Co-Leadership in Practice: Rebuild and Re-launch the Management Team after the Pandemic

Business Challenge

After three years of the pandemic, the General Manager of a company in the service industry needed to quickly re-build his management team. Ambitious objectives needed to be achieved and the pressure to deliver results to owners was high.

The new Team consisted of 17 managers with a blend of seasoned/experienced leaders as well as young Leaders with limited leadership and management experience. Many members of this Team came from other industries, which brought new perspectives and a desire challenge the status quo and to do things differently. In addition, a new HR Director was recently hired

The challenges were substantial.

• Create a cohesive team – Break down silos and stimulate collaboration between departments. Team synergy is at the heart of customer satisfaction and performance.

• Quickly integrate new Managers.

• Re-motivate and energize the seasoned management team members heavily impacted by the pandemic.
• Rally the Team around a common vision and align them to the corporate values to return to business growth.

And this need to be done in a context of labor shortage and pressure.

Solutions

The Co-Leadership Group designed and implemented a collaborative, strengths-based coaching journey over several months. A deliverable was the co-creation of the team vision.  Our coaching approach led to the co-creation of a Team vision, achieved through a series of team coaching and sub-group work sessions.

This vision included:

• An inspiring team’s purpose that gave meaning to actions.
• The 5 significant strategic priorities to achieve together to align the team to common goal.
• Key Measures of success – to assess progress and celebrate achievements.
• Collective and individual action plans to propel the achievement of strategic priorities.

During this coaching journey, the management team was initiated to various strengths-based and collective intelligence approaches.  Leaders were coached to facilitate various sessions.  This sparked inter-discipline synergies and teamwork. Most of all, leaders began to help each other.

Finally, our sports coach – Jean-Philippe Blémur – helped leaders to better take care of themselves.  Our coaching journey prioritized self-care and wellness, with several activities implemented to stimulate well-being and energy. Our leaders committed to prioritize their wellness, together, and set up individual and group activities throughout the year.

Results

The team coaching journey is still underway and Codevelopment Action Learning sessions are being planned. The goals are to accelerate the achievement of the 5 strategic priorities, continue to foster teamwork across units and elevate leadership capabilities.

The General Manager, the Human Resources Director and the Managers have highlighted that, to date:

The management team is engaged around a common vision – All team members were proud to present their collective vision and action plans. 

Furthermore:

• Each department have their action plan for success.
• Team synergy and fun is amplified. Leaders have experienced the power of breaking down silos and co-creating solutions, together. Creativity has been enhanced by the synergy of everyone’s strengths as well as mutual support and sharing.
• Leaders are better equipped to succeed together this year.
• The General Manager and the HR Director have a concrete game plan to continue to support the managers.
• The entire team is aware that better collaboration, trust and focus can only be created by investing time and energy in self-knowledge, communication, teamwork and synergy of strengths.

Authors : Nathalie Sabourin, M.Sc, CRHA and Ron Cheshire, MBA, ACC, strength-based coaches – Co-founders – Co-Leadership Group. All rights reserved.