A Message From Peter
Hi Everyone,
February is an especially exciting month for me. On February 10th, the 2006 Olympic Winter Games will begin in Torino, Italy - and I'll be there, supporting our athletes and assisting their coaches.
In July 2004, 87 million people tuned in to watch the Men's 100m final at the Athens Olympics, while 60,000 spectators were physically present in the stadium. If you've ever delivered a presentation in front of a crowded room, you have some idea of how crushing this pressure can feel. Like many, you probably wonder to yourself "what makes an individual able to thrive under such intense conditions?" Well, I've been studying this question for more than 20 years and the answers continually inspire me. They also form the basis for what I work on with elite athletes and what we teach to our corporate clients.
As usual, this month's newsletter is all about striving for that "Olympic" level of performance.
First, take a look at our newest case study "Getting Hard Results with 'Soft' Skills at TD Bank". It showcases coaching best practices in action and the amazing results that can follow.
Also below, an update on our Inside Edge workshops in Calgary and Vancouver. The Toronto and Ottawa sessions were a huge success, and the Western leg of the tour promises to be just as exciting.
Finally, I invite you to 'experience' our programs online. We've added new 'Experience It!' pages for three of our programs containing a host of video, audio, testimonials, and other goodies. See the final article for details.
We'll be back in your inbox in three months - and I guarantee some great stories in my 'Olympic Report'. Hope you enjoy this issue.
'ciao!'
Getting Hard Results with 'Soft' Skills at TD Bank
Background
The Agriculture Services division of TD Bank Financial Group provides loans, mortgages, and financial advice to farmers throughout Canada. As the Vice President of the Ontario region, Rob Hall faces a challenge many regional managers can identify with: his team of 58 employees are scattered throughout the province, and Rob must ensure that despite the distance they are all committed to the same goals and feel that they have the support they need to achieve them.
In the summer of 2005, one of the key challenges facing Rob and his team was the need to reduce the level of 'expired credits' in their business unit. 'Expired credits', or the percentage of clients who have not had a full credit assessment in over a year, is looked at very closely by Risk Management, and by external regulators. Rob was acutely aware that lowering 'expired credits' was necessary for the continued growth, and high regard, of his business unit.
Reducing the level of 'expired credits' was no easy task, however. Each percentage point represents hours of face-to-face meetings with clients, copious pages of reports, and a significant time investment on the part of each individual account manager. Clearly, Rob's ability to get his team committed to this goal was a critical success factor.
Consequently, when corporate headquarters notified Rob that they were running a Coaching for High Performance workshop for all the regional VPs, he was immediately intrigued at the implications for the task at hand.
The Workshop
Rob attended Performance Coaching's Coaching for High Performance (CHP) workshop over the course of two days in Toronto. He was immediately impressed with the content, and the instructor. Explains Rob, "for the instructor, two things really stick out in my mind. One is her enthusiasm for the content, and how valuable that is. Secondly, her ability to relate the content through experiences that she has had was extremely helpful - putting a story or an example around what you're teaching is always great, and she was really good at it."
When the second day of the workshop wrapped up with the GROW exercise - a powerful coaching process based around a progressive series of questions - Rob was sure he had something he could immediately take back and use. "The GROW concept is so easy to remember and I think it's very powerful," explains Rob "it really breaks [coaching] down step by step and takes into account the obstacles you may encounter".
The Goal
At the first quarterly team meeting after the CHP program, Rob immediately put the GROW to use in tackling 'expired credits'. Using the GROW process, Rob guided the team as they set their own goal, and the date they would hit it by. With Rob's final approval, they agreed they would reduce 'expired credits' to 15% by October 31st, 2005.
The Process
Once the goal was set, an e-mail was sent out titled "The Road to 15%" which broke down the overall goal into a series of achievable performance goals - one of the hallmarks of the coaching style of management taught in the CHP course.
Rob also used techniques he learned at the CHP session to give his team clarity in terms of what constituted success and what good teamwork truly meant for them. Specifically, Rob wanted to ensure that regional managers who hit their targets early would jump in and help out those with a ways to go. When managers did exhibit this kind of teamwork, Rob made sure to effectively recognize those who had gone above and beyond by sending them personal messages of thanks and a token of his appreciation.
The Result
When October 31st rolled around, Rob wasn't nervous - he wasn't even anxious. He already knew that the team had hit this one out of the park. "We blew it out of the water" he says, "we not only hit that 15%, we were down to half of it - around 8%. We were the lowest across the entire bank, and at the lowest level ever for our business unit." For an organization with over 50,000 employees and hundreds of business units, that's saying something.
To make sure his team knew that their efforts hadn't gone unnoticed Rob sent highly personalized, hand-written notes to all 58 members of his team - and threw a party to celebrate their achievement.
What made the difference?
Throughout the process, Rob did a number of things right. In addition to his already considerable talents as a leader, Rob was able to use the skills of coaching to provide clarity to his team, and to make sure that extra effort was sufficiently recognized and rewarded. He also clearly broke down the larger goal into a series of achievable, less daunting performance goals - a key component of a coaching style of management.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Rob was able to use the tools of coaching to ensure that his team was committed right from the beginning. Explains Rob, "The main driver of this success was the fact that it was the team's goal - it wasn't just my goal. Using the GROW, we as a group decided what we were going to achieve - and we nailed it."
Enrollment still open for Vancouver and Calgary Inside Edge sessions
After a tremendous reception in both Toronto and Ottawa, our Inside Edge workshops, presented in partnership with Queen's Executive Development Center, are heading West!
If you live in Vancouver or Calgary, you have a chance to learn the skills of mental fitness - skills that form the bridge between ability and execution in high pressure situations.
This is the first time we have ever offered The Inside Edge as a public course - and the response so far has been fantastic. Enroll early to avoid disappointment as class sizes are strictly limited to ensure individual attention!
Here are the details:
Vancouver - February 27-28 at The Sutton Place Hotel
Calgary - March 1-2 at The TELUS Convention Centre
Learn more about the Inside Edge program
'Experience' our programs online!
Through a major upgrade to our website, we're giving you the opportunity to 'experience' our programs without stepping foot in a classroom!
Time and again clients have told us that the experience of our workshops isn't something that can be conveyed in words, that it needs to be experienced to be understood. We've taken that to heart and worked to create a more interactive online experience that will allow you to see and hear what our workshops are like. Head over to our new programs section on our website to start your experience.
Especially recommended is the chance to see the framework that drives the one-on-one conversation at the heart of our SWOT Yourself program.