The executives were very impressed by their initiative, and with the help of their coach was able to communicate with the directors more effectively, and even apologize when they stepped over boundaries.
Team Coach: Participants in phone coaching came from director and team leader levels. In my experience, this is somewhat typical: often the most-senior leaders want (and often need) unique development experience. They often value, too, the ability to meet in person. The senior leaders requested individual phone sessions as needed from their team coach, so I was not involved in those conversations.
Team Leader Level
During the first year, Team Leaders worked with two coaches in curriculum-based group coaching customized to enhance leadership skills and address pervasive cultural challenges of distrust, blame, and lack of communication. Over the course of the program, this group shifted from apathy to commitment, from victimized-thinking to ownership and accountability. By the second year, it was obvious that the teams needed more coaching than curriculum, and so five groups were formed, each with their own master coach.
Similar to the other tiers, the team leaders lacked both trust and their morale was very low. Coaching provided members with strong rules for engagement based on respect, and emphasized accountability as a trust-building framework. Coaching illuminated what is required to repair relationships and empowered group members to recognize they were culpable if not working toward removing the obstacles to trust and improving the culture.
Results:
Changing technical systems and business processes resulted in the transformation leaders being pitted against the legacy leaders. In order to create trust and collaboration, coaching provided a facilitated opportunity for representatives from each side to sit down together from the perspective of Team Leaders having an enterprise-wide leadership responsibility rather than responsibility for single silos.
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