Leadership Transition Coaching, Business Unit Director, Vodafone Business
The client
IG were commissioned to work with Peter Terry-Brown, Unified Communications and Connectivity Director, Vodafone Business, and a member of the Vodafone Business Leadership Team.
Peter leads a $multi-billion business, which operates across 184 global markets. His role is UK-based with global responsibilities which involve leading peers and influencing and persuading people from different markets and culture to coalesce around one common goal.
Vodafone Business connects people, places and things while helping organisations succeed in a digital world. It is a global B2B organisation that sits as part of the Vodafone Group.
The brief
Peter had been recently appointed to the Leadership Team within Vodafone Business and, as part of this transition was offered the opportunity to work with an external coach. The coaching was to provide Peter with individualised and independent advice and support in both what and how he led, as he made his leadership transition.
What we did
IG worked with Peter across a period of nine months and identified some areas of focus for the coaching. These were:
- Understanding and managing self
- Stakeholder management and influence
- Flying at the right altitude - what to lead and what to delegate, striking
the right strategic and operational balance
“The initial phase of the work was to gather insight into Pete’s leadership. This involved speaking to both Pete and his global stakeholder community to gather feedback and insight into how Pete led today and how that leadership should evolve to meet the challenges of tomorrow. This insight was supplemented with a behavioural diagnosis that allowed us to gain an independent and evidence-based view of Pete’s leadership.”
“The approach was rigorous, six to eight hours of fairly intensive structured discussion with Dan where he probed and challenged to get the data he needed to build a comprehensive 360 view of my leadership. This approach meant we were able to triangulate the problems I was handling before applying a series of tools and techniques to drive incremental, impactful and lasting change.”
The result
Peter left the coaching with improved self-insight and understanding; he was more able to understand himself and his influence. He was able to use this self-insight to create increased agility in his leadership; making small, consistent tweaks that allowed him to lead according to context more often.
“The coaching was enjoyable but rigorous; it’s both challenging and liberating to critically analyse yourself, find improvement and make substantive change. Dan led me through it effectively and certainly made a huge impact. The biggest thing it has given me is the ability to better contextualise my leadership, so I can reach and genuinely impact more people. I’m a demonstrably better and different shaped leader. I now have a broader stakeholder map and have built deeper more authentic relationships which has enabled me to unlock a quality in diversity. My people score from the annual ‘pulse’ survey is one of the leading scores in Vodafone.”
