Executive Coaching High-Performing Teams

 

A Family Business Means Business

 
Initial Situation The president of a family-owned business struggled to motivate and lead his six-person leadership team consisting of family and non-family members. Conflict was not addressed openly, and when it was addressed, conflict was not handled constructively. Because difficult conversations were avoided, creativity and risk-taking were limited. The company was on the precipice of more growth, but the president was concerned that his leadership team lacked the trust and cohesion required for successfully expanding the core business.
  Results The leadership team became more comfortable and able to approach difficult topics with one another. Team members reported a new level of trust with one another—including family members and non-family members. Conversations that had previously been avoided were aired, and new levels of honesty enabled more creativity and risk-taking by the team. The company grew in scope as well as profitability, both of which were attributed, in part, to better working relationships and improved communication among its leaders.
 
 
As with most team projects, we began by conducting a thorough needs assessment to understand the nature of the team issue from the perspective of the managers themselves, not just the president. We interviewed each of the leaders and asked about the nature of their team’s collaboration, conflict resolution, decision-making, and leadership styles. In our assessment, we better understood the root causes of the conflicts on the team, and were able to design a series of leadership retreats aimed at improving collaboration.

We coached each of the six leaders for periods of three-twelve months, depending on the developmental goals we established with each of the team members and their colleagues. We met with each of the leaders along with the president of the company to validate that our goals made sense. We confirmed progress on a quarterly basis by speaking to each of the leadership team members about how they perceived their colleagues’ progress.

In quarterly, day-long retreats that we designed and facilitated, we offered a series of topics relevant to the team’s working style. During one retreat, we simply focused on “what conversations are we avoiding?” and in so doing we were able to unearth the topics for future meetings and were able to find resolution to some important unanswered questions like succession planning. Non-family members often wondered among each other whether they had a chance at leading the company in the future, and by voicing this out loud, the president as well as his family members were able to openly discuss what had otherwise felt like a taboo topic for discussion.

Meanwhile we coached the president of the company in what it meant to begin letting to and explored what kind of legacy he hoped to leave behind as he eased into retirement. We discussed building structure into his succession plan, and explored the pros and cons of including family and non-family members into the team. We helped him reflect on lessons learned in order to build his priorities for mentoring his leadership team to slowly take over the business.