Transforming a Leader and his Organization An Approach, a Case Study, and Measurable Results

by Maureen Metcalf and Robert Weisenburger Lipetz

This article looks at the question: “What is the developmental impact of a client who engages in individual coaching and consulting where the focus is integral in nature and the coach is functioning at least one full developmental level above the client?” In this study, the coaching and consulting support focused primarily on leadership development and used traditional interventions associated with management consulting. To provide the perspective of the client, Robert Weisenburger Lipetz, MBA, the client organization CEO, offers his insight periodically throughout the article.

Development is measured using the Mature Adult Profile (SCTi-MAP or MAP) created by Susann Cook-Greuter. With over 7000 profiles in the Cook-Greuter database alone, the MAP is currently the most rigorously validated, reliable and advanced assessment tool in developmental psychology.

The term “stage of development” is used to describe the different worldviews adults commonly possess. Each developmental level is a coherent and internally consistent belief system that describes how the leaders testing at this level are likely to think, feel and behave in various life situations.

The MAP assessment tool created by Susann Cook-Greuter describes nine levels of increasing complexity, each one more effective, insightful, and integrated than the previous one. The descriptions are based on the MAP framework and assessment tool. From the earliest to the latest level, they are as follows:

• Impulsive people are concerned with safety and basic needs. They are very unlikely to be in leadership roles.
• Opportunist leaders tend to focus on concrete tasks with short time horizons. They are likely to break rules which they may see limiting their freedom. They often act quickly without attention to consequences.
• Diplomat leaders tend to demonstrate concrete thinking style and be concerned with social acceptance. They are likely to conform to the rules and norms of the desired group. They also imagine that others think and feel the same as they do.
• Expert leaders tend to demonstrate abstract operations, multiple views and permutations and be concerned with expressing individuality in contrast to others: do they measure up to my standards. They can appear perfectionist and judgmental. They are likely to make constant comparison and measuring, perfectionist; can be critical and blame oriented. They are very adept at finding new and better solutions to problems.
• Achiever leaders tend to thinks in terms of formal operations, beginning to appreciate conceptual complexity as well as nature of closed systems. They focus on reasons, causes, achievement, effectiveness, contracts and agreements. They have a sense of responsibility and obligation toward others even while they pursue their own agendas and ideas; sees themselves as viable in the larger community, yet separate and responsible for their own choices; conscious of the importance of communication and appreciates mutual expression of differences.
• Individualist leaders tend to be increasingly aware of systematic thinking and as managers contribute to this broader view; increased appreciation for complexity, a growing appreciation for individual difference, and an ability to think in terms of how complexities and paradox can be integrated into a larger whole; takes into consideration non-linear influences. They are interested in development as an innate human possibility; consciously scrutinizes their beliefs in order to test their assumptions or to relish the novel mental freedom such a maneuver allows; aware that the world is as they see it, not as it is. They seek to respect and understand others; individual differences are respected and celebrated.
• Strategist leaders tend to perceive systematic patterns and long term trends; personal commitment and responsibility to create own meaning (make sense of what they see rather than believing what they are told). They focus on development, self actualization, self-fulfillment, authenticity and process; lives their personal convictions according to internal standards. Their interpersonal style is tolerant, spontaneous, humble, accepting; mutual interdependence with others is inevitable.
• Magician leaders are complex individuals who see events on many levels. They seek transformation of organizations not according to conventional goals but according to a higher order of behavior and being. They can have a transforming ability to draw together opposites and initiate new directions from creative tension; tend to build their own novel organizations or work on their own doing what they perceive to be their best contribution to humanity; as leaders they will be seen as visionaries.
• Ironist leaders tend to take a universal or cosmic perspective. No matter how great their achievements they act without pretense. They do not tend to identify with a desire to be an “ironist” nor be defined by their accomplishments or titles. They demonstrate a deep security and thus may not be engaged as actively as others at earlier levels in goals and actions. They often act as catalysts in shaping the lives of others.

Each developmental level also has its own strength and vulnerabilities. The MAP makes the most subtle and explicit distinctions at the high-end of the personal developmental spiral in light of the interest in spiritual and ethical dimensions of leadership that emerges at these levels.

The client discussed in this article developed significantly in his movement from early Achiever to late Achiever during the 2 year coaching and consulting engagement. During the time of the engagement, the organization tripled in size, increased financial performance and increased customer impact. Additionally, the client showed notable development not captured in the total score, such as introspection. These results suggest that, given the right circumstances, leaders may develop to a later level while concurrently improving their organizational success.

The Client

Company Background:

CEO: My goal was to sharpen what I see as the most important tool for achieving the objectives of my organization— myself. My philosophy is that no matter how effective I am as a leader, I can always be better. My experience with self directed development had been unsatisfactory. Sure, I read all the latest business books, attended management seminars and the like. Ultimately, I found myself encountering the same roadblocks and making similar mistakes as before. I reasoned that if I wanted to see significant development, I would need a skilled coach. You don’t become a great chef by winging it in the kitchen; you study under a great chef.

The goal of this engagement was to help the client increase his leadership effectiveness. Soon after the coaching began, the organization began to experience a shift in focus. The coaching engagement expanded into a coaching and consulting project; the opportunity arose to use the organizational transition as a window to help the client see how a later stage counterpart might address the issues he faced. This approach gave the client an opportunity to reflect on his actions as compared to how another might act. By exploring potential solutions and providing him with the chance to process the differences between them, he was able to both enhance the organizational solutions along with his own development.

CEO: The best mirror for my development is examining what challenges me in my work environment. Having the ability to practice new behaviors in these real world situations was critical in my understanding of how I was leading the organization and how I could adopt better ways to lead.

I benefited from mentoring in both worlds: the principles of better leadership, and the actual decisions and behaviors of a better leader. So, on the one hand, I was receiving experienced executive coaching and on the other, this was placed in the perspective of a higher developmental level of being. That transcended the problem I was having with self directed development, that all those books and lectures, didn’t translate well into all the real work situations I was encountering, at least not at the moment I was encountering them. With a developmental and executive coach, the two were combined to guide behavior and insight, right at the times they were needed.

Additionally, the structure of the coaching and consulting allowed us to ensure we were tending to key activities from an integral perspective. We created a risk assessment and transformation plan based on an integral frame of reference. This plan tended to the leader’s development, the organizational culture, the mission, vision, processes and structure. The combination of these activities created a system of reinforcement for the leader to grow and shaped an organization that could likely sustain the changes and meet the stated goals.

CEO: This organization-based planning put me ahead of the curve in the leadership I was providing. Having a broader perspective put me at least one step ahead of everyone else, and helped me to bring everyone into a common vision. Even when things came out of left field, I had much more grace under pressure.

<h3>Profile:</h3

Heart attacks are the number one cause of deaths in the United States. This client’s organization was founded in 1998 as a not-for-profit international organization focusing on heart attacks by being advocates for patients and bridging cardiology, emergency medicine and other professions to improve patient care. By helping care-giving facilities establish and adopt a “best practices” protocol for handling chest pain patients, the organization works to reduce the number of deaths across the world from heart attacks and heart failure. The organization provides accreditation of chest pain centers to help facilities improve processes and provide acceptable levels of care.

CEO: This was the kind of mission that only comes along once in a career. If I could shepherd this organization to success, we could introduce a fundamental paradigm shift in the way that care is provided for the number one cause of death in the developed world. It is not often that one has the opportunity to do something that will literally save hundreds of thousands of lives and significantly improve the lives of millions more.

Challenge and Vision:

Since its inception, the organization has enjoyed rapid growth. The staff increased from one employee (the current CEO and client) in 2001 to 6 employees in 2006 and then to 16 in 2008. At the same time, the budget grew from zero to the low six figures to well into seven figures. Without a cohesive operational structure or a well thought out strategic plan in place, initiatives were sometimes more reactive rather than proactive. To ensure continued growth and success, a more formal structure and plan needed to be developed.

In times of growth, communication of goals and objectives as well as the plan to reach them are particularly important. Lacking strong communication, employees, management and board members may find themselves with differing areas of focus. The challenge was to create a structure and processes that would better position this organization for the future.

CEO: I started my first day on the job with a borrowed card table and folding chair, with $20,000 in seed money, no income and no way to get paid. But, it was the right mission at the right time and I was determined to make it work. I introduced two lines of service to the community that we served that directly supported the mission: hospital accreditation and care provider education. Both of these services became big successes, rapidly growing us from zero revenue to a seven figure revenue organization. After a couple of years of feeling like I was constantly trying to hang on to a bucking bull, I was searching for an effective way to put into place a structure that could support continued growth with less pain.

Metcalf & Associates was initially hired to coach the CEO. Over the course of their work together, they all came to believe that the scope of the work should expand to include both leadership development coaching and management consulting to facilitate the transformations necessary for the organization to thrive.

THE COACHING APPROACH

We used the approach shown in the figure below that generally mirrors how an individual and organizational change:

While the image of the process appears linear, the actual process involved an approach that would more closely resemble a spiral, circling back and around. Additionally, the individual and organizational processes followed their own paces depending on the needs of the leader, the organization and outside conditions.

Define Vision

The vision and values definition process for the CEO included both increasing capabilities at his current developmental level and also moving to the next developmental level. The CEO focused on the following domains:

His professional vision included making lots of people’s lives significantly better by doing an exceptional job at meaningful, people related work. Additionally, he is continually growing and learning, using his gifts to their fullest, embracing what is wonderful in the world, earning sufficient income to be financially responsible for family and others, and engaging actively in spiritual growth.

CEO: It is fascinating how closely the work I was doing to clarify my life mission paralleled the work to clarify the mission of the organization. They weren’t the same goals, but the more success I had in defining and realizing the one set, the more success I had in realizing the other set. I had been drawing some kind of artificial line between what I defined as my “personal” goals and my goals as an organizational leader. But the truth is that the ultimate success comes from the development of the holistic and balanced man. Trying to say that personal goals around mind and body had no relationship to the realization of the organization goals was an illusion. The better the man, the better the leader.

The client defined how he wanted to function as a leader. He looked at specific leadership competencies based on The Leadership Circle Assessment he completed. About 18 months into the process, he began using a series of structured exercises to clarify his personal life mission at a deeper level.

During the annual planning process, the client led a strategic planning session with his board. They collectively created the mission, vision, goals, and expected outcomes. The information from this session was the foundation for much of the consulting work.

Assess and Analyze

• The client took the MAP and tested at Achiever with even distribution between answers for Expert and Achiever. Some of his strengths include a passion for serving people, a strong business acumen, a strong interest in improving the community, a focus on accomplishing the organization’s mission. His biggest area of development is releasing control of the smaller details in favor of focusing on the big picture.

• The client took The Leadership Circle Profile and identified specific leadership competencies that he wanted to refine. These competencies corresponded with those referenced in the MAP, specifically; he succeeded through controlling activities through detailed management and significant involvement in details rather than through purposeful and visionary activity and systematic thinking.

CEO: The assessments were a real eye opener. I was not surprised by some of the assessment results, both positive and negative. Others were more unexpected yet if I looked closely, I could see that the negative attributes did show up in the problems that continued to frustrate me. It is easy to blame others when heads butt and deadlines collapse, but ultimately the desired organization change would come from me, as I changed. With this baseline, I could create a plan with the coach on what to work on.

Create an Action Plan

Create an action plan that clarifies goals and tactics. The client developed a plan of action for personal and professional growth. The primary focus was to create a plan that supported overall personal and organizational success, then put timelines on these initiatives. He created an initial action plan then modified it over time to reflect his progress and changing organizational situation. The plan included:

Personal short-term goals:

• Improve communication—react to difficult situations constructively;
• Improve stamina—exercise regularly;
• Increase emotional resilience—meditate and journal regularly; and
• Reconnect with family and friends—list friends and family members and actively connect with them on a regular basis.

CEO: It is one thing to say that I have a problem with listening; it is quite another to gain an understanding of what is involved in effective listening. The coach was able to provide both fundamental state-of-the-science education on the ideal process, as well as a means to enact the desired new behaviors. And she kept me honest. When I relayed the challenges I continued to encounter, she could bring me back to seeing how this related to my spotty listening or whatever.

Organizational change short-term goals:

• Develop dashboards on a quarterly basis reporting financials and performance against goals established by the board;
• Update process flow charts and job descriptions;
• Determine “back-ups” and cross train for key processes;
• Update policies and procedures;
• Update document management plan and processes; and
• Gain IT support for key projects.

CEO: I’ll admit that I resisted letting go my death grip on every little detail. The irony was that as I spent less time obsessing over the next item in my task list and invested more time in planning, it was actually liberating. On the personal side, I had believed that in order to meet the demands of the job, I had to sacrifice the things that I used to do for myself. But actually, the more I thought about what I loved in my life, the more I realized that those things reinforced the best in me. I also realized how much they crossed over. My passion for my work was reinvigorated when I began to see it once again as a way to express myself as a good man doing good in the world. The more true I could be to myself, the more I could develop what I love about who I am, the more I had to offer everyone: my family, my community and my work. The work that I was doing with the coach to create the foundations of a better organization, created an environment that was more manageable. More manageable was less threatening and allowed for more thoughtful and less reactive leadership.

Identify Support Team and Communicate

The client identified supporters from his professional and family circles to offer various types of feedback and support. As his desired changes were both personal and professional, the communication messages had to work in concert. Communication was not only telling others what he was doing; in addition he sought input and feedback at regular intervals.

His support team included the following:

• Professional coach/consultant with a foundation in integral and developmental theory who tested at a developmental level sufficiently later than the client, thereby able to provide a viewpoint to support his growth. This support included formal coaching and also developing business solutions that were conceived and executed using integral approaches and with the worldview of a Strategist or “Level 5” leader.

• Vistage International, the world’s leading chief executive organization, specializing in executive and business coaching for medium and small businesses by providing access to a worldwide network of expert resource speakers, CEO peers, and executive learning workshops. Formerly known as TEC, The Executive Committee, Vistage supports the needs of CEOs by providing a place for chief executives to draw on the experience and knowledge of their peers.
• Wife and Family.
• Consultants—other consultants offered point solutions.
• Board President of his organization.

CEO: I made a point of relating my intentions to improve as a leader and ask for the support of these key individuals. Universally, they were honored to be a confidant and very willing to help. It changed the dynamics of the relationships for the better, as well. My wife thought about what would support my growth along with what she needed from me. My boss not only understood my openness to mean that I respected him and his mentoring, but that I was amenable to change. To him that meant that I would be more manageable and therefore allowed him to relax and trust me more.

His communication focused on the following:

• Personal change goals and actions communicated to the Board, organizational managers, Vistage group, wife and family. For personal development goals, the client not only told people of his goals, he also asked for feedback on his progress. This feedback happened at different intervals and in different formats for the various groups.
• Organizational change goals communicated to the Board, the organizational employees, and consultants. Client established regular communication times, vehicles and norms for each stakeholder group. The messages frequency changed depending on projects in process and the role stakeholders took in each project.
  CEO: I worried that as I began to put my development work into the conversations, that I would be perceived as being too “touchy-feely.” Admittedly, not everyone “got” what I was trying to do, although it didn’t seem to do any harm to those relationships. Fortunately, I found that those who were further along in their own development were supportive.

Take the Development Journey

The client actively pursued his short term and long term plans. He met with his coach/consultant weekly to track progress and refine the plan. These regular meetings provided both structure and discipline to the process. The content of the meetings changed with the organizational and individual needs. Time was allocated for discussion of the client’s personal development in each meeting, but depending on the other priorities, these discussions were minimal. Once the key transition activities were complete, the client again focused primarily on his development.

CEO: There is a real value to having weekly reality checks. I knew that a meeting with the coach was coming up and I would have to be honest about what I was doing. More than the value of this action “deadline,” was the value of stopping what I was doing once a week and being brutally honest with myself. What was I doing? Was I really doing what I intended? How was that working for me? What needed to change? If I had I been meeting only once a month with the coach, I am sure a lot of things would have gotten off track.

The personal development actions included:

• Mentoring/coaching by individual with developmental level Strategist or later;
• Competing Commitments exercise and follow-on observations.
• Practice Action Inquiry techniques as defined by Bill Torbert & Associates in their book Action Inquiry.
• Practice Noticing exercises: pay attention to assumptions, feelings and behaviors that would otherwise pass you by. This will generally be after the fact.
• Pay attention to how unique individual circumstances and needs impact your ability to accomplish goals. How do these factors impact other’s abilities to accomplish goals?
• Review and refine career goals and direction.
• Read books and publications that support development: Action Inquiry by Torbert and Associates, How the Way We
• Talk can Change Way We Work by Kegan and Lahey, and Review developmental levels information provided by
• Cook-Greuter as part of the MAP Assessment feedback package.
• Re-engage in meditation and deep spiritual practice.
• Re-engage with friends.
• Take up an enjoyable activity: golf.
• Continue to volunteer on a Board of Directors for a land preservation not-for-profit organization.
• Journal.
• Weight lifting.

The organizational change actions included:

• Developing an agreed upon set of annual objectives and a way to evaluate success. This activity allowed the leader to expand his view of the organization, take the perspective of the board, create a structure that provided continuity across years and establish board rotations.
• Creating guiding principles to serve as the basis for an employee manual and needed cultural change. This activity allowed the leader to create a culture that aligned and supported the organization’s long term goals.
• Defining and implementing changes to business processes necessary to support a growing dynamic international organization. The leader evaluated organizational risk and created systems and processes that supported the goals established by the organization.
• Creating a plan for both internal and external communications. The leader expanded his view of critical stakeholders and took a proactive approach in determining what information would support both their and the organization’s success.
• Creating an interview process and guidelines for behavioral interviewing to ensure candidates were selected for both skills and cultural fit with the organization. The client proactively determined that he needed to ensure future employees not only demonstrated the skills necessary to perform the tasks, they also needed to demonstrate behaviors consistent with the organization’s culture and values.
• Assisting in assessing the business risks and developing solutions to mitigate those risks. This risk assessment was one of the foundation tools to guide all other projects to ensure client service remained high and risks were mitigated during growth and transitions.

Maintain Momentum

The client and coach/consultant worked together to maintain focus and momentum. The urgency of the organizational situation supported the client in continuing to focus on delivering business results. By combining the personal and organizational work with the same coach/consultant, the client was able to connect the daily work with his development. The coach was able to structure discussions to bring focus to developmental opportunities in the context of delivering business results. Given the amount of work that needed to be accomplished in a short time, the combination of coaching and consulting really worked for this client. Another key factor was that the client and coach had a high trust/high learning relationship. Had the client been less trusting or less open to learning, this process would have delivered considerably less value. The client saw significant progress in the organizational projects, while his individual change was easier to see on some days and harder on others.

During the process, the client has moved close to entering Individualist. At this stage, he is demonstrating a much higher focus on his own growth and development. He has joined a spiritual group and is actively involved in both educational programs and a community of people focused on not only spiritual practices but also reinforcing the belief system consistent with Individualist. Joining this community with his wife and maintaining work with his coach will offer the support and encouragement to maintain his transition.

In several areas, the client moved from implementing short term tactics to reach a goal to creating and using long term practices. These practices supported his short term growth and will continue to sustain his gains and create additional growth longer term.

While his colleagues may be functioning at an earlier developmental level, they are finding that they are functioning better in the environment due to the organizational work that took place, including restructuring the organization to align roles and responsibilities with skills and abilities. The organization has solid infrastructure that includes vision, values, goals, results tracking, policies and procedures and processes. All of these items have also created a form of practice for the business to follow.

CEO: I had the best of both worlds. I had a business consultation from an experienced manager in combination with personal leadership coaching. As I faced new challenges and pushed forward, the lines between where one ended and the other began blurred. The solutions to complex problems involved as much who I was going to be, as they did what I was going to do.

Organizational change always involves bringing change through a lot of involved individuals. To think that the solutions to these don’t involve interpersonal dynamics, politics, perceptions and other intangibles, is naïve. The objective might be black and white, but the success of getting there has many colors. Some of these action plans were more like typical MBA-type PowerPoint slides and some of these were more like models of human behavior. The collaboration with the coach allowed me to plan through all aspects of these challenges as needed.

RESULTS

The client MAP score indicated he moved from early Achiever to late Achiever. The reviewer comments included, “In general, your protocol shows signs that you have been able to develop in significant ways. Given the traits and qualities mentioned above, there is good reason to believe that growth process will continue for you naturally as you develop even greater self-awareness and move into the Individualist stage.”

The assessment is a series of sentence stems where the person being assessed completes the sentences. The response to one of these items really shows progress in a poignant way. One of the stems is:

When I am criticized…

In the earlier assessment, his answer indicated he rejected the input and possibly the person offering the input. In the later assessment, his answer indicated he listened with the intent to understand. This later answer is critical to illustrating his ongoing progress as individuals limit their growth when they are unwilling to accept input or understand the perspective of the person offering it. He did not indicate he would blindly accept their recommendations but rather learn what the individual needed from him and decide how to respond appropriately to the input. This one response gives significant indication that continued growth is likely and acceleration of rate of growth is also possible.

Additionally, the overall number of questions scoring at all levels moved upward to show his center of gravity shifted to a later level of capacity.

CEO: I’m no doubt a more resilient manager with a better ability to think in terms of strategy. I’ve also improved my listening skills and have not only become a better leader, but also a happier person. It is a pleasure to work with someone of my coach’s caliber.

While research indicates that 75% or more change efforts fail to deliver the business results they expected, this transition delivered more than promised and established the foundation for ongoing success. In addition to the client’s individual changes, the organization experienced some significant success in their transition including:

• Moved from operating at a loss during the transition to operating at a significant profit that will be redirected to expand services and impact on mission-related projects.
• Transitioned a critical function of the organization from out-source to in-source three months ahead of schedule.
• Built several technology-based solutions to support the transition.
• Built the infrastructure required to operate an organization that tripled in size with the transition.
• Managed the transition with consultants thus limiting the impact to long term staffing cost; leveraged technology to manage costs.
• Documented key business processes to minimize risk associated with staff turnover and to create a strong foundation for staff growth and development.
• Implemented performance management and profit sharing processes.
• Implemented transitions with NO staff turnover or attrition.
• Implemented organizational measures and board reporting to provide the board better information to allow more timely and effective governance.
• Expanded service offerings by improving the current accreditation process, expanding to serve international clients, and expanding into heart failure accreditation.
• Conducted research to support better performance of medical centers using their accredited processes published in the American Journal of Cardiology.

What worked

During the initial coaching, the organizational environment seemed rather stable. As the work progressed, the organization entered into a time of significant transition. The combination of coaching and consulting that focused on business outcomes allowed the client to both generate significant business results and hone individual development targeted at business operations. If the coaching had been focused more on the client’s personal development, he would not have made time for this activity, as his organization needed more attention.

From my perspective, part of the value of this experience was engaging in a coaching and consulting arrangement concurrently that involved a level of exploration of solutions and transparency of thinking and assumptions. This open discourse enabled the client to check his own thinking and expand his perspective. Additionally, it exposed him to the thinking process of the Strategist developmental level. This thinking process included an examination of assumptions, long term impacts, involvement and perspective of multiple stakeholders, and other factors depending on the specific situation. The client remained open and receptive during the entire process. I believe this openness contributed significantly to his development. On a personal note, it also made the work a real joy for me.

The leader returned to his spiritual practice while engaging in the coaching. He had a strong foundation that had lapsed. After re-engaging in his practice he appeared calmer and better able to deal with his daily challenges. This renewed attraction to spiritual practice will likely support his development to later developmental levels.

CEO: The business success that I had during this period was simply phenomenal. Coming into it, it seemed like the worst of all possible scenarios, yet by the end almost all objectives were exceeded. When I talk about what we actually did during this time, people shake their heads and ask if I realize how remarkable it is? Oddly, the more I developed as a change leader, the less unusual I found the successes. I began to “just know” that it was going to work out. I developed a confidence, not only in myself, but also in the organization. What I really take pride in, are the personal successes. People began to spontaneously volunteer to me that “I had changed.” I was a better man in ways that I could see in my interactions with people every day.

Strangely, the resume dazzling kind of successes that I had had in the organization were no longer all that important to me as the main definers of who I was and what I was worth. Sure, I was happy to have been a good shepherd to the organizational transition, but it wasn’t the change in the organization that provided my most satisfaction, it was who I had become. It is a wonderfully satisfying thing to set your sights on improving yourself in significant ways and begin to look back and say that you had. The world that I lived in was different. I related to it differently and it treated me differently in return.

Issues of control just sort of became irrelevant. I had a longer term perspective. As people raged and jostled around me, I found their actions interesting, but not personal. Aspects of my life that had given me joy as a young man were reinvigorated and became meaningful again. It seemed like I was more true to who I really was. That isn’t to say that I didn’t continue to make mistakes or that I could shrug off all challenges. I don’t think that I can ever achieve a state that can’t be improved on and believe me, I have no doubt that I could stand a lot more work. I just want to make the point that my work had real results. Working with the coach so closely, so intently, for so long, did transform me in ways that I could see and others could too.

What would we change?

We are very satisfied with the client’s growth and his organization’s success. However, we probably focused too much on the business changes without tying them back to the overall leadership development goals more often, given the timeframes involved. We all may have missed some opportunities to explore our approaches and assumptions more deeply because of the volume of work to be delivered.

CEO: I have no regrets. You can’t contemplate your navel when the roof is caving in. I got what I needed when I needed it. Over the long haul, with the help of the coach, I was able to transform an organization and transform a man. How often do you get to do that?

Limitations:

This case study reflects the progress of one individual client experience. It does not offer trends or a sample size sufficient to expand to a larger population. It does, however, provide early support of an overall hypothesis that the combination of leadership coaching and organizational transformation that draws on integrally informed tools has the capacity to improve both the organizational transformation and also the leader’s performance as determined by horizontal and vertical measures.

References:

Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter (2002). “A Detailed Description of Nine Action Logics in the Leadership Development Framework Adapted from Leadership Development Theory,” www.cook-greuter.com .

Maureen Metcalf , the President of Metcalf & Associates, Inc., brings 23 years of business experience as an effective leader who demonstrates operational skills coupled with the ability to analyze, develop, and implement successful strategies for profitability, growth and sustainability. As a Management Consultant with two “Big Four” Management consulting firms for 12 years, Maureen managed and contributed to successful completion of a wide array of projects from strategy development and organizational design for start-up firms to large system change for well established firms. She has worked with a number of Fortune 50 clients delivering a wide range of significant business results such as: increased profitability, cycle time reduction, increased productivity, and improved quality. Contact: info@metcalf-associates.com

Robert Weisenburger Lipetz, MBA , “Bob,” is the Executive Director of the Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC), an international non-profit 501(C)(3) corporation whose mission is to reduce heat attack deaths. SCPC accredits hospital chest pain centers, and provides evidence based clinical guidelines and education. Bob Weisenburger Lipetz is credited with taking the organization from obscurity and no resources to its current position as a leader in the field. He has spoken extensively throughout the U.S. on the subject. In addition, he serves on the boards of “green” and community organizations.

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