Hawkins was the outside coach. Because the individual one-on-one conversations were totally confidential, people felt comfortable talking to Bill about their perceived weaknesses and concerns. His experience with coaching over 60 senior-level people during the past 15 years 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 successfully worked on exactly the same developmental issues using the same coaching process.
This process is designed for senior leadership teams. Over the past 5 years, I have used it in over a dozen companies, with the direct reports of the CEO of a financial services company, a team reporting to the CEO of a medical device company, and the direct reports of a VP of Marketing of a pharmaceutical company. The results on the mini-survey scale (-3 to +3) for this Texas Instruments team are in the top 20 percentile of all the groups.