National Membership Organization: Management Team Development Process

THE CLIENT

This national organization supports its membership of higher education institutions through a wide variety of programs and activities. The approximately 600 employees build alliances and provide ongoing services to the organization’s members and other related parties.

THE CHALLENGE / OPPORTUNITY

The organization has a group of long-tenured managers who had been promoted from within to become Directors, all of whom report to a Senior Vice President. They are all employees with longevity, have risen from within the organization, and are accustomed to “doing” rather than “leading.” They struggled with how to work together as a team and to empower their own direct reports as well.

THE SOLUTION

The Springboard team was engaged to work with these Directors, both individually and as a group, in order to improve their work as a team, to help them discover how to lead and learn to delegate effectively, and to coach them about strategic decision making and problem solving. In addition, the group was charged with creating and executing a “Team Application Project” that would showcase their newfound teamwork. The process included five team sessions and several integrated individual coaching sessions to reinforce new concepts.

THE RESULTS

The visible results from this team development process included clear inter-team communication improvements, movement from reactive to proactive decision making within the team, and the implementation of several time management strategies. The team also implemented a new communications approach across the department. One of the participants stated, “A number of issues were discussed which will assist each of us as we manage workflow and our staff.” With the team’s new collaborative approach, they were the first to create a departmental strategic plan and implement specific action steps as a part of an organization-wide initiative.

One participant said, “I really enjoyed the opportunity to think about new approaches to managing and communicating. It was also good to work as a group with my other Director teammates.”