Leadership Development Program

A middle eastern telecoms business was changing from public sector state
ownership to commercial, competitive and with 70% private shareholding. The mobile
business and the land-line business needed to merge with a consequent loss of a third of the
workforce in an environment in which this was unheard of. In addition the landline market was
being opened up to another provider and the mobile market was being offered to two new
additional providers. All senior executives below the CEO and his Deputy were asked to apply
for positions in the restructured organization.

This presented a series of strategic, leadership and managerial challenges. In people
development terms this involved:
• Developing leadership skills for the top 60 people in an environment where patronage
traditionally meant more than performance.
• Developing performance management skills to ramp up performance all through the
organization to deal with the more competitive environment.
• Providing 1:1 coaching for the CEO and for the top 60.

The Challenge
To design and deliver a coherent leadership development programme that would
prepare people for organizational change, recognizing that some of the participants
might not be appointed to the new organisation.

The challenges faced by this group included:
• Leading and managing themselves and those who reported to them through
a period of unprecedented change.
• Helping to develop strategic plans to implement the analyses done by
consultants. This would be the first time that senior people within the
organization would be involved with strategy creation.
• Understanding the needs of a potential new private sector shareholder and
providing the internal leadership to ensure alignment and then engagement
of employees with their new environment.
• Building and maintaining new teams where the selection process was based
on capability not patronage.
• Developing enhanced communication skills and strategies to ensure that
change was implemented successfully.
• Developing performance management skills to meet the competitive threat.
In addition, there was an identified need to provide the CEO with 1:1 support through
a period when his personal resilience would be sorely tested and without anyone
internally who he could consult.

The Strategy
The approach taken was to split the needs into four components:
• A five day programme which focused on strategy, leadership, change,
communication and teamworking.
• A coaching programme that supported and enhanced the leadership
programme for the group of 60.
• A separate programme of coaching support for one year for the CEO.
• Performance management training for the top 60, linked with their new
performance management system.

Leadership programme
This started with a coaching session to help participants focus on their objectives
through the leadership programme.

5 day immersion workshops in which the content was delivered using their
organisation as a case study. Concepts were explored and practised on an
organisation that they knew well: their own. This live learning approach made
immediate sense in the business and provided real take away items that could be
actioned. It also helped people do something meaningful at a time when many of
them were uncertain about their employment futures. Experiential exercises were
used as metaphors where this would enhance learning.

This was followed by a second coaching session to reinforce the implementation of
their action plans.

Coaching for the CEO
It was felt that his needs were different and that he would benefit from a one year
unconditional support coaching approach. Unconditional means that he was not tied
to the standard two hour session approach and we could customize the programme
to suit his specific needs as they emerged, including a mixture of face to face and
telephone sessions, and email and phone contact whenever he needed it. Mostly the
challenges were about leadership and the need for an objective external sounding
board.

Performance management
In groups of 12 the top 60 went through a two day interactive training programme to
learn how to run performance review meetings and how to link this with the HR
system that tracked performance. The learning approach was a mixture of role play
and real play with basic inputs to support.

Outcomes
The leadership programme was completed over a period of three months, quickly
followed up with the Performance Management training. Coaching for the CEO
started during this period and continued for the remainder of the year.
1) Participants thought highly of the programme evaluating its effectiveness as 9.18
out of 10.
2) Majority appointed to new positions in the new organisation.
3) The CEO was able to deal successfully with a number of challenging situations
with more confidence.