The Scenario

A Top 20 European Law Firm launched its new strategy, which led to a number of boardroom changes.  Gordon Cooper Associates were approached to provide an executive coaching programme for a new board member who was pondering a number of challenges.

• His appointment meant that he had moved to the Executive Board for the first time and wanted to make a positive contribution as a new board member
• Success in the role relied on his capabilities to engage a broad range of partners across sectors and service lines.  Some were aligned to the new vision and some were unsupportive.  The leader needed to demonstrated a broad range of influencing skills to achieve a coordinated and sustained approach to market

Our Approach

We first identified an executive coach who quickly generated great chemistry with the leader. After initial scoping discussions we then proposed a coaching programme to focus on specific objectives. The coach asked the leader to complete a number of carefully selected psychometrics and 360 tools to gather information on his personal style and preferences.  This was fed back at the beginning of the programme to identify his overall impact on others in a range of different circumstances, together with a comprehensive analysis of his current strengths and weaknesses as a leader.   The coaching programme consisted of 6 sessions taken over a 9-month period.  Each session built on the previous with the leader experimenting with his leadership and influencing capabilities between sessions.  He also learnt how to manage his learning effectively in order to ground the changes in long lasting behavioural change.

The Results

Feedback from the leader has been extremely positive.  He has gained significant insights into his own behaviour, discovered where and when to use a range of influencing styles and has become a more flexible leader.  During the course of the programme, the client also needed to grapple with other considerable change affecting the firm.  In doing this, the leader disclosed to his coach that he has found having an independent confidential sounding board to be invaluable in developing his ability to manage the enormous changes occurring for himself and the firm.  He learnt about how to manage organisational change whilst developing an authentic leadership style, which engages large groups.  

Programme Objectives

The client is looking to develop future Partners whilst also developing the capability of its Director grade to:

• Contribute to the effective leadership of the firm
• Attract new business and develop existing clients
• Create a role that has a strong client focus that goes beyond delivery of projects for their service line.

The Challenge

We want to get the participants working collaboratively across service lines and apply quickly the insights from the programme together with best practice from across the firm. The target audience is a very capable group, however, to date they have tended to focus on delivering client projects with a strong focus on their particular service lines.

Our Blended Solution

We created a modular programme that can be tailored ‘live’ in order to deal with the realities facing these future leaders. Key elements of the programme include:

• Pre- Programme diagnostic discussions and objective setting
• 3 modules:  Leadership, Business Development and Client Focus
• Facilitated workshops with action learning groups
• Visiting Partners to give their insights, discuss the firm’s approach to the market and changing expectations of professionals.
• Tools and models applied between modules on real situations and with wider colleagues.

How It Works in Practice

Diagnostic Discussion
The participants complete the Executive Coaching Tools Ltd.   360° questionnaire “Leading through Change”. This feedback was then discussed with an internal coach as part of a development and objective setting discussion.

Participants therefore arrive on the first module with clear objectives for their development and clarity on what they are looking to achieve on the programme.

Action Learning Groups

Our consultant facilitates the three workshops in which key topics and new  ideas are discussed. The participants take this input and work in trios or small table groups to apply the key learning to live scenarios.

The practical application of the lessons learned is further encouraged by discussions with visiting partners who bring their own practical insights to the issues discussed.

Individual participants, and in some cases the trios from the module, then complete further work between modules to ground the learning in real work.

At the start of subsequent modules the action learning groups share the progress made, the challenges they face achieving their action plans and the insights gained. Each participant is therefore working collaboratively with colleagues to make the shifts they need in order to develop their role as directors, and in some cases aspiring Partners.

Ongoing Development

The Directors have created during the programme a personal development plan that sets out what they are going to do to further develop relevant leadership and business development and skills. The trios (or action learning groups) together with all other participants on the programme also form a strong internal network that will support each other in achieving these goals.

Key Successes

• 360° feedback and action planning adds a strong focus to the learning
• New insights and input applied quickly to client situations
• Working collaboratively with colleagues to support each others development and the achievement of real business objectives
• Challenging, interesting and relevant

They select 25 high potential experienced partners to take part in an intensive development programme in order to shift both the aspirations and capability of these partners to deliver outstanding service across the world.

The Challenge

You have very capable partners, however they tend to be organized by functions and much of their success is measured through their local office / department P&L. The partners also tend to be functional experts and therefore a starting point is to view clients as an audit /tax /consulting client.

The partners are also extremely busy as delivering excellent service to clients always comes first.

The partners operate from 13 cities across Europe.

The Shifts Needed

In order to achieve the ambition of the firm, these partners will need to make a big shift from focusing on local execution to engaging with clients and their own teams globally. To do this well partners will have to ‘make things happen” despite any organizational constraints within the firm.

In the journey they have started they will be making a shift from locally focused transactional leaders to globally focused transformational leaders.

How Gordon Cooper Helped Achieve Success

Staring at the beginning might help to illustrate what we were able to do. We were selected to provide executive coaching support to the programme because we were able to demonstrate:

• We have great experience and expertise in leadership development through executive coaching and other blended approaches.
• We have great credibility when working with senior leader
• We have a great team of executive coaches who bring a collective strength and approach to delivering client service and can deliver this globally.

We deliver our service through a Lead Coach who co-ordinates the work of the team, and acts as a principle contact with the client programme team. The lead coach can therefore draw together insights and themes arising from the coaching and provide the firm with valuable insights about their organization, capabilities and challenges.

Common Goals – Different Journeys

The overall goals of the programme were clear, the specific coaching objectives of each participant varied according to personality, current performance, previous experience and market focus.

Our coaches were able to work with each partner to define their specific development objectives and therefore agree a tailored coaching programme for each participant. The precision and relevance of these objectives was achieved after running diagnostic discussions using 360° feedback and psychometric tools.

There were a number of elements to this programme in addition to the executive coaching support. Each partner had a target client on which they were to develop and implement a client service plan, each partner could call on an experienced LCSP to act as a mentor, the group also met at two learning summits in which Experienced LCSP’s shared their experiences, clients gave their views about what a good LCSP does and our Lead coach brought insights from the coaching and input around leadership development. The participants also shared their experiences from developing their approach.

Measuring Success

The acid test relates to: are these partners now behaving differently? – and the answer is clearly yes. Also can the firm see better client service and increased revenues as a result of these changes? – again the answer is yes.

In terms of the coaching it was pleasing to see that right from the start the partners were fully engaged and getting a lot of value from our sessions. They report high levels of satisfaction with the coaching and also report that this was one of the most useful aspects of the programme.

What the GCA Team bring:

• Highly qualified Master Coaching Practitioners
• Track record working with LCSP’s
• Track record in delivering global consulting assignments (Deloitte/PWC/McKinsey)
• Current senior engagements
• Qualified supervisors and top level coaching faculty members
• Recent coaching publications
• Linguistic capability
• Psychometric and 360 expertise
• Masters qualification in working with Diversity
• Experience in working globally