Global Finance Company
Global Finance Company
“David’s elegance at presenting is beyond. Our people loved working with him. Thank you for bringing your gift to us. We would love to have you back. So proud to have you connected to our brand!”
The brief: To improve internal communications and leadership style between senior executives.
This company is going through rapid expansion and struggling with the ‘tyranny of success’, invited me to run my Openness and Power workshops at a 2 day off-site to over 100 senior executives and company leaders from around the world.
The Task
To improve communication among mostly male senior executives. I heard concern from the company’s HR team that attentive listening and meaningful communication were being sacrificed through over use of email and at times an unnecessarily aggressive communication culture.
My power through leadership workshop developed these themes further by exploring responsibility, corporate governance, ethics and values to improve interpersonal and client-facing communication based on respect.
My sessions were also used to brainstorm best practice around meetings, email use and ways to be respectful even during ‘difficult’ conversations to help this hard-working, under pressure group excel.
The workshops
I was impressed by the engagement and openness by all attendees. Both my sessions were towards the end of a two day intensive off-site. I was expecting a degree of impatience and even resistance to my session. Far from it, the executives were relieved to be given permission to open up in a ‘safe’ place about complex and difficult issues around good communication at work.
Feedback Comments such as ‘I felt I knew some of this stuff, but it was so good to have it explained fully’. ‘It was great to have the space to unpack this stuff as I feel we never have the time.’
Coaching
Since my team development session I have started coaching two attendees, with the support for their head of HR, for individual coaching (working with me remotely via FaceTime with weekly sessions).
With my first client I’m deepening the learning from my communication class, helping him acknowledge his feelings and being able to express them to colleagues appropriately. With my second client, we are working to find calmness because of his unhealthy ‘addictive’ relationship to work.
My work with this company is ongoing.