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Case Studies

In order to keep and promote a highly valued employee, Human Resources looked for a way to help a Chinese Financial Analyst communicate more effectively with her team members.

Challenges:

This analyst was just a few short moves away from being promoted. She had all the technical and writing expertise required to make a strong presence with both clients and senior members at the company. The only major skill she lacked was interpersonal communication. Her meetings were domineering and her approach to leading others was considered abrasive and insensitive to the collaborative culture and collegial values of the firm.

Solution:

When we first started working together she perceived her struggles as mostly language related, both spoken grammar and written communication. By addressing these much needed improvement areas first, we were able to establish trust and credibility enabling her to take ownership over the direction of the coaching from the very beginning. Further into the program we were then poised to negotiate selection of peers for the purposes of gathering professional communication feedback. Summaries of these reports helped to highlight areas she had not seen before - inability to listen, dogmatic meeting management, interrupting – and to begin to address them for the remainder of the coaching program. 

Outcome:

Follow up peer reviews with the same participants allowed for dependable benchmarking of her progress. Reviewers noted a heightened conscientiousness around team communications and personal engagements within the firm. Furthermore, peers described her professional behavior as “drastically changed”. The company was pleased and she was more confident to move forward. During the next promotions period she was moved up to her new position.

• The employee gained a higher salary, increased confidence, and feeling cared for and supported by the firm—priceless!
• The company gained the retention of a key employee with extensive organizational memory and industry contacts and a highly prized skill set.

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A soon-to-be-promoted German Product Manager needed to work more collaboratively with senior-level peers; his confrontational and aggressive communication style was perceived as a barrier to the firm’s corporate culture.

Challenges:

This up-and-coming product manager had developed a reputation as a control-and-command type in a very laid-back, non-hierarchical culture. Though he was very adept at professional communication in terms of presentations, professional writing, and even client engagements, he was not connecting with and reaching out to senior level peers very often. Some viewed this behavior as standoffish, formal, and ambiguous.

Solution:

The difficulty in working with this manager lay in helping him to discover areas of challenge before they might be addressed in the training. We used mock meetings and video tapings to evaluate his communication style so that both he and his trainer might review his communication style and evaluate it based on predefined criteria. As these visits continued, in situ training began to uncover his true professional communication behaviors – rigidity with time and protocol, directness, over usage of formal language, and closed body language. Without his trainer telling him, he realized this would certainly prevent him from moving forward in the firm. With his new found self awareness and personal ownership over the training experience, he was much more amenable to the voluntary peer reviews. 

Outcome:

Being aware of these challenges was a very big first step for this German employee who was very hard to approach. The training program was a wake-up call and he soon began to make more attempts at connecting with higher-level colleagues both at company events and at off-peak moments. This enabled him to understand that tapping into the informal network at the higher levels was much more viable for his career than excellent presentations.

• The employee gained a true assessment of what he needed to get the promotion in his current company. He is grateful that his company had the courage and generosity to confront him with very critical professional feedback.
• The company gained a stronger, more capable employee with high potential for promotion. Because of the show of support the employee is less likely to leave the firm for different opportunities and instead value the ongoing resources available to him throughout the life of his career.  This also sent a clear message to other employees.

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To increase his chances at interviewing and landing a job, a soon-to-graduate Japanese MBA Student did not want to make any false moves with his resume, cover letter, interviewing or other early-stage job search efforts.

Challenges:

Graduating at the end of 2008 and in the height of an economic recession created a challenge for this recent MBA graduate. To make matters worse, his writing in English was not up to speed. This practically guaranteed that none of his submissions would so much as be looked at amidst the hundreds of competing candidates with solid communication skills.

Solution:

He only had 1 month to make training count! We were able to customize 3-hour consecutive power sessions around major, realistic objectives that would have immediate practical application to his career efforts: help him construct and edit his online presence (LinkedIn and Twitter), polish and perfect his current written materials (resume, cover letters, emails to HR, etc.) providing templates for future scenarios, apply to jobs within the training period and offer in situ coaching, review stylization techniques for cover letter writing, address cultural expectations and protocol (ex. sending hand written cards following the interview) and develop a personal pitch for self branding.

Outcome:

His eyes were opened to new and unanticipated aspects of the job search and professional communication. Because development of professional communication was not a part of his MBA program, his newfound confidence and skills set him apart from others of his graduating class. He also gained a special advantage by learning new professional skills he would also take into his future job.

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