human skills in a technical world…

and as with most technical organisations these
days, the people skills are absolutely vital.

As a ICT organisation, this customer has an inevitably
high level of smart-cookies who really know their stuff when it comes to managing and supporting technology. However these brilliant ‘techies’ didn’t always recognise the importance of their human skills.

This was not just an issue for general day to day
communications and business relationships, but also when the organisation wanted to promote from within – cultivating in house leaders.

Sam developed two unique programmes for this
company:

• Customer service excellence – with a goal to improve the customer experience, this traditional approach was turned on its head, when Sam delved into the issues and discovered the challenges of communication internally within the team! The solution started with a ‘stealth’ team building event to address the need for the team to collaborate. She used the Strength Deployment Inventory™ (SDI®) to provide a process-like approach to understand the unpredictable world of people! The team dynamic was improved significantly, and this gave the right basis a real change in providing a better service. The team then collaborated, in a facilitated workshop, on what ‘service excellence’ should look like in their world - once agreed, we gave them the training they needed to provide that high standard consistently.  

• Management development – for the entire management community, we kicked-off with a Leadership launch event where the senior team played a key role - proving their commitment through full-on participation every step of the way. The ‘mirror was held up’ in this high impact springboard event, and the entire management community challenged themselves to be honest about where they were at that point, versus where they wanted to get to. This was followed by a series of modules over 12 months, honing in on the essential skills to lead collaboratively, communicate and influence, empower people, lead them through change, hold quality management conversations and coach.

Not forgetting the importance of the audience, these programmes were cleverly designed with the audience in mind – using problem solving and process techniques to appeal to the technically minded learner!