Transform Experts into Leaders
Juan, a hard charging IT professional, was hired to head up IT services in a well-established organization where he was told that processes and procedures were not keeping pace with business needs. Excited by the prospect of turning their IT around – and what that might mean for his career – he quickly hit the ground running, uncovering a large number of problems and potential risks.
Juan focused almost exclusively on the systems issues and problems in those first months and was direct and blunt in talking with the team about what needed to be fixed and how they should go about it. Despite working late almost every night for six months, Juan was discouraged with the team’s progress. Things that should have been easy fixes weren’t. Or at least that’s what the team claimed. Even the most promising team leads seemed to be dragging their feet.
Around that time Juan’s organization administered a 360 for all its executives. Juan was stunned by his results. He received a number of low ratings and team members commented that he was rude, condescending, and, at times, downright insulting. They said he didn’t listen, even when they told him he was about to make a mistake. Not knowing what else to do, Juan hired a one of our coaches to help.
Humbled by his 360 results, Juan took the process seriously and realized that he needed to focus far more attention on his people skills. The coach helped him improve his listening skills and enabled him to see that his aggressive, blunt style was actually hurting his team members rather than empowering them to do their jobs. Over the next six months Juan worked closely with his coach to bring his people skills more on a par with his technical skills. When the 360 was administered again, Juan’s scores had improved significantly in every category. More importantly though, Juan knew he had developed the kind of people skills that would serve him well for the rest of his career.
