Leadership coaching becomes a centerpiece of instigating change along with team engagement training and installing agreed upon metrics. Here are some details on each step of the process.

Behavioral Assessment
The first step in attempting to shift a company culture is get a clear picture of the individual and group behaviors as well as the behavioral motivators. The traditional way this done by organizational psychologists is by obtaining behavior profiles and using 360 degree peer feedback, the JoHari window, the appreciative inquiry process and so on. Our firm does use these tools but in addition to this one of the most effective methods we use is on-site observation of individual and group communication dynamics. This allows us to record specific behaviors in specific circumstances as it is actually occurring so that it can be addressed in a more palatable manner. In this way we can observe habits and patterns of behavior. In addition it helps facilitate a more practical discussion.

Establish Outcomes
We help family business leaders and all key stakeholders to visualize and set about to achieve positive future outcomes. This is particularly powerful when there are many external variables impacting success. Often they can become hyperfixated on market conditions, price erosion, economic pressures, competitive forces, supply barriers or technological evolution. These variables might cause leaders to feel that visualizing outcomes is not viable but we know when highly engaged groups of people are working together in a functional way focused on a common outcome they tend to make more progress than those who are stymied by external and uncontrollable variables.

These outcomes are in part performance based but also behavioral based. In other words we coach stakeholders to visualize themselves and others behaving differently. These are established for the enterprise as a whole, family business leaders and key personnel. We have developed systems to ensure these outcomes are communicated throughout the hierarchy and to team members cross functionally. This in and of itself can breakdown silos and spark passion, creativity and incite positive interaction.

Change Tactics
With a clear set of outcomes and a deliberate destination we can work with family stakeholders and the company's leaders to craft a strategy and agree upon the tactics. These include the process side elements such as business model evolution, strategic planning, roles and responsibilities, initiative deployment, specific deliverables and performance metrics. But most critically we establish tactics for the behavioral changes desired. This includes mentoring, coaching, consulting and training.

Leadership Coaching
Over and over again in every industry and in every locale when family business leaders BECOME the change they visualize as outcomes in the organization, behaviors change quickly. But when leaders are waiting for others to change the team members tend to hold back on shifting their behaviors. Thus there is a stalemate. For this reason we engage, early on, in leadership coaching with all of the members of the management team. We help them to take the lead in shifting behaviors to win greater respect, cooperation and incite more engagement and passion. Coaching focuses on a variety of soft behavior and hard management skills.

Team Engagement
From working with many family businesses, large and small we know that every enterprise has a handful of employees who are the most influential. By helping those team players to receive personal benefit from the training and coaching they are impacted in a positive way. They become ambassadors for the new culture and way of acting and communicating. In Any cases we have these influential Team members partner with us in creating the training programs. In this way we use a viral methodology to spin the message among the ranks.

Success Metrics
Certainly measuring performances is easy. But we are experts in helping family businesses measure behavioral change. Again 360 feedback and behavioral profiles are useful but we engage in observation as a metric to assess cultural shifts. We plot the results against the behavioral data collected at the housetops of the engagement. In this way we are able to fairly accurately estimate the change Level. We take this to the next level and establish team mentors for each major departments or groups. We teach the to use the behavioral metrics to measure change so when we complete our engagement we have a self sufficient client able to ensure ongoing cultural alignment.