Situation:

The leader of a significant business unit in a fast-growing industrial company led the organization to success in the recent years, executing ambitious growth plans with a small yet growing organization. The leader attracted excellent talent, pushed boundaries and developed strong impact at the »point of sales«. Acting with a »hands on« approach, the leader won the trust of peers and teams and established a »winning team spirit« as often seen in startup-like settings. As a next step in his career, the leader took a CEO role in a larger, more traditional organization in the industrial context with different yet similar products and services.

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Challenge:

While the leader was well prepared from a technical point of view, the different culture, stakeholder landscape and speed of transformation came as a surprise. The leader’s speed of decision making was no longer perceived as »hands on« and pragmatic but created irritation and was seen as a tendency of overly cultivating autonomy without creating sufficient alignment and taking the organization along.

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Onboarding Coaching:

The Onboarding Coaching began with a joint meeting (coachee, superior, HR business partner) to clarify mutual expectations and align on coaching goals. In the following individual sessions, we supported the leader in »dosing« his intensity and expanding his behavioural repertoire to create alignments with more social smartness, considering the motives of relevant stakeholders as well as the maturity and culture of the organization. Besides deriving lessons from critical incidents and developing behavioural strategies on how to deal with challenges, we also guided the coachee in developing and applying stakeholder maps and methods for perspective-taking. The final session focused on evaluating progress and defining mechanisms to ensure sustainable high performance.

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Outcomes:

While at the beginning, the leader felt like slowing down, he successfully transitioned from a »hands on« driver and »pusher« of a smaller growth engine kind of business to an influential mobilizer of a large organization who empowered others to be successful in a highly competitive market landscape.