Coordinated Coaching Increases Trust within Organizations; Accountability as a Trust-Building Framework

• Team Leaders were able to speak more comfortably and directly

• They learned to hold their assessments as assessments rather than the truth, this improved problem solving as they began making requests of each other for the broader good of the enterprise. This ignited new actions and reduced feelings of powerlessness.

• This groups greatest challenge was that they were unwilling to speak “their truth” to executive leaders, primarily due to organizational history of public bullying/humiliation. As the group coalesced, shared experiences, clarified their interpersonal rights, and learned the tenets of boundary management they began reporting evidence of taking more risks individually and collectively. They also took on the question of how they might be silencing their direct reports or one another. With an agreement to stop silencing one another trust and courage rose.

Individual Coaching

Individuals in any of the groups could request through their coach a 1:1 coaching session with a master coach by phone. These were confidential calls that provided an outside perspective. Most of the callers only called once, but a few others called a couple of times, usually about unrelated issues.

Results:

• One client felt a coaching conversation was the best 60 minutes of development in her career.

• Clients all reported that they were “satisfied” with the executive coaching call; in all cases, they commented that they had new perspectives and/or actions they could take.

• Several clients noted a shift in the strategic focus of the organization, which they viewed as potentially positive.

The biggest result of adding phone coaching to the tiered team and group coaching program was that it allowed for the organization to save significant money on the cost of executive coaching while best meeting the needs of the leaders.