Coaching Fair Process to the Impatient Leader

“It’s not that they don’t get it. It’s that they’re resisting.”

“I don’t get it. This plan makes so much sense and my people aren’t getting it!” Karel is the APAC marketing head of a medical device company. “Well, they get it Karel. But they’re resisting. And for a reason.” Lisa, my co-coach whom we are coaching Karel and his team, looks at me and I see where she is heading. It’s time to coach Karel “fair process.”

A few months ago, Karel pitched to his leadership team a pivot in the marketing plan of one of their product lines to a different customer segment, and they loved it. “Go for it Karel!” — with endorsement from higher up, Karel set on to reorganize his teams and their work for the campaign. Three months down the road, his teams are a mess. Karel idea was to “borrow” certain people from his existing teams to form a project team, and do a series of two-way, even three-way swaps and overlaps of people to cover the shortfall of people until the project is over. He has twenty over people among his teams and in the previous year-end offsite he recalls they were all upbeat in taking on new challenges. So this project shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Or so he thought.

Lisa and I were called into lending Karel a hand. For the first couple weeks we spoke with his people to get a “smell of the air.” Not a disaster yet, but definitely in a confused state, frustrations abound.