LEADERSHIP MANAGEMENT
Context: Multinational company
Population: Talents
Our clients often ask us to implement programmes aimed at “turning their resources into leaders within two days in the training room”…
By descending on the company concerned and using mixed training methods (training room, outdoors, evaluation tools, individual interviews, workshops) we give form and substance to a programme that enables the participants:
- to acquire a common method and language regarding the use of the various styles of leadership and how to identify the characteristics of counterparts while strengthening participants’ ability to go beyond their preferred style of leadership (“that’s the way I am”, “a leader’s style must be…”), acquiring the aptitude to change style depending on the specific situation;
- to understand the various aspects of horizontal and vertical leadership;
- to develop their leadership through a personalised program that is reinforced over time.
People Management and Development- Basic
Context: Multinational company
Population: Newly appointed area managers
Taking the most common, difficult-to-manage situations as our starting point, we helped people to establish themselves in this new role by encouraging the sharing and use of a common company language.
By pragmatically combining a methodological framework transversal to the development of the participants' individual characteristics, we improved their effectiveness in implementing the method.
In a second phase, the company entrusted us with the area managers of the group's other brands.
People Management and Development – Advanced
Context: Multinational company
Population: Point of Sale Managers and Corporate Central Functions Managers
We acted on participants in two main directions:
- to provide practical methods to deal more effectively with team management, development and motivation in order to achieve business results, dealing with specific situations associated with the role and various situational aspects.
- to develop a greater awareness of themselves and their management style within the perspective of encouraging and supporting the self-development of managerial skills.
Role Integration and Awareness
Context: Leading National Company
Population: Managers within the sales area
Following the introduction of a new sales process to be implemented within the branch network, the company strengthened its structure by setting up a new role (a 200 people team) to act as the connection between the sales division and the various sales areas.
We created a modular managerial course (training room, outdoor, follow up) aimed at:
- ensuring the acquisition of the necessary tools and methods to ensure effective handling of key operational moments associated with the new role;
- increasing their authority as sales contacts for the branches, and motivating them to share and apply the new sales processes;
- supporting the method with a personal effectiveness programme to increase the managers' awareness of their own "comfort and discomfort zones" from the perspective of self-development and increased mastery of themselves and their role.
Today, this programme is presented in this company's training catalogue as "role integration" for each new appointment.
Context: Leading national company
Population: POS managers
The client needed to reinforce the abilities and skills of an extremely wide-ranging and diversified population, in view of the development from a technical-commercial role to a more distinctly managerial role.
This objective inevitably led to the involvement of the Managers on two levels:
- personal involvement in the role change and working with an increased awareness of themselves and their working style in order to boost their efficacy;
- acquire/consolidate certain managerial skills identified as particularly useful and important for this type of Manager.
The prerequisites for the project's success derive both from a strong commitment and its implementation, beginning with focus group activities and "workshops" involving various figures from within the company that enabled us to carefully draw up a detailed managerial development path.
Context: Leading national company
Population: Middle Management
The course has a twofold objective:
- to make all phases of the meeting more effective and efficient, from preparation / convocation of participants to verification of the output and the decisions taken.
- to train every manager to manage group dynamics, interventions from the "floor", timescales (deadlines) and the ability to achieve the meeting's objectives.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Area managers
We involved the area managers in a project aimed at strengthening their abilities to act as authoritative and efficient "coaches" for their collaborators. Over a significant timeframe, we worked with a series of tools and methods:
- 360° feedback aimed at coaching
- personal profile of their leadership style
- moments of development in small groups (3/4 people)
- individual interviews
- final feedback with colleagues
We accompanied the participants along a pathway that enabled an effective and focused interpretation of the development of their subordinates' skills, beginning from an examination of their attitudes and stimuli with respect to leadership and coaching activities.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Top Management
For an important multinational company, we implemented a mentoring training project aimed at the best talents. We used a long term process and the support of effective tools to obtain:
- the full, conscious sharing of the project by the mentors (the company board)
- the refinement of the skills, attitudes and behavioural sensitivity necessary to fill the role of mentor
- a programme of activities to allow the group of mentors to work in a standardised manner
- matching between the mentor and the mentee to encourage the ideal integration, on the basis of the characteristics and skills of those involved
- a monitoring system with a view to continuous process improvement and replicability.
Performance evaluation training
Context: Leading national company
Population: All managerial staff (Directors and Executives)
The company has reintroduced a new Performance Evaluation system after a few years of absence. Combining aspects of internal communications and other training aspects, we implemented a project with two main objectives:
- to present, make known and above all ensure the effective use of the new process
- to involve the evaluators from the perspective of motivation and organisational awareness (rather than the technicalities of the process and evaluation sheet).
Context: Multinational company
Population: Top Management
During the appointment of new high ranking managers and other board members of two multinational companies, we encouraged the creation and strengthening of team spirit and a shared strategic managerial style for the entire Board.
In particular, we acted on the following axes of improvement:
- increasing each manager's awareness of the management of his own role, incentivising the motivational levers
- reinforcing the ability to motivate and develop staff members, giving them direction and supporting them in the attainment of company objectives
- offering practical, useful tools to improve and speed up the understanding and management of multiple scenarios
- adoption of a common, shared language that strengthens team spirit and brand loyalty.
SALES FORCE
Context: Multinational company
Population: Junior sales personnel
In order to optimise the sales efficacy of the entire sales force, we have developed a pragmatic, sector-oriented path (practical training, customised tools, workshops) which enables participants to:
- learn and immediately use a common language and method for client management
- develop skills in terms of preparation and planning, identification of client needs, targeted presentation of the sales range, effective management of possible objections and elaboration of the offer
- fuel personal effectiveness through an increased awareness and mastery of the motivational and behavioural levers used, overused and refused
This program has been extended to all new company employees for several years.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Senior sales personnel
The requirement: to create an advanced sales training path, aimed at the entire senior sales staff. The aims: go over and examine the entire negotiation process specific to that role, while reflecting on how each participant's personal experiences and characteristics influence the various phases.
Combining customised, refined methods and tools and specific training on each individual phase of the process, the training focuses on a two-fold objective:
- optimisation of staff efficacy in manging the various phases. Participants are invited to reflect and train themselves to sharpen their awareness of the motivational and behavioural levers used, overused and refused, with the aim of strengthening the effectiveness of the entire negotiation process
- perfect the managerial ability of the various participants. We work on how to quickly recognise the personal characteristics of different counterparts and the most effective communication and relational methods to quickly develop a more harmonious relationship.
Sales Efficacy - Value Selling
Context: Multinational company
Population: Key Account Managers
The objective of this highly pragmatic programme was to strengthen global efficacy in client relations and negotiations, to offer extra added value (value selling). This is a sector in which both products and negotiations are highly complex.
Given the presence of individuals with extensive consolidated experience, we began from this baseline to identify an exclusive added value for individual managers and their specific business to help them transfer the concept of value selling to the client while building effective and differentiated relationships with the client company's various contacts - including the particularly demanding ones, whose input often proves decisive.
Sales Efficacy- Marketing Operativo
Context: Multinational company
Population: District Managers
The company's premise: "Although the presence of numerous emergencies is an intrinsic part of our company and our sector, we feel that our staff are not sufficiently organised and fail to plan their activities effectively; their time and priority managements could be more incisive; we should also provide ourselves with some tools shared by the entire company, because each brand has its own system".
Working from this requirement, we planned and successfully implemented a programme that incorporated both aspects:
- one methodological, providing the entire sales force (including managers) with some simple, immediate operational support tools, developed with the company on the basis of its specifications
- one motivational, to help staff to assimilate and share the tangible added values that the use of such tools ensures in daily activity.
Sales Efficacy - Low Performer
Context: Multinational company
Population: Sales personnel
We created a programme to strengthen the sales skills and motivational awareness of a group of low performers.
This was a very delicate intervention as the company, not considering them "lost", still wanted to invest in these resources, and because group members felt a certain personal and / or professional unease in the interpretation of their role, with a direct impact on results.
We provided individual staff members with a very practical key to the interpretation of:
- their working style
- their areas for development
- how to relate on a 360° basis with the context, clients and people
- their way of interpreting their sales role
- the motivational and behavioural levers used, overused and refused
Finally, by unmasking their blocking and motivating stimuli, each of them was able to set out on a new personalised development path.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Point of sale managers and sales personnel
Objective: to quickly increase sales and profitability.
We launched a structured coaching path for the sales force of all sales outlets nationwide.
We placed the need to develop a "client culture" - i.e. the ability to adopt an approach that is more in line with the needs of an increasingly competitive market - at the centre of the coaching activity.
We intervened in order to:
- optimise the commercial efficacy of each seller, concentrating on improving those individual aspects that limit performance
- transmit a common language and method, in terms of communication, negotiation and client orientation, in order to standardise the efficacy of the entire sales network.
Over a lengthy period, each of our coaches worked alongside individual sellers to provide specific, developed and continuous support in their sales activities, with the aim of consolidating and optimising the actions and behaviours essential for commercial efficacy.
Long term programme to strengthen the sales network
Context: Leading national company
Population: The entire sales network
We implemented a Sales Network strengthening programme (from Managers to the Sales Force) which was carried out in several phases over 3 years.
This strategic process enabled us to create an initial transversal programme through which the Sales Network shared a common language in terms of reasoning, skills and tools, with the objective of reinforcing the Network's "identity" and creating a more uniform client management method.
The second step allowed us to target more precisely and specifically certain behaviours and skills to be developed in the existing participants.
The entire process "accompanied" the Network (Sales Force and Managers) in an intensive yet gradual manner, avoiding the risky effects of "spot interventions" for their own sake in isolation from the participants' actual professional situation.
TEAM EFFICACY
Context: Multinational company
Population: Teams of staff
Following various structural, organisational and hierarchical changes, some critical problems emerged in the operational management and coordination of some staff teams (e.g. the leadership of new coordinators with respect to their teams and integration of the management teams).
Combining different methods - from targeted workshops to internal communication actions - we supported the teams in the route towards more organic and functional management in terms of managerial ability, communication flows and operational dynamics.
With the management teams we intervened in order to:
- encourage effective, functional and integrated managerial action
- offer methods and strategies to act on the teams' motivational levers
- enable the successful management of the change dynamics in progress
With the operational teams we intervened in order to:
- strengthen individual teamwork skills
- encourage and sustain integration processes, valuing the contribution of all colleagues
- offer methods and strategies to optimise the team's functional efficacy
Context: Multinational company
Population: Management teams
For some years now we've been accompanying the management teams of important commercial distribution centres through actions on the "here and now", offering solutions focused on the contingent needs of each team.
These are high added value projects as we intervene transversally to integrate and strengthen the individual stimuli aimed at team working, as well as involving teams in development paths that enable them to overcome the critical elements of a specific moment in real time, through the growing development of the team's skills and resources.
By combining different methods: training interventions, focused workshops, coaching sessions and innovative outdoor experiences with a b emotional impact, and by ensuring the presence of an open communication channel with the people involved in the development path - a guarantee of constant monitoring - we help generate and support a sustained team empowerment process.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Sales management team
After the merging of two companies, there was a need for the creation of a new sales management team, the members of which originated from both of the previous companies. Far from seeing the benefits of integration, they had evolved into two power groups that were experiencing a high level of conflict, with consequent difficulties in fulfilling new business objectives.
We intervened with a training path aimed at:
- eliminating the high level of individual conflicts
- setting up an integration process to be reinforced over time through the involvement and active contribution of all team members
- offering a "tailored" method enabling the planning and attainment of shared business objectives
- activating and sustaining motivational stimuli
Context: Multinational company
Population: Business unit teams
A company operating within a highly complex, competitive sector had structured a series of new Business Units after several acquisitions of other, smaller companies. The new teams were characterised by:
- different reference cultures
- different ways of understanding business logic
- a variety of figures to be integrated: managerial, technical, sales and support.
We intervened in order to:
- set up and support a long-term integration process of the different cultures present, while maximising the existing vital and functioning aspects
- guarantee the integration - of people and roles - through the recognition and constant maximisation of each person's contribution
- combine different business logics and methods, offering a common, shared and streamlined method
- act on the working processes and mind set of those involved, in order to optimise the management of complex scenarios
PERSONAL EFFICACY
Context: Multinational company
Population: All company personnel
With this programme, we supplied each member of staff with a very practical key to the interpretation of:
- their working style
- their areas for development
- how to relate on a 360° basis with the context and with people
- their way of interpreting their role
- the motivational and behavioural levers used, overused and refused
Thanks to a practical, user-friendly tool and a personalised strategy, the people involved embarked on a virtuous path to development.
Moreover, having involved the entire company staff, we obtained important transversal advantages for the whole company:
- assimilation of a common language
- standard rules in the evaluation of organisational behaviours
Self Development and Empowerment
Context: Multinational company
Population: Middle Management
We encouraged a "critical vision" of previously used behaviours and methods to identify their effective aspects and axes of improvement. This was achieved by increasing managers' awareness of their own style of work and its impact on the achievement of their own results and those of the sales team. This programmed strengthened the participants' ability to work on their own self-development, by reinforcing:
- overall effectiveness in real activity
- the ability to deal with and manage difficult and stressful situations
- self-motivation
The programme's added value for the Client and Participants was its guidance of the latter towards a self-development path which they can nurture autonomously and progressively in their daily activity.
Context: Leading national company
Population: Marketing Department
We planned and implemented a training path - to be inserted in the catalogue - to enable all central marketing department staff to consolidate and develop their abilities and their motivation towards making responsible and effective decisions.
We therefore developed a process that allows participants to:
- reflect and train themselves to sharpen their awareness of the motivational and behavioural levers used, overused and refused during decision-making
- become aware of how, in their own daily activity, they tend to concentrate on those decisions that fall within their own "comfort zones" (the b points that we use the most), to the extent that they are overused and transformed into potential weak points
- to be "more and in better" harmony with difficult decisions (situations and people) in order to optimise their own efficacy in different situations
- to implement and refine a long term personal development plan.
Context: Inter-company training
Population: Managerial staff from various companies
Classroom training sessions to develop and resolve some problematic cases, both company-related and other, proposed by the participants themselves enabled participants - whose common ground was people management - to try out the value of at least three key elements:
- the adoption and coordination of problem solving methodologies within the work team
- how to activate and sustain creative dynamics by integrating them into the application of a method
- the importance of acting with and for the team, taking on the role of facilitator and process coordinator to ensure that the solution benefits from the added value that each team member can offer.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Top Management
This session aims to train Managers to boost the effectiveness of their presentations. Managers are required to speak in numerous situations: internal business meetings, congresses, conferences and conventions.
In a stimulating workshop with the support of multimedia tools, participants were:
- trained in an effective, versatile method
- shown how to emphasise their own special characteristics to give their presentation more impact
- trained to recognise what qualities to develop and - above all - given a strategy and method to achieve this
- shown how to overcome some common misconceptions on their ability to sustain a smooth, effective performance in front of an audience.
Context: Multinational company
Population: All company staff
Beginning from the need to optimise the time management and activity scheduling of all managers, we proposed and created an innovative time management programme.
Taking individual characteristics of each participant as our starting point, we provided each one with specific, made-to-measure Time Management techniques and methods. Elements such as personalisation, practical use and immediate implementation of the methods offered enabled participants to improve the operational and strategic management of their activities from the very beginning.
In a second phase, the programme was extended to all company employees.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Internal trainers
We designed a customised programme with the objectives of:
- supplying the fundamental elements of classroom and public speaking techniques
- imparting the coaching method in order to effectively support the new sales force within the territory after training
- ensuring the effective management of feedback
Drawing inspiration from their individual characteristics, the participants worked on:
- understanding and refining the various communication methods and learning more effective behaviour and attitudes in classroom management and delivering presentations
- managing possible objections from participants
- learning a management method to support new sales personnel with the aim of developing their abilities and skills
- managing role-play, identifying the salient points of feedback and communicating them precisely, tangibly and appropriately.
Orientation and effective integration in the workplace
Context: University
Population: Recent graduates and undergraduates
From some years now Italian universities have been asking us for a graduate and undergraduate programme to encourage a more conscious, effective approach to the world of work.
We invite participants to work on their self-awareness and personal efficacy in a five day, full-time course which combines and integrates time for reflection and sharing of experiences with training and implementation sessions.
We work on at least three key aspects:
- the development of a clear, realistic vision of the dynamics that govern companies and the market, especially in relation to the ways in which "human capital" is managed.
- we offer useful, practical tools "made to measure" for each participant to increase their effectiveness in the management of "critical moments" (e.g. the selection process) and to provide the most suitable response to the transversal expectations of companies (e.g. client relations and team work)
- we work actively on the awareness and motivation in each participant in the establishment and achievement of objectives in the forthcoming socialisation process.
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Context: Multinational company
Population: Talents and Key People
The objective was to define the successful skills of the best talents and key people in order to spread them throughout the organisation.
Beginning from a study of the company situation, we defined and structured skill profiles in line with the distinctive characteristics of the professionals working within the various corporate environments.
The aim of this project was not to deliver a list of skills for evaluation, but rather to propose a series of tools able to accelerate a culture aimed at valuing and developing people within the organisation through a structured process.
Our diagnosis envisaged the extension of this culture to possible future objectives such as the identification of training plans, evaluation of potential and external / internal selection in order to achieve objective-based work management.
Context: Multinational company
Population: all staff members
The company's objective was to increase its awareness of the skills in place within the company, and especially those special skills able to boost the performance of its resources..
With the premise that the skills evaluation process must necessarily be in line with the organisational context and the target population, we helped the company overcome an evaluation based on occasional, disorganised, generic and personal judgements, in order to achieve a systematic process, guaranteed by a uniform language and standardised criteria based on precise parameters.
A system thus capable of breaking down skills analytically, providing clear, shared parameters and establishing the importance of these skills within the various roles.
This programme also aimed to accelerate the culture of structure staff development within the organisational context, allowing individuals to understand, examine and explain themselves through different cues and suggestions originating from their own working environment.
Context: Leading national company
Population:Top Management
We were asked to help board managers achieve a more complete, conscious development of the management of their role with respect to the many changeable challenges posed by the market.
For each board member and the board as a whole, we provided support aimed at developing a better mastery of their role and the skills whose proficient application enables future challenges to be embraced to the full.
We structured a process in which we acted by:
- working first on motivational levers to strengthen each person's commitment
- helping individual managers to analyse their needs by clarifying their priorities, requirements and expectations
- analysing the organisational context and market opportunities
- supporting the manager and the group in identifying their b points and areas in need of improvement and by favouring a perspective approach over self-evaluation
- supporting managers in creating their professional plan.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Talents
Our client wanted to know the potential of its resources, with the aim of understanding whether or not the positions of talented staff offered adequate opportunities for development. We proposed the evaluation of potential as a twofold investment for the company: on the one hand a planning tool, and on the other, an opportunity for staff development and motivation.
We offered the possibility of evaluating people's capabilities from the perspective of organisational development, regardless of their current role.
The company seized the opportunity to optimise its resources while guaranteeing continuity in managerial roles and distinctive skills.
Observation and evaluation as characteristics of the process used were supported by a method and tools developed specifically for the given objectives.
We also paid particular attention to two key moments in communicating the project: convocation and final feedback.
Context: Leading national company
Population: Management
In response to an important national group's need for more in-depth knowledge of the compliances between principles and attitudes required of management, we used the Management Audit method to work on the following: a 360° "attitudes and values" evaluation and feedback system .
This method also enabled:
- the set-up of a dialogue between the company and the individual to ensure that the evaluations made by the multitude of organisational players are based on communication
- the creation of greater integration between the company core figures
- the encouragement and long-term growth of dialogue between the company and individual
This programme enabled the company to reach a more detailed, mature self-awareness, providing a complete picture of its current situation with respect to new values.
Organisational analysis to maximise organisational development
The Italian branches of some multinational companies asked for our support with certain organisational development processes, including:
- cultural and/or strategic change processes
- changes to the organisational structure
- integration
- acquisition
- merger
- growth
Our experience has taught us that this process requires "4 hands" management, as ever more often, organisations already have the resources needed to achieve solutions, and projects are accomplished only when the company takes conscious responsibility for their implementation.
We offered our expertise in the analysis and planning of structures and processes, in the drafting and introduction of new management tools, in the implementation of surveys and research within the organisation, in the creation and support of workgroups and project groups and in the provision of expert and process advice and training activities.
On this basis we have helped organisations and groups to deal with critical experiences through numerous actions:
- analysis-intervention
- workshop
- temporary work groups
- project groups
- discussion groups
- targeted training
- process consulting
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Context: Multinational company
Population: all staff
Aimed at spreading new values and new brand skills among the entire personnel.
The project delivered a smooth, inter-functional, multi-channel and multi-media programme by combining formal training with other aspects associated with internal communications.
Using a playful and evocative method, the staff involved reflected on individual values and their intrinsic potential within daily operations (assimilation).
The next step was to guarantee each participant access to a simple and effective "recall" to consolidate the memorisation and assimilation of each company value.
Context: Multinational company
Population: Top Management
The aim was to push the company and personnel towards a more competitive business system capable of a more proactive interpretation of often critical market dynamics.
We created a new system of values in close collaboration with a group of top level company managers, using a variety of techniques and tools.
Following this, we trained the entire top management staff (approximately 50 people) to manage personally the diffusion of the new system of values throughout the entire company. We also supported the process through interventions aimed at internal communication.
The direct involvement of top level company management allowed us to highlight certain aspects of cultural change, thanks to the direct involvement of the highest ranking managerial staff
Context: Multinational company
Population: Sales network
Following an acquisition, a multinational group invited us to plan and create a "change management" project, understood to mean the ability of people to adopt a new business model and a new role within the new organisational set-up. The project, which involves a large number of resources (over 1,000), combining training sessions, workshops and individual coaching with specific internal communication processes, focused on two aims:
- to help people to manage distinctive managerial situations associated with their new role, beginning from their own personal and leadership characteristics, while at the same time fuelling motivational drivers
- to help people to be more effective in spreading the new model, supporting their ability to manage the motivational dynamics of their counterparts when faced with change