A Promotion Comes Complete
with a Skeptical, Mutinous Team
Excitement turns to frustration and deep concern when a legal manager learns the office she’ll be managing is in utter turmoil, and going downhill fast.
The Client: A busy managing attorney and her supervisory team.
The Challenge: Support the managing attorney in engaging with her team to quickly bring operational performance up to standard, while improving professionalism and teamwork.
The Solution:
Beginning with executive coaching sessions, we worked with our client to:
- Get to the source of dysfunction within her team
- Create a turnaround plan
- Hold courageous conversations and take corrective actions with staff
- Adapt her working style to match the needs and styles of others
- Plan, lead and facilitate participative team meetings Inspire and empower her team to raise the bar of excellence
Part II of the engagement focused on ½ day management retreats designed to:
- Build the supervisory team up and align on purpose, vision and values
- Create a team charter and agreements, and assess progress on turnaround plan
- Create a safe environment to discuss and resolve “undiscussables”
- Review delegation, feedback and performance measurement techniques
- Strengthen relationships across the team; create camaraderie
The Results:
Our client, her superiors and team members reported significant improvement in staff morale, collaboration and professionalism across the office. Most importantly, attorneys adapted to a variety of agency-driven procedural changes (that were resisted previously) while improving the overall quality of work performed.
Supervisors reported feeling more cohesive as a team, and empowered to lead their employees.
Our client reported her biggest breakthrough came from adapting her usual highly directive work style to one that included inspiring, influencing, listening and facilitating, rather than dictating. In her words, the difference in the office atmosphere and how she felt as a leader between our first and last meeting was like night and day.
My senior team and I engaged Scott to assist us in adapting to organizational and leadership changes that stressed our office to the limit. He patiently and expertly worked with us to leverage our strengths and address liabilities in a way that left me more confident as a leader, and the group working as a unified, high performing team. The difference between the beginning and end of our work with Scott is like night and day.”
Supervising Attorney, Social Service Agency