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CRAFT Leadership Case Study – External leadership support: A catalyst for change

CRAFT Leadership, High Performing Transformational Leadership Team, Transformational Leadership

When someone reaches the top level and becomes a company leader or board member, they will face the most significant challenge: “Who can I turn to if I need guidance or support?”

A kind of pathos often surrounds the top leader. We believe them to be infallible, and they cannot afford the slightest uncertainty, error, or “weakness” in the grip of expectations. But is it a weakness if a leader needs new points of view, external support, or the formulation of the right questions? The answer is clear and not at all surprising: of course not. In fact! Isn’t it true strength and wisdom to dare to ask for advice? Who said the leader is omnipotent? Yes, they have to make the decisions; they often have the last word, but a good decision requires thorough knowledge and an open mind.

In professional sports, world leaders, almost without exception, have masters, mentors, and teams who work with them, even though they practice their profession at the highest level. A world-class tennis player, for example, technically cannot get more out of his/her game. The top 50 in the world ranking are roughly at the same level regarding technical knowledge and endurance. Mentally and strategically, however, not. Anger management, audience sympathy, regeneration, energy management… we could list everything in which a new point of view and fresh practices can be introduced. A sportsman who constantly evaluates him/herself and faces his/her weaknesses is capable of further development, which he/she did not believe in until then or was not even aware of until then.

It is no different for top leaders. Yet we hear less about how essential a well-structured, targeted, and individualized executive program is for them. However, if we simplify it, a company’s success depends on the quality of its leader(s).

One of these leaders, Peter Pesthy, is the former managing director of Linde Magyarország Anyagmozgatási Kft., who, during a 2-year collaboration with a renewed leadership team, vision, and leadership style, brought a noticeable, positive change in the company entrusted to him.

 

Overview

In 2018, Peter met a complex challenge by the Linde Group, operated by the German headquarters, which deals with material handling solutions (sale and rental of forklifts) and intelligent automation systems for intralogistics processes. In his assignment, he had to replace the managing director of the Hungarian subsidiary, who had been in his position for several decades. With that, he had to complete the company’s transformation. Although Peter already had industry experience – including in the areas of service, production, and industrial electronics – as a top leader of a large company, he still felt that he would need professional help in such a large-scale change.

 

Challenge

Among the many executive coaches and mentors, he chose me. He had already met me at professional forums. Now, he needed a consultant specializing in transformation and building the leadership team with whom he could work closely for extended periods. Since Peter only then started getting to know the company’s internal structure, the employees there, and the everyday work processes, he needed time to get to know himself. However, he had the least amount of time since, as a managing director, he simultaneously felt the pressure of the task entrusted to him, the doubt and mistrust directed against him as an outsider bringing change to the organisation, all this in addition to the energy- and time-consuming burdens of operational work, maintaining customer relations and recruiting professionals.

 

Approach

Peter recognized that, on the one hand, as a specialized expert, I could help him formulate a new corporate vision, prepare the transformation, and prepare the organization and the leaders for the changes. On the other hand, with my strategic solid support, I could also help him integrate into the company.

 

Tasks

  1. Getting a comprehensive view of the company’s operation
  2. Identify the “organizational skeletons”
  3. Formulate the most important goals
  4. Eliminate malfunctioning processes and obstacles
  5. To put the company on a growing and renewing path

 

Transformation

Peter asked for 3 months to complete his diagnosis and map the most critical processes, and after that, he actively involved me in creating the transformation strategy.

I divided the Transformation Leadership process into 4 phases:

  1. Executive leadership guidance with key business imperatives – to the point and precise formulation of the organization’s vision and where it wants to go in the 6-12 months ahead, how the culture and the operation of the teams should change
  2. Rethinking his own leadership operation – how Peter needs to change to transform the organization successfully
  3. Identification and removal of organizational and individual saboteurs – filtering out hindering human factors, flawed processes and regulations, entrenched old, no longer successful personal and corporate habits
  4. Recalibrating the operation of the leadership team – how to build an effective leadership team that aligns with the transformation and leads it. As well as how to recalibrate available resources for successful transformation.

 The transformation affected the most critical areas of the company: sales, marketing, internal administration, service, finance.

 

Results

Peter’s preliminary expectation was that I would help him formulate clear goals and set up a method to take him and the leadership team through the transformation process. In addition, he and his team will be able to develop and motivate new arrivals in the future.

 During the first year of our cooperation:

  • I was a partner in thinking and provided professional support to Peter.
  • As a facilitator, I actively participated and held a series of workshops implementing the transformation.
  • I continuously helped to analyse professional and human factors.
  • I helped the leadership team through the change.

During the second year, I continued to work with Peter and returned regularly. I held follow-up workshops and supported the newly hired leadership team members with onboarding executive coaching and mentoring so that they could be at the forefront of the transformation as soon as possible.

 

Conclusion

When we disrupt an old system, the people working there often don’t understand the importance of the change either. Their usual life is suddenly turned upside down, and they will have doubts and worries. Only the top leader who can emerge victorious from such a situation is the one who embarks on the change consciously, confidently, and based on a consistent plan. And most importantly, NOT AFRAID TO ASK FOR SUPPORT. Despite all this, Peter remained humble enough; as he wanted to improve, he understood that he could cause many problems by being too fast or missing essential details. The goals of the cooperation were fully met.

This is how Peter remembers our joint work:

 “Personal chemistry is important to me. At the end of the day, it’s a relationship of TRUST (CRAFT Leadership Essentials – Trustworthiness), so it doesn’t matter how the personality of the executive coach and mentor affects me. It is essential to have a common language so you don’t have to over-explain everything because you understand what the other person is talking about. It gave me a sense of security that Beata saw the point. Moreover, she also noticed that I (a more technically oriented intellectual) could adopt an understandable and followable methodology easily, so I saw the process we would go through right from the beginning.

From the CRAFT Leadership methodology, (https://beatakalamar.com/craft-leadership-the-book/) FOCUS, inner strength, stability and building leadership credibility (REAL LEADER) helped me the most so that I don’t get lost in the details, put aside my maximalism, and don’t lose sight of the goals. And my team understood that the everyday task of the company leader is not to sell products but to lead the company in such a way that the sales team sells more products and that the organization serves its customers quickly, efficiently, and at a quality level.

 Thanks to the joint work, we have achieved several measurable and qualitative improvements and developments, such as:

  • Despite the organizational changes, Employee Satisfaction increased by 11 points,
  • Thanks to the commercial and marketing goals and actions laid out in the Vision/Strategy, the results of the new sales team set a record since the company’s existence,
  • Thanks to individual and team coaching, and conscious selection, a balanced, decision-making, a new leadership team was selected based on the DISC methodology.

 Without Beata, this great result would not have been possible.”

 

If you are also interested in working with me, let’s have a 25-30 minute consultation. Schedule a time slot here: https://beatakalamar.com/get-in-touch/