The Opportunity: Coaching. Create a coaching culture where improvement is an expected part of every conversation.

The Goal: To accelerate the use of best practices identified for improving divisional KPIs.

Above The Line’s Solution: Working with the Division VP, Director of HR and senior management group, Above The Line delivered the program to support the division achieve specific KPIs on their Scorecard. In addition to linking coaching to operational KPIs, a coaching KPI was added to the Scorecard – 1 coaching plan per period. Skill building in coaching started with the Senior Managers who were trained in the coaching process and supporting skills, within 6 weeks they were provided with group coaching and 1-1 coaching support.  Multiple waves of training and coaching followed until all levels of leadership had received 2 days of coaching training, completed 3 coaching plans, attended group coaching and 1-1 coaching sessions.

The Opportunity: Leadership. To provide their divisions’ with a consistent message on the company’s management system, the role of leadership, and training in the required leadership competencies & skills needed for success.

The Goal: The companies in the conglomerate all had separate and unique approaches to developing their leaders.  With a new emphasis on the retention of key talent and providing a clear succession path, it was important to provide an overarching leadership development and progression path for the entire organization.

Above The Line’s Solution: Provided leadership training to employees in the company’s eight divisions, where annually over five hundred people were trained in: communication, coaching, conflict management, supervisory skill building, emotional mastery, understanding self and others, time management and team leadership.

The Goal: As consumer buying habits change, traditional advertising habits also change. These changes caused our client to develop new products to help their advertisers get even closer to their customers. It became essential for the sales force to stop selling ads and start consultative selling; this meant becoming skilled in how to help customers put integrated multi product marketing solution in place.

Above The Line’s Solution: Consulted with Marketing and the VP of Sales as they developed the right business model, while we developed the training content to entrench required sales behaviours. The sales department underwent significant changes in how it planned, operated, and reviewed progress and how it compensated its sales force. New KPIs were created, benchmarked and reviewed daily, as a way to connect sales training and coaching to what mattered most.  The program included: Facilitating leader’s alignment workshops to develop KPIs, customizing training  content, training managers to deliver 90 minute training modules, training the entire sales force on Level 1 Sales Skills, 1-1 coaching with managers as they coached their sales people.

The Goal: Decrease the number of customer complaints and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Above The Line’s Solution: Customize, update and deliver a training seminar on service, which is a required course for career advancement.

The Goal: Accelerate the rate of adoption of new behaviours, required to grow both revenue and margins.

Above The Line’s Solution: Facilitate scheduled conversations with the CEO and senior leadership team to ensure that management training and support is tightly connected to the company’s Scorecard, KPIs, Performance Management process and ongoing employee training & development. We began by building Coaching skills and giving every manager a process for coaching that was both auditable and repeatable regardless of what behaviours they were coaching on.  Managers are given on-the-job support and performance check-ins by seasoned coaches from Above The Line. Managers meet bi-monthly in groups of 7, for 90 minute reviews of key tools and how they’ve been using these tools in their day-to-day work. Every manager who participates in the program self-assesses’ their ability and practice in the core competencies which becomes part of the overall performance management process. Use of core skills, and new behaviours are linked directly to KPIs, demonstrating a ROI for the participants and the organization.

The Goals: To achieve better overall decision making in the organization and to increase the levels of mutual trust and understanding; where employees focus on improvement vs justification and managers focus on metrics and outcomes vs personalities and judgments.

Above The Line’s Solution: Consult with the company’s CEO, VP Operations, VP of Communication and Director of HR to support them in institutionalizing a new management system. This included feedback on the structure of communication (who/when), the content of communication (what is said) and the delivery of the message (how it is said).  Provided training, group and 1-1 coaching to all levels of leadership; in the areas of: Coaching, Communication, Emotional Mastery, Time Management, Essential Supervisory Skills and Leading Change.