Cougar +

I call him “Cougar” because of the space of 18 months, thanks to his courage and commitment he transformed his managerial skills into those of a true leader: one who recognizes his power and seeks to use it wisely. His objective, which he clearly announced in front of his president at the launch meeting, was to know himself in depth. Given his success as a senior manager at the time, I think his president probably decided to humor his whim without really understanding what would be involved in reaching this type of objective. On a simple level, my client wanted to represent his company at large informal gatherings where his role demanded that he network and use small talk to establish and develop relationships for professional purposes. On a deeper level, he wanted to break through his emotional barriers to reach a more authentic self – one that would not be afraid to say what he really thought and felt. It has been a privilege for me, his coach, to work with someone who was willing to embrace his fears, shed his tears and experiment with cutting edge techniques in coaching AND then go out and put all the learning into practice. The results have been quite spectacular. He has lead courageous conversations with those above him, below him and with colleagues. Life is not perfect for him but he is aligned with what is important for him therefore his words and deeds tend also to be well placed and well timed. “Cougar” is someone who will use coaching again in the future but probably in single sessions, just to clarify his thinking around a specific subject for a specific purpose.

Aram +

When someone’s company folds it is an opportunity to look back on the experience, decide what is worth taking forward with you and what would be best left behind. Aram took advantage of a moment like this in his career to get some coaching around “next steps”. Constellating his family structure and his previous business structure allowed him to compare and contrast his place and role in both structures. It provided him with information about what is immutable (his place in the family) and what can be changed (his role in the company). It allowed him to literally see the types of relationships that fostered his growth and those that challenged him to change something in his way of relating to the “troublesome” person. In the middle of the coaching process, he changed companies and countries. When he found himself again in the same configuration in his new company, he hit a black hole. I am tempted to say that the fact that he had committed to a coaching process pushed him to deal with the issue head on. It was tough but he came through. Did coaching help? – Hard to say. He says it did.

François +

I coached François a few years ago when he was moving from the shadow of his role as “advisor to the King” to an operational role in full sunlight. He is a highly successful man and manager but driven by a thirst for perfection. He constantly puts himself into question, questions others and ceaselessly strives for bigger, better, more for himself and those he manages. He is a real leader and brooks no fools so he’s not an easy person to manage in fact. This second coaching process has allowed him to distance himself from the hurly burly in order to reflect on the wisdom of his use of power, how power is wielded and to what purpose in the higher echelons of the company and to challenge what he deeply wants from life. The higher he flies in the company the more these issues will confront him. The coaching space is a time and place in which to contemplate one’s reflection without losing oneself in a narcissistic monologue. It would so help companies if more of their leaders engaged in coaching the way François has done.

Audrey +

Audrey is a talented young professional who has been working in the same company for 10 years. She knows it is time to move on but she is experiencing anxiety about the move. She doesn’t want to stay and yet she can’t quite find the direction she wants to take. She recently married and wants to have children. This is not a reason to avoid changing something in her professional life. She has loving support from her spouse but she can’t quite make the jump out of the familiar to the unknown. Coaching has been about helping her face her fears, explore her talents and talk to people of different ages from like professions. She has approached coaching with an open mind and great willingness. She is lucky enough to have a father-in-law who is also a coach and can benefit from additional family support. Audrey has one last session which she is keeping up her sleeve as a sort of joker for when she feels something significant has changed in her current landscape.

Peter +

Peter was hired for “Mission Impossible”. His company thought a coach would be helpful and possibly cheaper than laying him off on the grounds of incompatibility with the company and his task. So my mission is a strange one. He didn’t ask for a coach but thinks it’s a good idea. The objectives vary but it is his space and the coaching process does allow him to come to terms with the challenge of managing a project and people essentially not ready for radical change. I know that the confidentiality of a coaching session provides a space in which to air ideas and grievances, weigh the pros and cons of diverse actions and to gain a little serenity in a company fraught with excitement and anxiety.

Marie-Laure +

Marie-Laure is an expert in her domain but is very shaky on the management side of her job. She is a high performer and very often chooses to do it rather than delegate it. This is not helping her to have the team she wants: proactive and highly skilled. She recognizes that she is her own worst enemy and wants to change. She is tackling the coaching process with the same enthusiasm as she attacks any kind of challenge. She is sincere in her desire to change. For the moment she is oscillating between control and laissez faire and is seeking a middle road. The coaching process needs to feel like a concrete, practical managerial aid for Marie-Laure to buy into it. Her natural impatience will be her biggest challenge to the success of the coaching process. Her objective is to look at her management role from the distance of the coaching space and to build the team she wants to do an effective job.

THALES AIR SYSTEMS +

WORLDWIDE SALES & MARKETING MEETING IN DEAUVILLE

The sales team had been hugely successful and the company really wanted to reward them for their outstanding contribution over the previous two years. My role was to interview the top ten sales people on stage in front of their colleagues from all over the world. I met them individually on the morning of the opening of the event to get a feel for who they were and to develop some sort of trust between them and me before the “show”. On stage they all revealed themselves to be sensitive human beings willing to share some deeper parts of themselves with the audience who remained enthralled for the better part of two hours. The Thales communication team brilliantly orchestrated the event with music to welcome each “guest” on stage followed by a personalized video showing each person’s country of origin and operating market. Effective stage lighting gave an overall impression of an intimate TV program. My skill was in balancing a journalistic and coaching approach for each interview. When the sales director came up to me afterwards to thank me, he said, with tears in his eyes, “I feel as if I have met these people for the first time today and yet I have known them for some time”.

SANOFI PASTEUR +

GSMA WORLDWIDE MEETING IN CANNES

The team leader had recently joined the company and her goal was to bring together disparate sections of the company to blend them into one team. It was a three day meeting in a beautiful venue. It was an ambitious attempt to appease people who were dealing with a lot of change in their company – some were downright hostile to any reorganization. There was a need to inform and update people about the changes. My co-facilitator, Alain Geoffroy, and I worked closely again with my client and her HR specialist to design a process that would honor the past, take stock of where everyone currently stood in relationship to the announced changes and move the whole team towards planning a coherent future together. At the beginning of the three day meeting the majority of the 50 people present paid lip service to their capacity to adapt to change but it very quickly emerged that, although they intellectually adhered to the changes, emotionally they were way off being on board. A few people resolutely remained attached to their hostility over the 3 days but the vast majority of people “moved” towards the next steps. The processes that contributed to opening people up to speaking their truths without danger of repercussion were:

• “Le pouvoir of Six”– please see the excerpt on this website from Philip Harland’s book that recounts this process as a case study.
• Walking the Golden Path – a personal journey through the company that allows each person to recount highlights from his personal and professional career.
• World Café – a bottom up, iterative conversation that encourages the emergence of collective wisdom.
• Three Pillars – a spatial exercise that facilitates awareness around the degree of trust, structure and knowledge present in the current system. From this an action plan was built to bridge the gaps.

VALEO LIGHTING BRANCH +

A ONE DAY MEETING AT ROLAND GARROS FOR THE BRANCH’S RESEARCH ENGINEERS

The purpose of the one day meeting was to facilitate creative thinking around a new LED product for car headlamps. The challenge was to create the conditions that would encourage sharing amongst people for whom financial reward normally came to he who lodged his idea first. I worked closely with the communication director and her boss to build the process for the day. Ironically the idea of taking everyone to a site of champions reinforced the idea of individual success but thankfully did not prevent the excellence of the team work that emerged that day. My job was to provide a process that would facilitate the breakdown of any existing barriers to communication amongst people of different ages, experience and hierarchy. I had the morning to facilitate as many interactions as possible while loosening minds used to a habitual way of functioning. This entailed having people moving in space and talking to many different people on a variety of connected subjects. The afternoon was dedicated to group work with the goal of producing a draft of a new product to be presented to an “assessment committee” at the end of the day. By the end of the afternoon my client had 5 viable blueprints in his hands for a new Peopled product.

VERALLIA (SAINT GOBAIN) +

A 1.5 DAY CONVENTION TO LAUNCH THE NEW BRAND NAME: VERALLIA

The company was bringing together its managers from around the world for the first time ever to celebrate the launch of its new brand name, VERALLIA. It was the occasion for most people to “discover” and embrace their future under the same trademark. My role was multi-purpose. I facilitated a creativity session for the CEO and his executive team prior to the convention to help focus the team on a tag name for the company’s glassware branch. I had the crazy role of leading an icebreaker quiz at the dinner the night before the convention. The preparation by the communication team was excellent which meant I could call upon all my skills of improvisation to make the exercise fun and inclusive of all 250 present. My true skill as a facilitator was put to good use the following day when I and my co-facilitator, Alain Geoffroy lead a World Café process to create bottom up conversations around the future of the new company. My client was in his element the whole day and received a standing ovation at the climax of the day. He said it had never happened to him before. I sincerely don’t know to what extent my work contributed to his success and I suspect that his communication director had a significant role to play in it but he clearly earned the respect of his managers worldwide and they were not afraid to demonstrate it.

ROBERT-DEBRÉ HOSPITAL +

4 FACILITATED HALF DAY MEETINGS OF THE CORE ADMIN TEAM WITH A VIEW TO INCREASING THE EFFICIENCY OF TEAM MEETINGS.

he ground work of creating effective relationships amongst “team” members had already been achieved so my role has been more about coaching the “team” to a more satisfying use of the time dedicated to its weekly meeting. It has, up to date, been a question of observation, questioning and the use of one or two processes to facilitate the emergence of clearer and more detailed wants, needs and expectations with a view to creating shared goals with performance measurements.