Coaching: Craving New Challenges

The Challenge

Maria, a talented engineer with strong project management and problemsolving skills, had moved up the management chain from R&D through sales and marketing into second level management. In her position, she found she was repeatedly handed projects that drew on the same set of skills and problem-solving approaches. Frustrated at not being challenged with new tasks, she asked her manager for a development plan as a key step toward advancing in the organization. He suggested she clone herself so she could do more of the same. Craving new challenges, Maria decided she would resign.

The Solution

Senior management began an intense campaign to keep Maria, including asking a coach from PDI to conduct a 360 survey. Maria’s scores on the survey were outstanding—well above average on virtually every dimension of performance. Maria, however, zeroed in on the few areas where she did not excel and prepared to concentrate on improving them. Her coach recognized that this pattern was one of the main obstacles to her successful advancement. In her zeal to find solutions to the challenges in her current role, Maria threw herself at problems, but rarely stopped to reflect on what she needed to do to develop the skills to succeed at the next level.

Maria and her coach worked together to clarify Maria’s goals so she could turn her focus to the areas most important to her. They then concentrated on how to use those goals to make conscious choices about what she did and where she spent her time.

Maria began to think strategically about what she wanted to do. Her coach challenged her to stop doing some of the low priority things that had led to her past successes and to look beyond to greater challenges. They built a priority grid based on what mattered most to Maria and to the business.

As Maria focused on this new approach, her improvement was so significant that she was offered a major promotion. This tempted her, but now that she had the ability to think strategically and prioritize, she concluded that the new job did not move her toward her long-term goals. Instead, Maria chose to work with her manager to create a new cross-functional role within the most critical part of the business. This move gave her significant opportunities for a higher level of leadership and visibility.

The Results

Over the next two years, Maria continued to work intermittently with her coach on an as-needed basis and advanced three levels above her previous role. She now reports to an executive vice president. This rapid advancement is even more significant since it took place in a relatively static job environment where few people have had opportunities for advancement, and where meaningful lateral career moves are also scarce.

With coaching, Maria improved in multiple skill areas, including delegating, prioritization and time management, leadership, communication, networking, managing upward, influencing, listening, organizational politics, and stress management. Yet the key to Maria’s transformation is that she has learned to apply herself to greater and more complex challenges as she realized her goals and potential. Maria’s new skill in making decisions based on long-term priorities rather than the pressing needs of the moment was a simple lesson, perhaps, but one with profound implications.