Success Story – Executive Assessment and Development, Board Facilitation, Team Building, and Management Development in organizations within Retail
Assessing and developing leadership and customer service teams in household brands, such as G Plan, Bristol Airport, Shiner, Bristol Zoo, Cunard, Virgin Holidays, Virgin Mobile. Facilitating Board meetings, improving leadership capability and emotional intelligence, developing and retaining high potentials.
Business issue
The Board and CEO were looking to achieve the following:
- A better understanding of each other’s responsibilities and key challenges
- To break down barriers and overcome silo working
- To discuss and understand key issues and perceptions
- To build more effective working relationships
- To allow for constructive debate and engender useful discussion and group feedback
- To enable the team to understand how to adapt their Personality styles to different people to improve working relationships
- To understand the dynamics of an effective leadership team
- To identify the key strengths and development areas within the senior team
- To give and receive open and constructive feedback in a safe, confidential environment
- To agree how the senior management team should act as a High Performing Team and as role models for the business
- To understand the impact of silo working on others
- To engender mutual trust within the team
- To understand the role and responsibilities of business leaders as well as functional heads
- To develop a consistent approach to Leadership within the team
- To establish how to make collective decisions as part of the team
- To set key objectives for working together as an effective team in the future i.e. a Team Charter regarding communication, processes and behaviours, regular team meetings,1:1s, Feedback
- To develop individual Action Plans for future ongoing development
In addition, Management Development Programs were required to create improvement in Communication, Time Management and Sales skills for newly promoted managers and the Sales Team.
Solution
Natural Talent designed and delivered two highly interactive facilitated Board Sessions, which included:
- A Review of how business is conducted
- Identifying blockers to better Collaboration
- Identifying opportunities for development and improvement
- Acknowledging the successes within the team
- Identifying key areas to improve
- The Five Dysfunctions of a team and why teams fail
- The Team Performance Curve and what actions could be taken to become a high performing team
- Tools and techniques to prevent silo working
- Decision Making techniques
- Agreed Behaviors to demonstrate Collaborative Leadership
- A Contract for working better together with guidelines regarding roles and responsibilities, Communication, email management and etiquette, meeting management and governance
- Leadership Development
Outcome
The Board worked much more collaboratively, sharing knowledge and innovative ideas. As a result, revenue increased and overall morale and engagement were significantly higher, which led to increased customer satisfaction. The upskilling of the management and Sales teams resulted in improved working practices, more consultative selling, increased Sales, and an expansion of the Sales team.