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Client case studies
RS Components (RS) is an electronic, electrical, and industrial distributor supplying a vast range of products to research and development or maintenance engineers.
RS Components: Coaching Organisational Change
CASE STUDY
RS Components (RS) is an electronic, electrical, and industrial distributor supplying a vast range of products to research and development or maintenance engineers.
The Context
RS Components (RS) is an electronic, electrical, and industrial distributor supplying a vast range of products to research and development or maintenance engineers. RS operates in 27 countries under the trading brands of RS Components and Allied Electronics. A further 38 countries also receive products, via a distributor network, resulting in coverage of around 90% of the world’s GDP.
RS is an organisation built on its ability to provide a high-quality service to its customers. RS employees have huge amount of pride in the company, its products and everything it stands for. The culture is historically paternalistic, people are – and expect to be – valued.
The Challenge
A need to respond to a rapidly changing operating environment
The global economic downturn of 2008 brought a new level of challenge for the RS organisation. Operating conditions became tougher as a general slowing of world trading increased the focus on meeting cost and revenue targets. In response, RS announced a restructuring programme to streamline the organisation and strengthen operational resilience.
Several factors needed to be addressed directly, to deliver change and continue to evolve an organisation fit for the future. Specific challenges included:
- The traditional, caring, ‘paternalistic’ culture was resulting in delays in decision making across an essentially matrix structure
- A desire for an increased sense of ownership and individual accountability, e.g. decisions were often escalated to senior managers and even the Executive Committee
- A need to develop internal talent and ensure the right leaders were in position to implement strategy and develop employees. This was resulting in increased costs of hiring externally to bridge gaps.
Develop Leadership and Deliver Change
RS’s leadership development strategy focussed on the following imperatives:
- For leaders to use coaching behaviours to manage performance, increase employee engagement and promote learning, e.g. during 1:1 meetings, performance reviews, career development interviews and appraisals
- To shift culture from a ‘parental’ style of leadership towards an empowering ‘adult to adult’ colleague relationships
- A need develop relationships within matrix reporting structures to strengthen collaborations and increase speed of decision making
The Solution
A robust development programme with practical application in the workplace
Starr Coaching were engaged to deliver a leadership development programme to help develop a coaching style of leadership. After more than 50 hours study, successful delegates would also gain a credible external accreditation that they would value as individuals. The programme targeted senior leaders including members of the Executive Committee; ensuring role models for coaching were visible from the very top of the organisation.
Specific objectives of the programme included:
- To give leaders a range of leadership coaching tools and skills pragmatic to their role
- To build coaching ability through increased self-awareness, receiving feedback, personal reflection, and direct experience.
- To challenge leaders by a programme with a higher-than-average level of commitment, e.g. self-study, personal coaching and assessment
The programme was not designed to create internal coaches; instead, it was for senior leaders to strengthen their skills through the integration of coaching into their everyday style.
A Supported Journey of Learning
The four- month long programme was a blend of the following methods:
- Self-assessment, (pre- and post-programme)
- Classroom study, (theory, demonstration & practice)
- Practice in the workplace, i.e. a min of three formal coaching relationships
- Telephone coaching by expert coaches
- Colleague feedback, via a competency-based questionnaire
- Reading and written reflection
- Formal assessment and accreditation
Personal Perspectives
The programme was a challenging time as delegates unpicked their own paradigms about how they led and the beliefs they had about people. Often the most challenging part of the programme was less the coaching practice and more the writing of personal reflection notes. Having to reflect on their leadership style and learning increased self-awareness in the workplace.
For many, the programme was a journey of self-discovery, challenge, and personal growth. Many leaders began the programme believing they were ‘coaching’ managers. Individuals quickly recognised their own behaviour and mindset was more directive and controlling of the people around them. This same directive tendency was also linked to issues of dependency, increased workload, stress, and a delayed decision making. Delegates quickly became engaged in the opportunity of coaching for them.
The Results
Engagement, ability, and a common approach
Quantitative feedback was gathered as part of the accreditation process and during employee engagement surveys. Further qualitative and anecdotal feedback was gathered after the formal accreditation, either as part of the appraisal process or through regular reviews.
The feedback indicated that:
- Colleagues were solving problems without automatically asking for direction; they were thinking for themselves and exploring creative solutions
- Engagement was increasing because of a less directive style of leadership
- Delegates felt more confident to have difficult conversations
- Speed of decision making was increasing, as leaders began to foster empowerment by ‘fixing’ issues less often and instead encouraging decisions from others
The business is embracing the concept of leadership coaching and real change is starting to happen. A second programme was as successful as the first and leaders are now pro-active in applying to join subsequent programmes. The opportunity to challenge their own behaviour and mindset, whilst gaining a professionally relevant qualification has broad appeal.
For RS Components, a calm sense of optimism grows. Reductions in operating costs have been achieved and recent sales trends are encouraging. A talented workforce, with a leadership driven to succeed are proving a winning combination. Whilst change is a recognised constant, leaders in the organisation are embracing coaching as a way of delivering results whilst developing people.
By Sara Wright, Organisation Development Manager, RS Components.
Further Information
- To discover how Starr Coaching can help you develop coaching behaviours in your workplace, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.
info@starrcoach.co.uk
Three-year financial targets smashed within two years, a nomination for a Personnel Today award and one very happy CEO.
Mencap for Personnel Today Awards
CASE STUDY
Three-year financial targets smashed within two years, a nomination for a Personnel Today award and one very happy CEO.
A need to engage, empower and enable managers – by phone
The Royal Mencap Society, our largest provider of support services to people with learning disabilities, began with a bold vision. They wanted to build a highly skilled, HR call centre to support managers out in the field. These managers need to be able to respond to everyday HR related challenges, whilst building positive relationships with employees. Rather than create a false dependency on the call centre, Mencap also wanted to develop the confidence and ability of managers to handle HR issues for themselves over time. There was also a clear desire to set the HR team up to succeed before go-live, to achieve high levels of performance right from the very first call taken.
To bring this vision to life, they needed the give Call Centre Operatives the conversational skills to enable and empower people – which we at Starr Coaching know are skills of coaching.
So, what happened?
Working in collaboration with Mencap, Starr Coaching co-designed a programme of development events for the AskHR Team. First, Starr helped Mencap to develop and align to a ‘whole team’ vision. When asked, individuals were quick to describe the type of reputation they wanted to create for the team. They also knew what types of behaviours would most support their joint success, such as openness, ownership and proactivity. The consistent focus on these behaviours helped to build levels of emotional maturity and personal resilience across the whole team.
Crucially, Starr also built the team’s ability to adopt coaching styles of telephone conversation. By offering simple, clear coaching principles and real-life demonstrations, individuals own practice sessions were engaging, fun and productive. The AskHR team gained conversational skills and techniques which projected a mature and engaging style. Operatives were shown how to handle potentially tough situations, such as disputes or conflict by facilitating managers own thought processes and often decide for themselves what they needed to do.
Winning principles included:
- It’s often more beneficial to help a caller think and act for themselves (than tell them what they should do)
- Sometime callers don’t need brilliant ideas, they just need support to empower them to do what they already know is right
- Effective enquiry can surface the caller’s own insight; so, ask open questions, use summaries, and make observations (before giving advice)
- Coach the person not the issue – don’t be drawn into playing ‘fix it’
- You can’t coach knowledge – sometimes someone simply needs information
By practicing different responses such as open questioning, observations, opinions, advice or even direct instruction, the team learnt which responses create more neutral or more directive influence during a call. AskHR now have the judgement and skills to know which conversational principle or response will help a manager deal with their current issue, whilst helping them grow in confidence and resilience over time.
What were the results?
Mencap’s goal of using coaching behaviours to encourage learning has reduced the number of calls coming into the team. Also, the proportion of mundane or ‘common sense’ types of queries, has reduced, allowing the AskHR team to focus and add value in more complex situations. Caller (manager) satisfaction results show a marked decrease in the amount of support callers feel they subsequently require.
To justify Mencap’s investment in training and consultancy support, financial gains were expected from year three onwards. Delightfully, the team have achieved these targets within their second year. The team is now hailed as “a positive example at Mencap” by CEO Jan Tregelles who said of them:
“Their support is Zen-like, they are our gurus and Dalai Lamas, keeping calm and offering us wisdom and guidance at times of often great turbulence and emotion. They are a unique, high performance service team, a centre of excellence for employee relations.”
Mencap have also been shortlisted for the Excellence in Employee Relations Award by Personnel Today. AskHR’s coaching culture has enabled them to go beyond their own expectations and achieve the incredible. Starr Coaching would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to Carol Godding and Mencap’s AskHR team – we’re super-proud of you all!
Spotlight on the charity who dazzled the world of HR
Three-year financial targets smashed within two years, a nomination for a Personnel Today award and one very happy CEO. Mencap’s AskHR team are proving everyday how coaching in the conversation creates results and benefits beyond expectations.
Further Information
- To discover how Starr Coaching can help you develop coaching behaviours in your workplace, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.
info@starrcoach.co.uk
A division within a FTSE 100 life and pensions company, employing 5,000 people in the UK and abroad. The company has a reputation for excellence and is a consistent winner of technological awards for Pensions and Protection.
Performance Management within Financial Services
CASE STUDY
A division within a FTSE 100 life and pensions company, employing 5,000 people in the UK and abroad.
The Client
A division within a FTSE 100 life and pensions company, employing 5,000 people in the UK and abroad. The company has a reputation for excellence and is a consistent winner of technological awards for Pensions and Protection.
They are an organisation with a long history and traditional values. The company places a strong focus on being ethical and treating people fairly. Company values relate to service to others, co-operation, and the importance of customers.
Their Need
An Increasingly Challenging Operating Climate
In early ’08 markets were shifting rapidly, and the financial climate was increasingly daunting. The organisation needed to tackle the challenges head on, with a restructure and the emergence of strong leadership and management behaviours. One senior executive spoke plainly.
‘The message is clear; the clock is ticking. We must become a more challenging, focused, and driven organisation, which demands that we all demonstrate better leadership and management skills’
A need to get stronger at managing performance
A review of the performance management framework also revealed the need to adopt a robust approach to managing performance. Appraisal documentation, satisfaction surveys plus anecdotal feedback suggested that increased emphasis and consistency were needed. Managers wanted greater surety and confidence to handle the following:
- Agreeing clear performance objectives, both with individuals and teams
- Ensuring a continuing focus on learning/performance improvement throughout the year, e.g. within regular 1:1 update sessions
- Developing Talent, e.g. to alleviate pressure from themselves as ‘experts’
- Effectively managing poor performance, e.g. giving constructive feedback in a way that creates learning and improvement
- Using the Performance Management processes as a fair and objective vehicle for reward and recognition
Our client, a board member, was convinced that some traditional values needed to evolve.
‘We need to encourage more straight talking from managers to improve performance of individuals. That means stretching people with better coaching and feedback as a consistent leadership style.’
Coaching skills were seen as critical to managers in tackling these challenges in an increasingly difficult trading environment. Starr Coaching were asked to develop a programme of development that made sure classroom learning made a real difference to what happened in the workplace.
The Solution
Process, principles, and skills
Our approach increased clarity of the HR Performance Processes, then strengthened its delivery by teaching managers coaching tools and techniques. Managers were shown how to coach both in meeting situations and in the live environment, i.e. as a natural response to everyday issues and enquiries.
A 3-month learning journey
Activities were blended to create a learning journey over 3-4 months, e.g. self-assessment, training events, telephone coaching and reading. Other features of the approach included:
- HR delivered a half-day workshop to increase clarity of the Performance Management Process, e.g. key terminology, defining clear goals, etc.
- Starr Coaching delivered learning events and were supported by the clients internal coaching resource, e.g. internal coaches supported managers during and between learning events
- Senior managers attended events alongside their colleagues. The learning experience was cascaded to any manager with 3 direct reports or more.
The Results
Engagement, ability, and a common approach
The company performed electronic surveys which gathered feedback as well as self-assessment data. General feedback was taken immediately after events, with a more rigorous assessment three months after the final coaching event. Data indicated the following results:
- Increased engagement and ability in coaching, especially during less formal, everyday conversations in the workplace
- Increased comfort with the principles of ‘plain speaking’ and using coaching to increase openness and trust
- Increased support for the management performance lifecycle, e.g. agreeing targets, performance reviews and giving constructive feedback
Further Information
- To discover how Starr Coaching can help you develop coaching behaviours in your workplace, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.
info@starrcoach.co.uk
Selfridges is training senior managers to become coaches – and empowering employees and improving customer service as a result”. Sarah-Jane North reports
Selfridges Case Study
CASE STUDY
Selfridges is training senior managers to become coaches – and empowering employees and improving customer service as a result. Sarah-Jane North reports.
Changing the way you manage after a decade may seem like a Herculean task, but that’s what Chris Mitchell recently had to do.
Having worked for the Selfridges department store for nearly 13 years, Mitchell, area manager for services, was used to telling his employees what to do when a problem arose. Not any longer. Instead, managers must coach their teams on a day-to-day basis to help them reach their potential.
This new management style was installed by Selfridges’ learning and development team with the help of coaching consultants Starr Coaching. Starr has been running a two-day “manager as coach” workshop for Selfridges’ managers, with a one-day follow-up session six months later to check on progress. The workshop,
says Julie Starr, director of Starr Coaching, equips managers with two tools to help them apply coaching to their everyday working lives.
1. Formal Conversation
The first and more structured tool is the formal coaching conversation – in other words, a performance review. Managers are provided with a “coaching path”, a five-step process to help them navigate through a conversation driven by the employee.
2. Coaching ‘on the hoof’
The second tool is crucial to the style of management Selfridges wants. This three-step response coaching model helps managers to have coaching conversations “on the hoof”. It requires them to throw off any traditional styles of managing they use.
Learning Points
- Don’t expect managers to find time for lots of formal coaching sessions with employees.
- Help managers to coach “on the hoof” by putting them through workshops of at least two days.
- Help them to stay with the process by giving them simple step-by-step models such as Starr’s response coaching model.
- Be patient – it takes time for managers to switch management style but it will eventually become second nature.
- Encourage managers to get their employees on board, reminding them when they drift back to being overly directive.
- Managing with a coaching style can help people to feel more valued and develop more quickly.
“It all sounds very simple,” concedes Starr, “but the beauty of it is that it wakes you up from the normal ‘fix-it’ mode of managing. We tell managers that their job is not about knowing it all and doing it all, but about creating the conditions that allow others to learn and grow. And it is those bite-sized conversations that present the real opportunities to coach.”
Indeed, it is the everyday nature of this coaching style that holds the most appeal for Selfridges, operating as it does in the highly competitive, ever-changing world of retail.
Mitchell does not have time to hold umpteen meetings in his office each day, with 120 employees, including nine direct reports, and five departments to manage. There is no such thing as a typical working day here either, so varied are his responsibilities. Within his remit at the flagship London store are the information desk, car parking, the safe deposit department, alterations, customer services, payroll and expenses, suppliers and two franchise outlets.
Although the start of each day may be the same, what follows is anyone’s guess. So, says Mitchell, being equipped to coach his managers on the spot has proved to be a revelation. “I did question why I should change my style after 10 years and I found it difficult at first,” he admits. “But my old line manager told me that eventually it would become second nature, and he was right.”
Mitchell says switching to the new coaching style was made easier by having a new team unfamiliar with his old ways.
On his first day back at the store after the workshop, he gathered them all together and asked for their support.
“I told them not to let me give them the answers,” he recalls.
“People do sometimes appreciate you being direct and giving them the solution, but more often they want the chance to come up with their own and in doing so develop their own skills.”
Leading the drive to overhaul management practices was learning and development manager Caroline Darker. Charged with embedding the chain’s new values into the business practices and management behaviours of employees, Darker saw a chance for store managers to reinvent themselves, and turned to Starr Coaching.
Selfridges’ new values, launched two years ago, include showing respect, being customer-focused, adopting a positive stance and taking ownership of issues. For Darker, coaching offered a natural way to ensure these values were upheld by all who worked in the company’s four stores – in London, Birmingham and two in Manchester – and its shared services centre in Leicestershire.
“We had been consolidating bad behaviours in the past and we needed something strong and compelling to move away from that,” she says.
“Across the business we needed people to get away from functional expertise being their sole driver and instead make management expertise more a part of their role.”
High staff turnover rates are not uncommon in the retail sector and an employee’s relationship with their manager is often the central factor in any decision to leave. Added to the mix is the highly pressured, unpredictable environment.
Managers need to be seen on the shopfl oor, not locked away in meetings all day, asserts Darker. They should be accessible to their teams and up to date with the issues of the day. Therefore, they need the appropriate skills to interact with and manage their employees, which is what made this coaching style ideal.
“I think it makes people feel more valued, develops them more quickly, enables them to take more on, engages them, gets them to take ownership of their own issues and ultimately makes for a more pleasant working environment,” she says.
“Coaching is not always nice – it can be very tough – but as a coach you need to know how to end it in a good place, with people knowing what they need to do.”
So far 45 managers have attended the workshop, which brings managers from all four stores and the shared services centre together and requires them to interact through role-playing to acquire the coaching skills they need. Another 50
are due to attend this year. All are at area or sales manager level with responsibility for fi ve or more departments – the theory being, says Darker, that
“if you can get them to have coaching conversations the others will follow”.
Launched as a learning and development initiative, the workshop and the skills it teaches have quickly become a business priority. A recent survey of employees showed they were now more positive about their relationships with their managers.
“There is no such thing as a typical working day here, so being equipped to coach managers on the spot has proved to be a revelation”
The intention is to train another 100 senior managers over the next two years, followed by 200 or so junior managers. The workshops are currently delivered in London but as the programme extends its reach, regional workshops may become necessary.
“We are still at the early stages of this journey but the initial signs are good,” Darker says. She admits, however, to pockets of resistance to the new management style.
“There are people who have found it a real struggle but that is among those who just don’t get it. We are not saying that managers cannot be directional, simply that they need to have a more fl exible approach.
“I’d like to think we will eventually get to the point where it has become the Selfridges’ way of managing, but we’ve only just started the journey.”
Back on the shopfl oor at the London store, Mitchell is seeing results. He reports improvements in customer service and customer satisfaction levels and more empowered teams.
“It took some time to get into the new way of managing but I no longer think I have all the answers,” he says.
Further Information
- To discover how Starr Coaching can help you develop coaching behaviours in your workplace, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.
info@starrcoach.co.uk
ABOUT
With best-selling books, powerful principles, models and approaches, Julie Starr influences the growth of coaching globally. By making powerful ideas simple, Julie and her team of expert facilitators help managers to shape how they think and what they do. Together they transform everyday conversations in the workplace, for consistently better results.
