Often times, an organization will have needs beyond what training can remedy. Crysand consultants can help provide expertise in a number of key areas:

Needs or Interest Based Negotiation Strategies

If your labor union or management negotiation team has interest in needs based or interest based bargaining strategies, we can explain how that differs from traditional collective bargaining, and help move people towards identifying shared needs so that the solutions derived in your negotiations meet as many interests as possible. This strategy helps to ensure that the agreement will be more accepted by both parties.

Organizational Personnel Audits

Let us help you assess if your employees have the people skills to perform their best in the jobs they hold, and, if they have skill deficiencies, help propose training programs to address those needs.

Departmental or Organizational Intervention

A department or organization can be riddled with personnel and interpersonal problems. We can help identify the problem areas, and suggest methods to remediate those problems. Suggestions can include coaching, training, corrective action, re-structuring, or developing action plans and codes of conduct for the entire staff.

Coaching

We define coaching as: “A planned intervention with an individual to enhance or remediate skill sets necessary to optimally function or succeed in their leadership position.”

Enhancement would involve coaching those individuals where the individual or company desires to:

• Hone the leadership skills of high potential individuals within the company.
• Provide management and interpersonal skills for highly technical oriented employees.
• Support the growth and success of newly promoted key personnel.

More often than not, remediation coaching has been ordered as an alternative to termination because the individual:

Our coaching helps individuals and the company at the same time.

For the individual, we offer assessment, guidance, feedback and planning to help the client to be more successful. Moreover, we help clients identify and change self-defeating thoughts and behaviors that inhibit their performance or the performance of the company.

For the company, the coach helps the employer retain a key employee. This type of employee might be a highly-compensated executive, or a key professional in whom the company has invested time and training; therefore, the company would not want to let a person of this caliber go, without making an attempt at correcting behaviors it wants changed in that individual first. The unacceptable behaviors are usually interpersonal in nature, and hamper the individual’s ability to manage, succeed or lead highly effective teams. They may have the technical skills, but lack the interpersonal skills or team skills to work well with peers, superiors, or subordinates.

We coach employees because it makes sense to develop talent you already have, to correct some of the problems with people who already know the culture and policies and mission of the organization. We coach to give people another chance at changing unwanted behaviors. We coach because it is less expensive than recruiting, hiring, and orienting and developing outside talent.

We have found that successful coaching usually consists of some or all of the following components:

I) Information Gathering and Assessment

A) The work environment and culture
B) The client’s self report
C) Client assessment and testing if necessary

II) Intervention

A) Feedback from information gathering
B) Goal setting and building rapport
C) Identification of self-defeating perceptions and behavior
D) Discussion of strategies for goal attainment

III) Action Planning

A) Code of conduct
B) Action Plan
C) Follow up

In the information gathering and assessment stage of coaching a comprehensive picture of the client and their work environment is drawn. If the client is referred for coaching by upper management, a meeting is held with those managers.  At that meeting, strengths and weaknesses as seen by the managers are discussed as well as target behaviors for the client. As much information is gleaned regarding the corporate culture, mission and vision. It is usually helpful to meet with director of human resources separately as these professionals have invaluable information on how thing are “really” done in the company and they have their fingers on the pulse of the organization. If the client is a self-referral (not referred by management for some problem), we see the client first to evaluate her needs and goals. Depending on the needs and goals, meetings with the client’s employer may be appropriate. 

 The purpose of the client meeting is to determine how they see themselves in relationship to the work environment and to assess their perceptions of their own strengths and weakness. We inform our clients that we are hired to help them be successful and that the company wants them to succeed. Initially, most referred clients see coaching as punitive rather than helpful, so it is important to belay those fears. Depending on the information gathered and with the client’s consent, meeting with staff who report to the client may be helpful in informing the clients how they are perceived by their direct reports.

:: COACHING CASE A PHYSICIANS STORY.pdf

Assessments or more formalized testing maybe appropriate. We have found the DISC to be helpful in validating our observations, plus the DISC provides a wealth of information on supervision and management styles of the client. The Meyers-Briggs also has proven helpful. We do not do personality and projective testing.

In the intervention stage, a session is conducted with the client where he or she is gently confronted with all the information gathered. Negative and self-defeating perceptions are identified and challenged, and recommendations are given for skill acquisition or enhancement. Assessment data is interpreted. At this time, a transition usually occurs, where the client accepts responsibility and eagerly moves to goal setting.

:: COACHING CASE A MANGERS STORY.pdf 

Often times, rapport is being established between the coach and client that further enhances and hastens the coaching experience.

We believe that most people just need help getting unstuck. Many times, people just lack certain skills and some self-insight needed to move to the next level. They don’t need a 25-point strategic plan to change. Just like a company’s mission and vision statement, the simpler the plan, the better. We tell clients and client companies that with or without successful coaching, the employee needs to be expected to perform. The results must be beneficial for both the company and the individual.
The code of conduct and action plan that the client develops can either be a tool to improve or documentation of intervention by the company, an indicator that everything was attempted in order to change problem behaviors. If the client refuses to change—or, if after coaching, the behavior is still unacceptable—the company might have to proceed with further disciplinary action, but can do so with a clear conscience.

When you develop a talented person from within, it creates loyalty in that person. It shows the other employees that you are committed to their development, that you will go the extra mile to retain people who care and try, and that you invest in your people. Actions speak louder than words, and what a great way to build morale. Too often, the mission statement touts the importance of people as we brush them aside, hoping the new ones we hire are better than the old ones. One CEO we worked with turned over his entire staff two times and still insisted that he kept choosing the wrong people. How many lives need to be wrecked before people like this person get insight and get a little coaching for themselves?