Ignite Culture

Tom was a talented quality engineer who came to me perplexed. He had many strong leadership qualities and couldn’t understand why he was completely despised by almost everyone at his company. In his mind, he was doing his job well if he spent the day telling people what they were doing wrong so they could fix it and produce a higher-quality product. He was proud of the work he was doing. Others saw Tom’s behavior differently. They described him as “negative, “pompous,” and “arrogant.” They avoided him and made fun of him behind his back. He couldn’t make headway with anyone. I remember the day I walked through the plant with him. People turned away.

Through our work together, Tom began to realize that he could only see what was broken when he spoke to people. He had never learned how to communicate in a way that empowered others. He didn’t realize that everyone he spoke with felt he was shaming and blaming them. He couldn’t see any of this; it was a massive blind spot. At this point, I had been coaching him for six months. With time, training, and practice, he began to become more self-aware both internally and externally, learning more and more about the disconnect between how he perceived his behavior and how others saw him. He realized the two perspectives were polar opposites.

Within six months of finishing our 18-month engagement, Tom was promoted to plant manager. Two years later, he was promoted again. This time to director of operations for five plants. When he communicates with others now, Tom finds out what matters to the person. He patiently works with them and gets their buy-in so that they’re invested in the process of improvement and the outcome. During Tom’s leadership tenure, profitability went up eight points, net profits nearly tripled, and the company went from being weeks away from a union walkout to widespread collaboration across teams and operations. The leadership team actually started meeting and working productively together. They engaged in leadership training and organizational culture development with us. They developed a cadence of regular communication. They held town-hall meetings. They had four hundred people go through our Response Agility Training™, where they learned their automatic reactions are derailing their happiness and causing them undue stress every day. Additionally, we partnered with them to create role alignment for every unique role in the company. It was an amazing turnaround that started with one person being brave enough to look in the mirror and do the personal work needed to create positive change.

Tom is living proof that every human has the capacity to become more self-aware and change his or her behavior. When you start to see such transformations happen throughout a company’s human system, the sky is the limit.