Steve Jardine, Sales Director at Acoulite saw coaching as an opportunity to challenge himself and to gain support during a difficult time of transition and change within his organisation.
Faced with bringing together a new and inexperienced team, alongside difficulties communicating and aligning priorities across departments, Steve found that Tom Flatau’s coaching techniques not only helped him to adopt a growth mindset and achieve far more that his original goals, but that he could also use the approaches to enhance his own staff relationships and support their individual needs.
Long story short
Steve saw coaching as an opportunity to challenge himself and explore not only where he wanted to be in his career and within the organisation, but also as a way to help get his people through transition and unknowns at a time of great change within the company.
As Sales Director of a new sales team, with many newly recruited members, it was a very challenging time. They were disparate and inexperienced. They often felt they needed Steve to report to and to lean on. They lacked independence. Steve became the interface between established members of the organisation and this brand new team. It was hard work bringing about a sense of collaboration, understanding and communication between them. However, Steve was in no doubt that this was sorely needed and would provide many excellent opportunities for the business’ growth, if he could make it happen.
Steve had agreed some big goals and large targets, and felt overwhelmed. However, with the support and guidance of Tom Flatau, through the one-to-one executive coaching sessions, Steve:
“Openness. Trust. Collaboration. …they are critical for all of us to be successful in everything we do as human beings. If you can harness that and see the benefit of it all, then it builds your confidence massively.” “In each session, there was something we wanted to move on to, another achievement or a slight change…it kept moving along.” “Working on growth mindset was key to confidence.”
“Openness. Trust. Collaboration. …they are critical for all of us to be successful in everything we do as human beings. If you can harness that and see the benefit of it all, then it builds your confidence massively.”
“In each session, there was something we wanted to move on to, another achievement or a slight change…it kept moving along.”
“Working on growth mindset was key to confidence.”
Steve took what he was experiencing and learning in the coaching sessions and adopted this approach in his own leadership.
He encouraged his people to be more honest with each other as a way to better engage and understand each others’ priorities. He immediately started to see more alignment between departments.
Steve found that even those within his own team were afraid to be honest with him. He shared this example with us:
“There was a junior designer with whom I had a very traditional sales approach. I would write a detailed brief and give it to him to ‘get on with it’. It is a typical approach for a lot of people. But then, I wasn’t getting back what I was expecting or wanted. So, I had an informal meeting to gauge how he was getting on. He told me, “I’m frightened of you…I don’t want to get things wrong”. I didn’t want to be that guy, so I asked him how I can make the design process better. I offered that instead of writing a briefing why don’t I sit down and talk him through it. Through this simple act of understanding, we developed trust and now this designer delivers exactly what I need – the results were immediate.
It was all thanks to the coaching and realising this was a much better approach.“
Throughout the span of the coaching, Steve found that he needed to do a lot of soul-searching and to truly find his self-belief. The structure of the sessions allowed him to come up with many answers himself. Through this, he gained both clarity and confidence.
Steve was amazed at how the coaching worked on an almost subconscious level. He found that the answers he was looking for were all there within himself, but it took commitment. Then, the results generated themselves. He realised that many of the goals were achieved almost without him trying because they became part of a longer journey.
Tom helped Steve to understand the importance of learning with an open and positive mindset and always to be open to learning from others; to have trust in that process.
Steve admits that whilst there are always things to work on in his organisation and in his own personal development – he no longer calls these weaknesses. They are just the next phase, and present opportunities to continually improve both yourself, as well as helping those around you.
Even Steve’s Managing Director has noticed a big change and saw how Steve’s team and his role massively changed. He now sees he can trust Steve to make decisions and to communicate these to other team leaders and managers, giving the Managing Director more time and freedom to close deals and lead the organisation. Another example of how the coaching has helped more that just Steve himself.
Yes I want to receive advice and news on how neuroscience can help me succeed in business.
Once payment has completed, please click the "Return to Seller" button to continue.