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· A large call center on the East coast was experiencing bad morale. Disgruntled Managers lost faith in their leader and performance was plummeting.
· Plunging metrics led to large losses in revenue.
· Lidia was brought in to coach the leader and to discover the issues driving the morale and performance issues. She also worked with the 5 managers and others on the management team to uncover the core problems and find solutions.
· Within 3 months the leader – with the help of Lidia’s expertise- had rebuilt significant trust with his staff. Through team-building meetings, morale improved appreciably and metrics rose dramatically – saving the company $3.5 Million per month.

Situation
A highly metrics driven call center was tumbling in performance. Headquarters received anonymous complaints about the call center Director and the poor morale among the managers and staff. The VP of this functional unit was notified by human resources about these issues.

Lidia was called in by the VP who interviewed the Managers who were horribly dissatisfied. They felt that they were not being treated with respect. Even long-term Managers that had much experience, felt they were being treated with palpable disrespect. Key staff was threatening to quit.

At the core of the conflict was the Director who did not understand or see how his words and actions were directly related to people’s job satisfaction and ability to perform. “The floggings will continue until the morale improves” codifies how this Director led, unintentionally, those around him. Upper management was completely unaware of the damage caused by his actions and words until the anonymous tips came to light. People were exhausted, feeling hopeless and weren’t confronting the Director about how they were experiencing him because they did not feel it was safe to provide their feedback. As result, the communication was going one way (top-down).

Resolution
Lidia worked with the Director one-on-one, the Manager team as a group and then with the managers one-on-one to discover what issues they were experiencing. After these meetings, she carefully designed a way to address all the concerns. In a series of sessions consisting of a group discussions, and two-on-ones (Lidia plus the Director and a Manager) – each issue was tackled.

The Director was shocked with what he learned in terms of how people were experiencing him. With the help of coaching, he took significant action that ultimately indicated to the Managers and supervisors that he was open to them and their feedback. He spent at least 1 hour a day being visible, interested, available to people by walking the floor and interacting with them. He went out of his way to pop-in on managers in their offices, to communicate with them and find out how things were going. Rather than being a passive recipient of their input, he was an active recipient and proved to them that he took their concerns seriously.

In team-building meetings, the Managers were encouraged to look at how their attitudes and actions were feeding the negative culture. Eventually they took responsibility for upgrading their style of communicating with their boss and their staff which impacted the culture appreciably in very positive ways.

Conclusion
The Director went from leading the organization with metrics, to leading the organization with communication, while still getting to the end-result of metrics.
All Managers and extended support teams gained confidence and trust in their Director’s leadership because of how he significantly improved his interactions, availability, support and communication. The Managers followed suit and the culture of the entire call center improved dramatically.

The call center, within 3 months, appreciably improved their metrics, which represented a savings of $3.5M per month for the company.

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· Communication broke down between two teams within a large company who supported the same customer.
· The leaders of the teams were extremely frustrated with the lack of performance.
· Lidia discovered the root cause of the teams’ inability to collaborate.
· The differing styles and mandates of the leaders made it impossible for their teams to truly work together. After coaching the leaders, they were able to model the behavior they expected from their teams. Performance improved significantly.

Situation
Two different services divisions of a large corporation were required, for cost benefit reasons, to dovetail the way they support a largely common customer base. In order to accomplish this new way of service delivery and customer care, the Directors were asked to work together to establish a common set of practices.

In the process of creating this common set of practices, they entered into a seemingly endless series of meetings, with nothing being resolved. They brought their issues to their VPs, who in examining the situation, didn’t understand where the problem was or why this was such a big deal. The VPs’ frustrations with their Directors were growing.

Resolution
Lidia was invited by the senior VP to provide a facilitated dialog between the Director teams. In the course of an initial meeting, this particular conflict became evident and was brought to the surface through her facilitation and questions. In facilitating the dialogue, differences were brought up in the direction that was being provided to the Directors from their VPs- one was prescriptive and the other very aloof. The series of breakdowns in collaboration that occurred were a result of these incompatible directions.

The root cause was shared with the VPs resulting in the leaders recognizing that they needed to collaborate. VP #1 recognized that the direction being provided was impacting Directors #1 ability to collaborate, and by modifying her style, she could develop a better relationship with VP #2. That would then free-up Directors #1 to be more productive in their meetings with VP #2. VP #2 also recognized the pressures that Directors #1 and #2 were under, which enabled more sensitivity and understanding to the situation the VPs had placed their Directors in.

Conclusion
The discussion gave Directors #2 a different perspective of the situation, and they were less judgmental and reactionary as they gained an appreciation for the pressures and direction that Directors #1 were under. As result of the facilitation, there were changes in effectiveness of processes and the impact was reflected in customer impacting metrics shortly after Lidia’s engagement and the Directors’ resulting successful collaboration.

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· The owner of a small construction company was concerned with safety and escalating accidents.
· Workman’s compensation claims were climbing at alarming rates.
· Lidia was brought in to discover the root cause of the problem.
· After one day of team-building exercises and discussion with the staff, a solution was discovered and put in place which virtually eliminated accidents.

Situation
A small construction company specialized in large scale commercial landscape and excavation, requiring knowledgeable heavy equipment operators and an impeccable safety record. Their operations were growing yearly. Workman’s compensation claims were increasing, resulting in lost productivity, increased operations costs and diverting the attention of the owner from managing revenue generating aspects of the business.

The owner was looking for solutions to improving the culture of the organization. The workers were ‘strong silent’ types, tough, blue-collar guys who were challenging to communicate with in terms of ‘softer’ yet business impacting issues such as safety. Lidia was brought in to undertake ‘team-building’, and in the course of the 1 day discussion discovered cultural factors that were significantly impacting safety, such as the need for respect and self-esteem which unfortunately, resulted in a lack of communication in regards to competency levels on various large pieces of equipment. It was uncovered that it’s not ‘ok’ to say you don’t know how to operate a piece of equipment, so they preferred to put themselves and others at risk, rather than to express the perceived weakness of not knowing.

Resolution
Because the owner couldn’t trust them to divulge what they were skilled at or experienced in managing, the only way to ensure a minimum competency level was to have everyone (approx. 17 men) trained on every piece of equipment. The organization stopped making assumptions in regards to specific equipment skills.
As result of Lidia’s facilitation, the owner quickly discerned the need to train all employees on all the equipment. In training everyone on the operations of each piece of equipment, workman’s compensation claims were virtually eliminated and productivity increased.

Conclusion
The families of the employees responded with a strong show of appreciation. His team felt better because their families received the recognition that was lacking, and provided increased emotional support for their spouses relieving some of the pressure that the employees were facing. The Director’s inclusiveness with other teams was successful and the organization at large recognized the cooperation that this group received, which exceeded that received by other divisions towards integrating the functions in a timely manner. Due to his leadership, this Director was then recognized as “high potential” within the larger organization.

Lidia’s coaching of this leader helped him to find productive strategies to encourage collaboration with other teams within the larger organization. His leadership abilities were recognized for this effort throughout the company. In addition, Lidia’s suggestion of how he could impact the morale of his staff and their families proved to be extremely successful.