Emergency Operation
Copyright 2006 Progress-U Ltd.
T h e  U l t i m a t u m
A couple of months ago, Marc (name changed), a manager in
his early 40s, called me and said: “I need your help! My
superiors told me today that I get another 6-week trial
period and if by then I can’t show a good performance, I
will be fired.”
He sounded quite panicky and outraged, which is not
surprising in such a situation. First, I helped him to calm
down so that he would be able to think clearly and
rationally.
Typically, my clients get coached 2 to 4 times per month.
However, as this was a true emergency case, we decided to
set up 2 coaching sessions per week for the first 3 weeks
and then review the situation again.
It turned out that he started this job less than 6 months
ago and that in the first 2 to 3 months, everything seemed
to develop well. And then all of a sudden, according to
him, everything turned against him:
* His boss stopped communicating properly with him,
bypassed him time and again, and even annulled orders that
Marc had given to his staff, thus completely eroding Marc’s
authority in his department.
* His staff expressed deep dissatisfaction to Marc’s boss,
who was the interims manager of this department for almost
a year before Marc came on board. They complained about
Marc’s lack of technical competence and his leadership
style.
* Colleagues from other departments became more and more
skeptical about his competence and ability to perform the
job, being reflected in the style of the internal
communication (He showed me email where colleagues wrote
things like “… when will you ever understand who is taking
care of these kinds of issues?”).
W h a t  H a p p e n e d ?
Looking at Marc’s career, we see a person who made his way
up from the bottom. His two previous positions gave me a
clear indication about the root causes of the problem:
- In his second to the last position, he was working in the
export department of a medium-sized company and was
responsible for the sales of a certain region. He had no
personnel responsibilities in this position.
- In his last position, he was responsible for setting up a
sales network in Europe for a US company. At the end of
this appointment, he had four staff members reporting to
him, all recruited by him. His boss in the US was mainly
interested in the sales figures, which he successfully
increased. The US team hardly got involved in what he was
actually doing to achieve those.
That means, he:
… never had to “take over” existing staff.
As a consequence, he assumed that his new staff would
accept him as their boss in the same way the people he
employed accepted him in his previous job. He did not
realize that he first has to earn the respect of his staff.
… never worked as a manager in an existing organization.
He underestimated the cultural aspects, as well as the
dynamics and politics involved, of a grown management team.
… as a manager, never had to work closely with his boss.
Because he didn’t want to do anything wrong, he initially
did not make any decisions, but always asked his boss how
to handle things. Worse than that, he did not even prepare
possible solutions but plainly asked what he should do.
Now, it suddenly became crystal clear to him what went
wrong and that the reaction of his boss and his team was
not something which happened suddenly, but that it was an
inevitable consequence of his behavior.
Unfortunately, his boss was not the type who gives constant
feedback on what’s good and what he should improve.
Instead, he was just waiting whether Marc’s behavior would
change over time and got more and more upset and
disappointed when it did not happen.
E m e r g e n c y  A c t i o n
Unfortunately, I entered very late in the process and it
was clear to me that the chances of “saving†Marc were not
good.
As always, when I coach people in difficult situations, my
first target is to get them to calm down and put some
distance between them and their turmoil, to enable them to
think more clearly and rationally. I encourage them to
first air their frustrations, anger and other strong
emotions they may have in that situation.
Marc and I spent half of our first session doing this
activity and I could feel how Marc calmed down afterwards
and started to think more logically. As a next step I asked
Marc to describe his current situation and what led to it.
Of course, in the beginning Marc could not understand how
this could have happened to him. He always had good
intentions, worked hard and “did nothing wrong to deserveâ€
it.
Only when I asked him to clarify in detail what happened
did Marc start to understand what “he did wrong†and what
led him to this difficult situation. That was a key element
of our coaching process, as understanding what went wrong
was the basis of the action plan that could help rectify
the situation.
In the second week, we worked out the action plan that he
would present to his management to show that he would
change the way he was working so he can merit the
satisfaction of his superiors.
T o o  L a t e
Unfortunately, it turned out that some key people in the
organization completely lost their faith in Marc—they did
not believe that he would be able to change and work
successfully in his position. Hence, they were actually
looking for Marc’s mistakes to have more reasons to
terminate him. We realized that the ultimatum was a wish of
the top management who wanted to give him a last chance,
while his direct superior already “wrote him off.†In this
situation, it was impossible to succeed. The coaching
process started after he had reached the point of no return.
After we realized that (3 weeks from the start of the
coaching), we focused on his time after the ultimatum.
Overall, Marc’s feedback on the benefits of coaching was as
follows:
The coaching helped him stabilize mentally and emotionally.
The coaching came too late to save his job, but would have
most likely helped him keep the job if it was started at a
less critical stage.
The coaching helped him understand what went wrong, what he
could have done differently, and how to be more successful
in the future.
—————————————————-
Charlie Lang’s mission is to develop his clients to become
First-Class Leaders. He is a passionate and professional
Executive Coach, Mentor Coach, Trainer, Public Speaker and
Author of articles related to leadership, change management
and innovative sales. His book “The Groupness Factor”
http://www.progressu.com/groupness-book.htm got published
in August 2005. For more info, visit
http://www.progressu.com/solutions/for-leaders/leadership-so
lutions.htm
