Ajay called Neel and counselled him for over an hour leading to the latter withdrawing his resignation. “Some peace temporarily”, thought Ajay as he stepped into the foyer of the plush hotel for his crucial client meeting.
Incidentally organization culture is so deeply embedded within the DNA of any organization that it influences the thinking and meaning of the organization to each individual. However each of the “I” think or make leads to multiple micro cultures within the larger whole causing subtle cultural differences and underpinnings that might affect the organization negatively. The irony being that most individuals are unconscious to this ongoing influence on their behaviours and actions.
Ajay had founded this organization 12 years ago and recently become my client. I was appointed as a coach to Neel. Ajay’s biggest concern was that none of his core team of senior leaders (including Neel) displayed a sense of ownership of the organization and this had impacted their levels of delivery and accountability pretty drastically. Somehow all the decision making and results focus became Ajay’s primary responsibility and the others merely executed when needed. All this had begun to cause deep stress to Ajay since he had started losing faith in the ability of his leaders to continue the business and grow the organization further.
Prior to appointing me as a coach to Neel, I was invited as a consultant to review the situation in the organization and offer my recommendations for improving the situation. I went about conducting depth interviews with all of Ajay’s direct reports and in addition with all members of the next level of leadership as well. These interviews gave me a lot of insight into the real time working culture of Ajay’s organization. For starters there seemed to be a major disconnect between Ajay’s vision and the translation of that vision to others. At the core Ajay believed in empowering all his leaders so that each of them had the freedom to operate independently and partake in business growth with an entrepreneurial mind set. However it seemed to have backfired since some of the vocal members of Ajay’s team expected the liberties and privileges of ‘ownership’ to be listed down in a formal written document similar to every other business process within the organization. The gap between expectations had created a negative and a contagious spiral impacting the organization detrimentally.
After I discussed my findings privately with Ajay he appointed me as a coach for Neel whom he felt had strong influences on the rest of the organization. He wanted me to coach him and enable him to build a greater sense of ownership, entrepreneurial drive and accountability at the core of his professional deliverables.
For my first session, I met Neel at a coffee shop near his house and we seemed to hit it off pretty well over small talk on politics and sports. But after 15 minutes I noticed a lull in Neel’s voice and he seemed to quieten down completely. He seemed rather curious to know why he was chosen to be coached instead of any other member of Ajay’s team. “Am I going to lose my job?” he asked rather hesitantly “is this why I’m being coached?”