Coaching Case Study By Olga Labutina
(Executive & Transformation Coach, GREECE)
This case study represents a very common challenge many of my executive coaching clients face in the workplace but.
In my executive & business practice, I profoundly work with people from the leadership teams of large multinational companies and, although highly successful, some of my clients can not always adapt to certain negative cultural aspects of the organizations they work. Often, those negative cultural aspects of the organization affect them in a way that they start doubting their success, their capabilities, and their overall career progression. All of the above impose a heavy burden on their work and life, as well as their corresponding leadership style, which creates a vicious circle.
The corporate culture dictated top-down in many of their workplaces is unforgiving of mistakes, and many a time the success comes at a cost of overwhelming stress, self-doubt, and avoiding failure at all costs, rather than learning from it.
As highly successful individuals, often perfectionists, they tend to undermine their past accomplishments, depend on continuous external recognition, and feel the need to constantly prove that they have earned the place and the position they currently hold. And an ongoing requirement to promote and “brag” about their projects and their leadership capabilities within the company (as opposed to having “the results speak for their work”), as well as engage in corporate politics are tremendous factors adding to their dissatisfaction with the company’s culture and their work life.
According to the article “Toxins in the workplace: effect on organizations and employees”, written by the organizational development researchers Steven H. Appelbaum and David Roy-Girard[1], “organizations, as well as their employees, suffer from the effects of toxins that are present within the organization.” The authors have outlined numerous negative effects that result in poorly established leadership and organizational culture worldwide. Although the research the article is based upon dates back to 2007, the negative effects discussed are widely present in the modern organization too.
These effects discussed included “impaired judgment, irritability, anxiety, anger, an inability to concentrate, and memory loss.” At the same time, it is stated that those effects contribute to the financial losses higher than $200 billion each year rising from employee deviance, which on its own accounts for almost 30% of all business failures.
Needless to say that eliminating the cultural toxins, reestablishing a healthier corporate culture by nurturing more positive leadership styles, corporate coaching, offered to the leadership teams and higher management, as well as various L&D initiatives can play a crucial role not only in the employee workplace satisfaction and reducing deviance but also in the business and financial results.
There is no surprise in the fact that the overall mood of the organization is set by the higher leadership teams, so the toxicity is usually spread out from the top. “The higher up the toxic person is, the more widely spread is the pain, and the more people there are who behave in the same way”
Such leaders play an essential role in establishing and maintaining a toxic work environment.
A toxic leader can be described as someone that is motivated by self-interest, the personal image, and achievements that are self-centered rather than organization-centered.
- They often are the leaders who focus on visible quick fixes and short term achievements and succeed at the expense of others.
- Toxic leaders micromanage and want to be in control of every project at all times
- In case of problems or challenges, a scape-goat needs to be found to blame on.
- Toxic leaders cannot afford and admit making a mistake
- Toxic leaders always interpret the situation, news, or strategic managerial decisions in a way that works for them and their career plans.
- They never show or express vulnerability, which is according to the research professor and author Brene Brown[2], “{Vulnerability} is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change”.
More often than not, my clients are adopting the toxic leadership style, because, as they say “it is compulsory to survive in my organization, because when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” At the same time, not all of them are culturally aligned with such leadership styles, they tend to strongly disagree with it and the way it is influencing them. Such an emotional, cultural, and rational dissonance creates a lot of negativity, as well as self-disrespect.
Below I present the specific case of my client Mark and his workplace cultural struggles.
The client
Mark, the senior director of the largest FMCG company, came to me with the “I don’t know what I should do, I don’t have the power to continue working in this company, I feel trapped and unsure either of whether I am in the right place, or if I can continue with the same function. I feel emotionally drained, disrespected and I have no motivation whatsoever to go to work every day.”.
The situation for my client was also strongly impacted by teleworking, the uncertainty of the company’s goals at the beginning of the Covid crisis and the fact that although necessary at his level, networking and nurturing the relationships wasn’t easy.
Mark has 20 years of working experience in financial consulting, he is a superstar achiever, he has been selected as the most impactful employee numerous times, winning the “forever lost” accounts and launching the projects no one could launch for the company globally. He is outstandingly result-oriented, a hands-on doer, who acquired the mentality of “if you want something to be done right, do it yourself. Unsurprisingly, he has been stretching himself too thin, running thousands of micro and macro projects on his own, incapable of delegating tasks and trusting his team. His 360-degrees report of his management and leadership style indicated a huge discrepancy between the management, peers, and subordinates’ evaluation. His working approach, misalignment in the personal and the corporate values was leading him to the verge of burnout.
Coaching Relationship Agreement and Discovery
Working with Mark we followed my CHOICE coaching model, which as the name implies, bases on the importance of the concept of choice. I believe that as a coach I can help my clients embrace the choice for behaviors that are obvious to them and that lay on the conscious surface as well as uncover the behaviors and beliefs which my clients stand unaware of and eventually help them apply a conscious choice in that case to achieve a lasting change in their life and work.
I am convinced that whatever thinking/feeling/behavioral acts and patterns we consciously and subconsciously choose to apply (and more importantly choose not to apply) in a specific situation play a pivotal role in the success or failure of the overall process.
Hence, embarking onto a coaching journey and engaging in a coaching relationship is a conscious choice that needs to be taken for coaching to bring the undeniably transformational results that are most of the time beyond the objectives stated at the start.
During the discovery session with Mark as with most of my clients, we have always clarified that for the coaching relationship to succeed and bring the expected or even beyond expected outcomes, he would consciously choose to want to engage in the coaching relationship as well as choose to embrace the process and to want the positive transformation (whatever it will be) to happen.
We have also worked on setting the rules, outcomes, prior expectations, and looked deeper on the “now” of Mark.
Mark revealed that he was really unhappy with his senior VP he was reporting to for not being able to take responsibility, for being a yes-man, and for the fact that he wasn’t interested in Mark’s career progression. At the same time, the very complex nature of Mark’s organization had its own effect on Mark’s disappointment with himself and his work. The organizational structure was not linear, it wasn’t always clear who is responsible for various long and short-term decisions or how projects were run, on top, the company was going through a set of transformational initiatives as well as budget cuts.
Due to the matrix nature of the global organization, Mark’s extended team members would vary from project to project, the responsibility of each member and their impact on the project was not clearly defined, not making it easier for Mark to feel in control and have everything “under my watchful eye”.
Before joining this FMCG company Mark had a career in on of the biggest consulting group, where the responsibilities were crystal-clear, the results (defined by specific numerical KPIs) were driving the projects and although he used to work 15 hours per day as opposed to 10 in his current company, he never felt as drained and unsatisfied as he felt when he came to me.
At the end of the discovery session, I have offered Mark to complete the DISC assessment so that we can uncover his specific personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, natural predispositions, etc, and so that he has some grounds to reflect upon before we start working together. As a matter of fact, Mark was very eager to go through an assessment, any tool, literally anything that could help him change his situation and his emotional state.
Coaching Mark
During the first session Mark reflected upon his DISC assessment results -he came as a Cs. He agreed that he thrived on order and clarity, applying his “severely”, as he mentioned, an analytical approach to solving problems. He has also mentioned that it worked very well for him during his career in consulting, as analysis, meticulous approach to every detail and strong orientation on numerical results are what was needed to perform and succeed in this industry.
He was reminded about how hard it was for him to play the corporate politics game in his organization where the approach to the results is not that straightforward, and the achievements are not measured in a direct way but rather an indirect one, correlated with the interest of a ruling party. Although his previous consulting job, like any other job, had a certain degree of corporate politics injected into it, it was not that overpowering as it is in his current corporation.
He has also mentioned several beliefs he might hold about the management and his team. He caught himself probably expecting too much from his team, as he expected everyone to be as analytical and organized as he is. That was reflected in the way he was providing feedback to his direct reports (as per his 360 assessment), which was harsh and too direct, performed in a rather irritated one-way manner. He also lacked active listening skills talking to his team and this was not taken positively by his subordinates.
On top of that, he realized that he was searching for a significant input for high-impact decisions from his management, in his pursuit of clarity, requiring a sign-off more than what would be acceptable for his position.
He has stated that probably the corporate culture he was currently living in was not ideal for him as it significantly lacked clarity and required him to engage in a lot of “politics” as he called it and that that might have been the reason for his general low level of job satisfaction.
After several initial sessions, together we set the overall agenda for our relationship and goals, including developing an understanding of the non-toxic corporate culture he could thrive in, altering his management style towards his direct reports and his relationship with his management as well as working on his communication style and skills.
Mark’s main motivational driver
What came up for my client in the middle of our coaching relationship was the fact that he was being very emotional about the concept of a stable living location and feeling at home.
He mentioned that although he was enjoying working in the consulting industry, neverending business trips and unpredictable projects and assignments were negatively impacting him and even cost him his first marriage.
He opened up about how deeply frustrated and sad it was making him feel to not be able to call a geographical location “his home”. He lived in hotels and rented apartments for short periods, and it was entirely against his nature and all-consuming desire for stability and comfort. He shared that he needed to have a home to return to, a shelter where he can “get the new energy from”. A home that he found in his current city, was ideal for his personal life and his personal happiness.
His true driver became evident to him during this session and he concluded that he preferred the stability of the corporate world as opposed to the instability of the consulting world and that it was more important than the predominant style and clarity the consulting business could offer.
The dilemma:
He was faced with a dilemma: whether to find a new company where the corporate culture was aligned with his values or to try and adopt his working style, his mindset and communication skills to the current reality to be more effective, lead in a more impactful way and shift his level of job satisfaction. He reflected on both outcomes and although the first one was more desirable, he decided that it will be his longer-term goal, that he will stay with the same company for several more years, show results, and get a promotion, which will also work better for his CV and the overall career progression.
He has also admitted that he would like to become a more flexible leader, who can lead not only in the times of “crispy clarity” but also in the times of uncertainty and that staying with his current employee and transforming his working and leadership style is a challenge he would like to accept. He believed that as a senior leader, even though he would be unable to fully eliminate the entrenched toxins of the corporate culture of his workplace, he could definitely contribute to “changing the game” for his teams in a top-down manner.
Mark’s search for recognition:
With several observations from my side, Mark revealed he was also unwilling to leave the current workplace as he was constantly seeking recognition for his projects and results, and “leaving now means I have given up”.
When I inquired about what recognition meant for him, what would it change when he got it and what had him needing it so badly, as well as mentioning all the recognition he had already received in the company, Mark opened up about his childhood and the education he received that was mainly based on achieving outstanding results, their recognition or punishment, in the case the results are not achieved in full. He realized that he was seeking recognition in a somewhat automatic and unconscious way as this was “the way I am used to functioning”, as he mentioned.
We discussed it further and Mark mentioned that he was probably “too old and too senior to care so much for the recognition from others” and that he actually felt like this had been impacting him negatively and that he felt “some kind of liberated” understanding that.
I have invited him to try several mindfulness techniques to reflect on the recognition and the feeling of liberation from it and Mark found it very effective.
Mark went further on to reflect on what can “inhabit the space left after the liberation” that will be his internal resource and he realized that the satisfaction from the improved relationships at work can be a great driver and a source of motivation, especially in the beginning of this journey.
Mark’s communication skills
In the course of this discussion, Mark came up with a conflicting point. He acknowledged himself for being very easy-going and capable of creating and maintaining personal relationships with different people globally. Because he has lived in various locations, his network is spread out globally, which has never been an issue and that he has always been “great at bringing people together and keeping connections” when it concerned his personal life. However, when it had to do with creating and maintaining the relationship at work, or simply networking and seeking benefit from it, he was totally reluctant to pursue any effort in this domain.
He unveiled a strong belief he held deep down, that not only did networking have a strong negative flare to it for him, but also he was, as he mentioned, “taught, that work is work, and there is no space for creating relationships. When you work hard and bring results, there is no time for chatting”. He realized how much this belief was influencing his “very average” networking skills, and that he could “borrow the friendliness” and the ability to connect, attract and charm people from his well-developed communication skills that he widely uses in his personal life.
The outcomes:
As a result of the abovementioned revelations and the coaching journey as a whole, he was able to create:
Resources
[1] Appelbaum, S.H., and Roy‐Girard, D. (2007). Toxins in the workplace: affect on organizations and employees. Corporate Governance: The international journal of business in society, 7(1), pp.17–28.
[2] DR. Brown, B. (2012). The power of vulnerability. TedXHouston