strength-oriented leadership, culture of trust, team integration and team behavior

David W., Managing Director and Plant Manager in the automotive industry

I accompanied David for a total of two years in his role as Managing Director and Plant Manager, in which he had just started when we met. The coaching units took place both in individual sessions, by shadowing David during his day to day work and by facilitating team development activities with his direct reports.

David is a charismatic leader, a decision maker with long working days, who enjoys to be decisive. Previously he was responsible for a plant in an Eastern European country.

In his new role, David had to manage a challenging transformation of his organization. The last few years had been characterized by inefficiency, delays and quality issues. His international leadership team consisted in part of employees who had already held their roles for quite some years, but also of new, young team members who had not been in the company or their role for a long time.

In individual coaching sessions, I worked with David on his leadership skills. He had realized that his preferred management style would not take him very far. The team had previously experienced a similar leadership style of David’s predecessor, which had frustrated the team, since it did not prove successful in recent years. Hence, David wanted to do it differently. He was determined to empower his team to take the right decisions and to feel accountable. Having more time himself David would be able to work more strategically rather being involved in the day to day operating issues.

We worked concretely on his behavioral patterns of his leadership style. It was not easy to change, because for years it had proved successful for him. Through reflection, experiencing and learning new patterns, David was however able to let go operationally. He suddenly had much more time to further develop the business and his own stress management had improved significantly.

In team coaching sessions, for a total of 1.5 years, the team learned to function as a team. Team integration, team behavior, role clarification, change management, decision-making processes, resource-oriented feedback and learning to deal with conflicts were among the topics. Some team members also participated in individual coaching sessions.

In the end, the motivation and performance of the team had increased significantly working more effectively and efficiently. Even the relationship with the works council and the workforce had changed noticeably positively and the success of the change was reflected in the positive economic results again.