In 2023 a client reached out because informal complaints were made about one of her valuable directors. The commercial director was said to have numerous challenging and conflictual relationships at her peer level. She was said to be distrustful, derogatory and threatening. Simultaneously others expressed great trust, loyalty and appreciation for Mildred’s leadership style: clear, addressing real issues, getting things done and standing up for her people.
Our approach started with Mildred herself. The big question was: are you willing to look in the mirror and get a full (360) perspective on your leadership? Are you willing to work on issues without blaming anyone who completed a 360 review for you?
With two yes’s to these questions we spoke to the most challenging relationships (8) and asked 16 others to fill in a questionnaire with the same questions as the interviews. A mixed and confronting 360-report resulted. Mildred took 48 hours to let the summary sink in. She then said that she fully owned up to the content and was committed to improve.
We proposed 7 coaching sessions including breathwork and voice dialogue. Parallel to that we facilitated three meetings with different departments were setting their records straight in courageous conversations.
Mildred was heading one of these departments and the courageous conversations that did not take place between these departments affected her reputation. She kicked these meetings off with opening statements about her learnings from the 360. She framed the meetings as an opportunity to deepen the mutual understanding between departments. We surfaced natural tensions and set ground rules for safety to ensure a safe environment for natural content tensions. The key tensions between marketing and commerce emerged, as well as IT and commerce. Mildred made honest and heartful reach outs to people. She asked people to give her stop signs, if she was in overdrive, or overstepping their boundaries. Coaching sessions helped her understand how her childhood trauma played into some relationships at work and how she could stop repeating her traumatic behaviors. She showed a remarkable increase of self-awareness, understanding and practice with new behaviors in the facilitated department sessions.
The combination between deep insight through neutral, unbiased source, based on honest feedback and practical steps to recover issues between teams gave her a new start and better relationships until today.
Learnings
This case study highlights the importance of self-awareness and a commitment to personal growth in addressing transgressive behavior. Leaders must be willing to accept feedback and engage in self-reflection to improve their leadership style and relationships. The use of 360-degree feedback, coaching and facilitated sessions in which real business tensions were addressed, provided a powerful context for growth. It also fostered a culture of openness and mutual understanding.
Case study was derived and anonimized from our work practice.
