Watching a leader transform under pressure is one of the most rewarding parts of executive coaching. This story follows a construction industry General Manager who had to navigate a high-pressure downturn. With support from executive coaching, the client clarifies his strategic focus, makes tougher decisions, and strengthens accountability as he actively guides his business through intense operational challenges.
Context for Engagement
My coaching client, John (not his real name), works in the construction industry for a corporation that has offices throughout the US. He was the General Manager of a regional office with over 200 employees. I was chosen as his executive coach for a nine-month coaching engagement.
Problem: Business Unit Under Pressure
His business unit was in a critical situation when coaching started. Some projects were losing money, some were behind on completion, some had been put on hold by clients. This put immense pressure on John to create a path to navigate this downturn. He was very respected and well liked. Generally his management style was to collaborate and get consensus before taking action. Given that revenue was down and new business was sparse he needed to set a new direction, take bolder action, and develop stronger leadership and accountability for both his team and himself.
John got written feedback from his manager and nine others on his team. There were three major areas that he needed to focus on:
- Have a plan, set the standards, focus on KPIs, get the work done on time.
- Make decisions more quickly, hold people more accountable, focus on results.
- Prioritize so everyone knows what to do, track individual’s progress, motivate people to be the best they can be.
Solution: Strategic Planning for Operational Demands
John and I started with the “low hanging fruit” to get some early wins. He used his Executive Assistant to create more planning time for the team and also for himself. This got him out of the day to day crush so he could begin to focus on creating a strategic plan for navigating the downturn. He also put a new leader into a key executive role to better deal with clients and get that team better organized on the projects side. These two moves were immediately seen as movement in the right directions.
Project Execution
1. Aligning Leadership with Accountability
As the strategic plan became clearer, John worked closely with his manager to create buy-in from him. He also worked to communicate the strategic plan throughout the larger organization. Time was spent getting the whole team oriented to the changes being made and as expectations were clarified, accountability became a stronger focus. This was an on-going task as the changes needed were often challenging to realize. Working through a team of 14 sub-heads was critical as alignment was always a key component of getting the work done right and on time. Not to get ahead of the story, but John would later pare this group down to 8 sub-heads which streamlined meetings and increased accountability. This helped the business unit’s ability to keep the strategic plan messaging clearer and more on target as workflows changed.
2. Embracing the General Manager Role
John also got laser focused with his manager and began meeting every other week with the EVP from corporate as well. He developed more clarity about what it means to be the GM, owning the leadership of the business unit role more fully.
3. Restructuring: Getting the Right People in the Right Roles
Part of the restructuring that needed to happen was getting the right people in the right roles and making critical staff adjustments. Over a period of a few months many of the most critical roles were switched out. This added fresh energy to the efforts to create new business while making sure that key problem areas were better attended to.
4. Building a Long-Term Strategy
As the focus on cost cutting and creating new sales opportunities continued, John’s strategic plan was being revised for a longer view as well. The new plan was broken into three timeframes: Short (3-12 mo.), Mid (12-23 mo.), and Long Term (which was how to “future proof” business that could be sustained for the long term). John knew that the current downturn would eventually shift and become an upturn again. His plan positioned the business unit for success when that happened. Around this time he also began focusing on the business unit’s culture. He wanted to move the culture to a place where critical feedback is seen as positive and trust is the ground from which his team worked. As his coach, this demonstrated to me that he was looking to the future with as much clarity as he had looked at the past several months.
Outcome: Maintaining Operational Continuity
Just as our coaching was coming to an end, John’s manager was promoted to another position and a new SVP became his manager. John felt he was welcoming the new SVP to a business unit that had moved through many changes and was continuing to prepare itself for the next year of business and beyond.
Key Learnings
John had some major learnings from our time together. He saw he needed to be more active in leading the business unit. He discovered that toughness meant some people might not be completely happy with the direction he set, but this was offset by greater overall effectiveness which led to better results. He learned that setting clearer and higher performance expectations and demanding greater accountability helped the team be more settled with their work and clear about the direction of the business unit. He also came to fully inhabit his role as leader of the business unit.
Reflecting on the Coaching Process
As John’s coach I saw, once again, how iterative coaching is. We start with what we know needs to take place and as we move forward, other ideas, needs, and desires show up and we add these to our focus as that happens. These discoveries enrich the process for the client and the coach. Sometimes the way to action is clear and sometimes it takes some digging to see the right way forward. Being able to sit and hold the unknown until a way forward becomes clear is what makes coaching such a powerful tool for growth. It’s a process that never ceases to amaze me.