As services gain in importance within a company’s portfolio, providing managers with the necessary support to master new challenges, grow into new roles or operate more effectively within their organization, a fast evolving competitive environment or with customers is crucially important. We understand coaching as a cooperative process to help managers, individuals or teams, set and achieve personal and professional goals and superior business outcomes.
Our coaches are able to quickly recognize the ability and experience of managers, build rapport and trust and work as a partner to define goals that are specific, achievable, and appropriate. Together, coach and manager identify strategies to advance these goals and determine support required to overcome barriers. Coaches challenge managers’ assumptions, ask probing questions and encourage them to clarify their own thinking; And become more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and critically examine their own performance. They receive objective and constructive feedback allowing them to recognize what works and what can be improved. They have the opportunity to put into practice what is learned, reflect on outcomes and follow up with adjustments in approach and evaluation of results.
Managers are empowered to become their own agents of change. They apply their skills, develop their abilities, prepare for more demanding challenges and grow as leaders. We build on individual and team needs derived from past experiences, but tailored to current activities, concerns and expected challenges. For teams we focus additionally on team performance, problem solving, increasing emotional intelligence and avoiding groupthink.
Our coaches are effective not only because of their strong communication skills, coaching experience and broad knowledge base. To a high degree they make a difference because they are experienced leaders in their own right, recognized and respected within their field. They have first hand and personal understanding of the context in which service managers operate, of service business transitions, operational modalities, organizational constraints, culture traits, nuances, risks and tricks of the trade. Technical skill mastery helps rapidly build rapport and engender respect of individual coachees and teams.
Typical benefits identified by clients:
- Better able to define, assert and articulate the role of service as a strategic activity within the organization
- Improved, more beneficial relationship between product and service units, enhanced cooperation
- Smoother organizational change, better buy-in; higher impact on performance
- Better alignment of objectives and actions;
- Increased diversity of opinion, but better coalescence around objectives;
- Faster, improved decision making; better understanding of risks and returns
- Higher degree of creativity and innovation in design of offerings
- Stronger competitive performance
- Better understanding of customers’ needs and requirements, improved customer journeys, customer-centric processes; better cooperation between sales and marketing; lower sales cost; higher customer conversion and retention rates
- Higher retention of key people, more commitment