NEW SUPERVISORS

Harold had been lead operator for nine years and was the most technically competent operator in the field. He was the only candidate for promotion when the old foreman retired. But soon after, problems began. Quality deteriorated, production reports were late and worst of all, production was dropping.

Harold’s boss came out from Calgary to see for himself what was the problem. It was easy to spot. Harold was continuing to be a friendly guy to the operators, he said himself the he didn't feel good being bossy. Fortunately for Harold, his boss suggested a coach could help him. Harold was both relieved and pleased. He knew he needed help. This was an easy job for the coach, as Harold wanted to do a good job. His improvement was immediate.

TURNOVER

Mark was a 20-year man, an engineer and VP of this small oil company he had a depth of field experience. In his present job, there was no one else with his level of practical knowledge. This meant that he had to check on every detail of every one’s work. Mark had been told that he was a ‘micro-manager’, but he saw no way out this predicament.

There were several consequences from his leadership style, two of his better people had quit in the last three months and he was putting in too much overtime. The president of his company saw what was happening and told Mark that he needed to change his leadership style and suggested a coach might help. This was a more difficult coaching task as Mark resisted delegating and setting new procedures to prevent errors, yet challenge his people. With persistence it finally paid off.

TRAINING

Bob was becoming aware of the high cost of training. Tuition, travel coats, salary and especially all the work that did not get done when the students were away from their desks. A typical situation was the 'leadership course', Bob made it a point to get all new supervisors into this one week course. The biggest problem was that when the students returned from the course, there was a backlog of work waiting for them.

What happened was the course manual and their memory was put on the shelf. As a result Bob saw low value for the cost. His neighbor who worked for a different company had a solution. They had hired a coach who attended the course once.

Then he booked one hour a week for the first month and then every second week for three more months for each student. In the first week, they picked the important items from the course that that employee wanted to work on. Then the coach coached on those issues. He charged a flat fee for the four months. They found this a huge success, some of the employees wanted to continue the coaching longer.