Client Success Stories

Building Trusted Relationships

We partner with our clients to build trusted relationships so that they can achieve accelerated results and sustainable long-term growth with happy loyal clients and employees who love what they do.

Corry’s confidential client list contains startups, SME’s, Fortune 100 and 500 companies, as well as influential leaders and high potential managers in the tech sector.

Organizational
Coaching Mandates

President, Information Technology

A young founder of a thriving start-up reached out as his business began to explode. He knew that as he increased the pace of onboarding, he needed to design and implement a leadership culture that reflected his values, his brand and the service level that launched his success. 

A major priority of this leader was to ensure that customer service was delivered with impeccable standards without sacrificing the wellbeing or the quality of the workday for his employees.

We designed a program of strategic consultation and ongoing updates with the founder to bring clarity and commitment to his culture strategy to ensure that leadership development was set in a solid foundation and aligned with the values, brand and customer service expectations.

Once the team became big enough to need managers, an elite group of top performers were  selected to attend group and private coaching to ensure that their leadership skills were well developed for the new responsibility.

Leadership and customer loyalty sessions were conducted to ensure that all employees were exposed to the communication, interpersonal skill sets, and customer service training needed to deliver on expectations.

Clarity and alignment around organizational culture values

Agreement around and commitment to the behaviours needed to demonstrate shared values.

Understanding of how to foster and maintain customer loyalty as a company and each individuals role in achieving that.

Confidence in consistently using skill sets around customer loyalty themselves

Acquired the observation skills and constructive feedback skills necessary to guide direct reports on topics related to organizational culture and customer loyalty practices.

Founders, Software Development Corporation

A husband-wife team of a fast-growing software development company were seeking leadership development coaching for their growing company. They were devoted to ensuring that their employees were well equipped to thrive on both a personal and professional level as the company quickly grew.

This fast-growing company needed to attract and retain top talent and all levels of management needed to know how to lead their teams. Their young employees were brilliant, top candidates in their fields but lacked workplace skills such as interpersonal dynamics, self-awareness, delegation, communication, time, stress and conflict management and the ability to thrive through change.

The reason for reaching out was to prevent the inevitable issues that these missing skill sets would lead to – dysfunctional dynamics that would debilitate the ability to work successfully. The owners knew that dysfunctional teams lead to client attrition.

Private coaching – All senior managers were enrolled for private coaching so that they had a private and confidential opportunity to work through personal leadership challenges.

All managers were enrolled in our signature leadership development program, The Coaching Academy for Leaders, and all employees were invited to attend a lunch and learn series that introduced them to the same concepts that the managers were learning.

Team Coaching
Acquired practical leadership theories and how to apply them to their day to day reality. Developed common understanding and vocabulary for organization culture and effectiveness. Leadership labs including role play, small group discussion, games and activities provided the personalization necessary to ensure that every session delivered ‘just in time’ solutions in a dynamic and creative way.

Private Coaching
The private coaching strategy ensured that each individual could bring their private and confidential challenges (and even their objections) with the material to surface, talk through their issues and find a personalized solution.

The lunch and learns
These sessions included the entire workforce including managers and senior executives. The topics included the same leadership theories as the management training thus allowing all employees an opportunity to understand where their managers were coming from.

The essence of the lunch and learn was to ensure that employees see their role in the cultural effectiveness and to see themselves as informal leaders with important contributions to make. This allowed for organizational culture to take root.

Chief Culture Office, Industrial Automation and Intelligent Systems

An entrepreneur started his company from his garage at home and grew both organically and through acquisition very quickly. The CCO reached out to us for help and guidance.

The original workplace culture was founded with an entrepreneurial mindset and took on teams of people used to working in a traditional corporate culture. This caused culture clash leading to great dysfunction, massive disengagement and high turnover.

We developed a program of leadership development workshops of two per month for 9 months with the senior executive team. Because the process brought together the leaders who found themselves suddenly colleagues, they had to find common ground both with each other as well as with their new boss.

The sessions explored leadership values, common ground and how these values showed up in day to behaviors. We covered leadership theory and practice in great depth and our sessions went deeply into how culture strategic planning is interconnected to business strategic planning.

Following the same cadence as the executive team, individual contributors were invited to attend Customer Loyalty workshops that aligned the work that the leadership team was producing with the work that the team members were doing and how it followed the customer journey.

Unification of the newly merged leadership teams around shared values of the company.

Shared understanding and alignment around leadership and culture theory.

Relationship and trust building among the merged teams and the owners of the company

Shared understanding and commitment to formal and informal leadership practices to provide consistency throughout the ranks and across departments.

Client – VP HR, Supply Chain Network Technology

This VP HR reached out to our team to discuss rapid growth and a problem with a diluted organizational culture as well as employee retention.

The business expanded quickly and new hires were onboarded at a pace to keep with growth. Soon, the teams grew too large for the partners to handle the day to day management of the employees so they selected a team of talented high performers and promoted them to managers, creating a brand new layer of leadership within the firm.

The pain point became obvious when they realized that the new managers had no leadership skill and their approach frustrated employees so much that employee turnover became a very expensive and painful problem

6 high performing individual contributors were selected for leadership development training and were enrolled for private coaching so that they had a private and confidential opportunity to work through personal leadership challenges.

Then the management team as a whole was enrolled in leadership development training.

The team of new leaders learned the skill they needed to effectively manage their teams.

They developed confidence in practicing leadership theory on a consistent basis and employee turnover was capped.

The organizational culture became pleasant and productive, establishing a strong employer brand able to attract, retain and engage employees.

Client – VP Strategic HR, Online Payment Technology

A group of 3 young entrepreneurs partnered to create a Canadian Tech startup which grew rapidly, both organically and through acquisition of Canadian, American and European assets.

The growing pains stemmed from the speed of change combined with organizational culture confusion.

Strong personalities, all with proven track records, often clashed, the workforce caught in the middle.

The original workplace culture was founded with an entrepreneurial mindset in Canada and took on teams of people used to working in a traditional corporate culture as well as abroad. This caused corporate culture clash as well as geographic culture clash leading to dysfunction, massive disengagement and high turnover.

Management Training – 4 teams of 10 leaders per team, each team from a different leadership level were given leadership development training focused on the issues and challenges faced by their unique perspective.

Each layer of management aligned to one shared set of culture values, with agreement of how the values show up in day to day behaviour.

Developed shared skill set needed to effectively manage teams.

Accountability throughout the ranks by practicing agreed upon leadership methods on a consistent basis.

Individual contributors self identified and respected as informal leaders in their own right, raising personal accountability for performance and results.

Private
Coaching Mandates

Director, Manufacturing Technology

A strong, no-nonsense, plain talking executive was struggling with executive presence and strategic communication: he was disheartened because the demands on his department were accelerating as the company grew at an exceptional rate. To meet the company goals, he needed 10 new hires however each time he tried to present his case, the CEO would shut him down.

After 4 months, the client had learned how to communicate effectively and strategically and he received approval for his plan to increase his department.

Senior Director, Online Shopping Division of a Major Retailer.

A brilliant and dynamic young executive being groomed to rise up through the ranks this Director needed to improve on her communication style and executive presence. She was told that she needed to become self-aware as her comportment was perceived to be “condescending, patronizing and overpowering in a group setting”. Her approach was creating obstacles as peers no longer wanted to collaborate with her and became unwilling to execute on her requests.

Within the first 3 months, the client was able to develop the reflex of self-awareness, reframe the context of the original feedback into a future focused and goal oriented mission to improve. She continues to be highly receptive and engaged in coaching and successful in her field.

Senior Director, On Line Payments

A high potential young executive recently promoted to a new role hired Corry as his private coach to work through solutions presented by his new role. In this private and confidential setting of coaching, he worked on his executive presence and strategized solutions for how to resolve issues at this new level.

Increased Self awareness
Improved Executive Presence
Just in time Strategic solutions for day to day challenges

VP, Telecommunications

This executive hired Corry as a coach after exit interviews revealed that his leadership style was the direct cause of high turnover on his team. He originally believed that his style was effective and necessary however facts revealed that his methods were counterproductive. Devoted to personal and professional evolution, he buckled down and took a deep look at where he needed to change.

Improved ability to lead effective and productive team meetings
Improved ability to motivate his team
Better communication skills
Improved relationship with his boss
Adopted a positive vocabulary and a positive persona

Senior executive, Social Media

This executive was struggling with change management: massive changes were causing exhaustion, employee burnout and high turnover. Our coaching sessions involved change leadership conversations to sensitize the executive to the difference between project management and the human side of change. Together we worked through an effective change management strategy as well as the leadership style necessary to successfully transform the organization.

Strong methodology for leading change
Improved understanding of team dynamics and leading high impact teams
Improved ability to understand and address the needs of his direct reports

Chief Financial Officer, Cyber Security

This CFO was on a mission to explore his own unconscious bias and how to get past these limiting beliefs. Coaching involved discussing the real time, day to day interactions he was having with his colleagues and employees. He used his coaching time to review and reflect upon his actions and reactions to given communication and work styles of women, people of colour, members of the LGBTQ community, people of different generations and other men like him. His goal was to overcome the blind spots created by limiting beliefs so that he could be sure that he was being fair and developing the true potential of each person.

Learned self awareness around blind spots caused by unconscious bias.

Developed strategies for being more accurate and fair around his perceptions of colleagues.

Designed ‘just in time’ solutions for day to day issues around interpersonal issues.

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