Engagements

ARC Leadership Associates provides a broad range of services for both individuals and teams. Individual services include in-depth coaching to C-level executives, development coaching for high potential leaders, and on-boarding for leaders who are newly hired or new to their role.

Our team programs are tailored to our client’s situation and challenges. We help launch new teams and support established teams to reach higher levels of performance. We can also integrate individual leader coaching with the team development process.

CASE STUDY 1:
Individual Executive Coaching

Organization

A manufacturing company generating $1+ Billion in domestic and international sales

The Situation

ARC Leadership Associates was engaged to help a recently hired VP Customer Care transform her 100+ employee organization, which was underperforming with respect to customer satisfaction and day-to-day operations.

In this fast paced and metric driven environment, the client had to work on multiple fronts to implement her strategy and deliver a culture shift. She first had to a quickly determine the critical priorities. Our client then needed to gain buy-in from senior leaders and engage frontline employees. Additionally, her goal was to maintain her relationship oriented style while driving change—a challenging balancing act.

Engagement Design and Objectives

ARC conducted a situation analysis consisting of 360° feedback interviews and a variety of leadership assessments, including the Hogan Leadership Forecast Series and MBTI Step II. We then collaborated with the client to develop goals and a twelve month action plan. Ongoing coaching continued over that timeframe to:

• Provide a safe environment to think both strategically and tactically
• Leverage an objective sounding board to understand and navigate organizational challenges
• Support her ability to reframe problems and test out new ideas—evaluating risks and realities
• Build confidence in her decision-making and judgment
• Provide a guidepost for balancing her relationship-focused style with direct messaging when needed
• Track ongoing performance and accountability to the plan and make adjustments where appropriate

Results

After 18 months in her new role, the client successfully:

• Rebuilt the Customer Care organization through a new hiring process, staff training, and attracting strong management talent
• Established customer focused daily execution metrics to gain immediate actionable feedback on performance
• Improved the organization’s rating from the worst in customer satisfaction to one of the top two in the industry
• Built relationships across the different business units
• Established credibility as a key strategic leader in the organization

CASE STUDY 2:
Integrated Individual/Team Coaching (I-Team)

Organization

A $2+ billion division of an international industrial manufacturing company.

The Situation

ARC Leadership Associates was engaged to work with two dedicated cross-functional teams and their new leaders. These teams were newly formed and for the first time, fully and jointly accountable for new product development. The teams were asked to:

• Execute a new stage gate approach to product development
• Improve the overall product development process
• Ensure the timeliness of new product releases
• Tackle a new target market that had extensive and stringent testing protocols

Engagement Design and Objectives

ARC designed an integrated approach that addressed development for each individual team leader and for the freshly chartered new product teams.

For the team leaders, ARC’s program incorporated individual assessments to foster insight on leadership style, motivation and values. Quantitative and qualitative 360° feedback provided additional performance information. The coach worked with the two team leaders to generate action plans. The plans focused on developing new leadership behaviors that would contribute to their success in the new role. Tools and resources for managing the team dynamics were also included.

For each team, ARC designed a full day offsite session to share the overall team profile and individual work style preferences within the team. In addition, the coach worked with the team to use this information to help establish operating guidelines, practice effective communication and information sharing, and structure a more rigorous approach to creative problem solving. Individual team members committed to specific areas of development in support of the team’s overall goals during the session.

Results

While each team focused on slightly different objectives, both teams:

• Increased their level of honesty and disclosure within the team
• Closed the gap on accountability problems by addressing critical communication issues
• Established mechanisms to provide systematic updates as to the team’s progress
• Accelerated learning and avoided early, and potentially costly, pitfalls
• Created accountability structures to ensure the team delivered on its timelines and milestones
• Developed scorecards to consistently monitor progress