An Identity Crisis Averted

As an Enterprise Transformation Coach, one of the greatest challenges tends to be bringing teams along a journey that appears to be top-down, even when support exists at a team level. Working with a global financial services provider, once I understood the organisation’s vision and path to transformation, I busied myself focusing on individual teams, to communicate and clarify the why, the what and the how of the change. My success was limited for many months, for as long as I felt tied to clarifying the mechanics of the jargon-ridden large scale transformation approach to individual teams. Looking for the root cause, and with the help of another leadership and mindfulness coach, we realised we needed to bring it back to basics and even before the “why” of change, we decided we need to start with the “who”. By getting people, even those who had worked together before, to really listen to each other, understand each other’s personal and professional values, and their unique preferences of working, we were able to facilitate a genuine social agreement, one that embedded a high level of genuine trust, collaboration and camaraderie amongst the team and led them quickly from ‘storming’ to norming. This provided a more cohesive ‘voice of the team’ for me to work with when embarking on the why, what and how of the transformation, with any challenges brought forward in the future also being more authentic, respectful and from a place of holding each other accountable and a willingness to make the team succeed.