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All Posts By

Tribe

Apr 26
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Facilitating dialogue to work through differences and conflict

By | STORY
CONTEXT:
A charity whose purpose is to be a platform for intelligent giving for donors, has approached Tribe to support them with creating a space for employee dialogue on a key foundational strategy that the organisation had been adopting since it was founded 20 years ago. The organisation provides donors with free access to data, tools and resources to guide philanthropic decision-making. During a brand strategy meeting, it became evident that employees had differing views on whether or not the organisation should continue to adopt a ‘complete neutral’ stance on how it evaluates charities. The leaders of the organisation recognised that the discussions around the topic of neutrality were highly charged and they were fuelled up by the polarization that existed and was becoming more evident in the larger society. Therefore, they decided to create a safe and courageous space for employees to surface their concerns and different views around the topic of “neutrality” as well as everyone to hear and recognise these different perspectives fully. We were asked to facilitate these dialogue sessions.
INTERVENTION:
We held several meetings with members of the leadership team to best design the employee dialogue sessions. Our aims for the session were to;
  • hold a safe enough space for all the emotions and views to surface
  • create personal awareness around this topic, shed light on some dark corners
  • create a shift in the system from being stuck to being more fluid
  • enable new wisdom to emerge
We ran 3+ hours employee sessions using the Lewis Deep Democracy approach which enables every voice, including the minority voice to be heard. We knew the session would bring up emotions and could possibly become sensitive and tense. We acknowledged this consciously with the group by allowing everyone to check-in and expressing their concerns coming into these sessions and also creating an alliance around what would make it safe for them to have these dialogues. Using the deep democracy approach allowed us to lean into these tensions as it surfaced during the sessions and surface the wisdom that was not evident for the team before. All sessions ended with acknowledging individual and group awareness and learning from the session
RESULT:
The sessions allowed the employees to fully express themselves and their views on the topic of neutrality. More importantly, it allowed everyone to listen and acknowledge that there are many different perspectives and there is not one truth or one right way to address this issue. Many employees views on the topic shifted and there was more fluidity in the system  as a result of all the views they have heard (i.e. one employee who had very strong views around ‘the need for the organization to clearly define what neutrality means’, ended the session by acknowledging that she is not normally comfortable with uncertainty and indicating ‘maybe it is time to learn to stay in the grey zones’). Furthermore, as a result of being able to openly share allowed for the anxiety and tension in the system to dissolve (i.e. an employee who checked-in to the session by sharing how he was feeling coming into this session with a metaphor; ‘I feel like I am standing at the edge of a cliff and I am alone and I could fall’ and then at the end of the session checked-out by saying ‘I am still on the cliff but all of you are with me, I am not alone and we can walk together’). The leaders indicated that as a result of these conversations, they felt in a better position to better decide how to continue to create impact for good.
Sep 06
2

Social Responsibility Project – Vocational School Mentoring Program

By | STORY
CONTEXT:
Private Sector Volunteering Association (OSGD) in Turkey initiated the Vocational Schools Mentoring Program in 2012. The program is aimed at strengthening collaboration between corporations and vocational schools as well as building the confidence of students, help them clarify their goals for the future and prepare them for their professional careers. OSGD was searching for a partner to help them design the structured mentoring program and train volunteers of this program who were employees of member organizations.
INTERVENTION:
As Tribe, we designed the structured mentoring program, developed guidebooks for mentors to carry out the mentoring program with the students in the schools. We also designed and delivered training programs for the volunteer mentors from the private sector organizations on how to mentor the students. Over the 7 years since we have been partnering in this program, we trained over 1,300 mentors and have reached approximately 10,000 students through these mentors.
RESULT:
The program has been rolled out within 60 private sector organizations in 15 cities in Turkey and has impacted 10,000 students in 116 vocational schools. Assessment of the program performance indicates that student confidence levels have been increased through participation in the program and significant number of students have been hired to work in the private organizations who have supported their mentorship or chose to continue their education in a university.
Sep 06
2

Leadership Development Program Design and Implementation

By | STORY
CONTEXT:
A multinational organization in the tire and reinforcement sector had a long history of investing in its leadership development. The current leadership programs had mixed reviews from employees and some program content was overlapping. Furthermore the new organisational model required that the leadership development pathways are revised to better fit the current organisational and leadership capability needs.
INTERVENTION:
We reviewed all current programs as well as the new leadership capability needs. We mapped out the new leadership competency needs and identified various development approaches using 70/20/10 model. We created a development pathway with timelines depending on employee/leadership career steps and stages. Project also included documenting the vendor briefs and identifying the vendor selection criteria.
We were also commissioned to deliver several training programs to mid level leaders across 5 work sites in 4 different continents as part of the new development pathway.
RESULT:
The program has been rolled out globally and leaders have been going through the development programs based on their needs and experiences. The organisation is able to offer its employees with varied development opportunities from work experience to leadership exposure, from mentoring and coaching to training programs.
Sep 06
2

Team Coaching for Better Alignment and Collaboration

By | STORY
CONTEXT:
The leader of a regional foods R&D team in a global FMCG company, expressed her need to bring her team together, increase collaboration and synergy to become one team. The team consisted of members from different backgrounds and working from disperse locations. The team members had been working very individualistically in silos with no real team feeling. Additionally, the team had experienced a trauma historically and even though time has passed the effects of the trauma still existed which continued to feed the mistrust in the team.
INTERVENTION:
We worked with the team leader and also measured the team effectiveness through a team questionnaire to identify the specific issues that the team needed to address to be its best. Based on the key areas needing focus, a series of team coaching sessions over 5 months were designed and implemented with the leadership team. During these team sessions the team worked on team purpose, existing conflict areas, increasing collaboration and how to keep each other accountable.
In addition to the sessions with the leadership team, we also facilitated a session with the larger extended team.
We completed the work with an after assessment to evaluate the progress the team has made.
RESULT:
The team was able to establish a common team purpose that supported engagement and alignment of work. The team members were able to connect at a deeper level and recognize its strengths which increased trust in the team. They started to lean into conflict more effectively and hold each other accountable for team results.
Sep 06
1

Leadership Coaching to Improve Organisational Climate

By | STORY
CONTEXT:
The leading company in the steel manufacturing industry had invested in its leadership development as part of a large corporate change initiative. All C-level executives and directors were assessed on their leadership competencies, leadership styles and the organisational climate they created for their teams. The assessments revealed that leaders needed to widen their leadership repertoire and improve on their organisational climate.
INTERVENTION:
We coached 22 senior level executives individually over a 4 month period to help them identify what were the key areas they needed to focus on in their leadership styles and organisational climates. Our work focused on supporting each executive in 1 to 1 sessions to bring awareness around what kind of impact they wanted to create, how their current attitudes, behaviours and practices were supporting this aim and identifying ways of more effectively managing the climate they created.
RESULT:
For each executive the outcomes of the sessions were different. For example, for some it was an understanding of the impact of their behaviours / styles / leadership approach on the climate they created and acting proactively to effectively managing it. For others it was a deeper awareness of who they were as leaders and how the leadership role fit their ambitions.