Client stories: Ministry of Defence

This article is filed under: executive coaching, leadership, leadership development

Coaching high-potential people

Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) equips and supports the UK’s armed forces for current and future operations. Employing around 21,000 people, it has a budget of £14 billion. We were asked by one of the Operating Centres, responsible for a complete area of procurement, to offer 1:1 and group coaching to its senior leaders, and also to support some high-potential people who aspired to the Senior Civil Service.

Highlights of the work

We started by contracting with the Director General of the Operating Centre (the client) in order set the boundaries between the coaches, the client and the individual – always a tricky balance to strike. We then got the participants together to set out our approach and to discuss their expectations of the work. Many had no experience of coaching and were interested to understand how it could help them in their important daily work. Others had been coached before, but some had been disappointed by the experience. Taking up the challenge, two Stanton Marris consultants set out a six month programme for 18 leaders and high-potential people involving 1.5 hours of coaching for each participant each month, with unlimited access in between sessions on the telephone or face to face.

We covered issues such as: career planning, preparation for senior civil service selection, leadership of restructuring programmes, enhancement of relationships with the Defence Industry, more effective Board working, internal collaboration, personal impact, resilience, and conducting difficult conversations. We also observed senior management team meetings in order to gather data for individual sessions.

After six months we got the participants together once again to review the outcomes of the work. Even those who were sceptical at first, because of previous experiences of coaching, were positive about the impact of our work together. One commented, “I admit I was not expecting this to be useful, but in fact I would really like to continue.”

The future

The team has since completed another six month programme of coaching during which we looked forward to supporting leaders through the tough financial and operational challenges they now face. CWIT Team Leader, Alan Nicholl said “even those who started off sceptically were quickly convinced of the value of the support being offered. At the same time Stanton Marris were able to have impact on the team’s overall performance as we tackled some difficult strategic issues together.”