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Orchestrating Results
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Leaders and Teams

Success Stories

1. Building a High Performance Culture From the Ground Up

The Challenge:
A start-up internet company needed to build a corporate culture from the ground up that was results-driven and people-oriented.

The Journey:
The Symphony Group conducted individual interviews with the company's CEO and Senior Leadership Team and created and administered an employee survey to candidly assess the current state of the business, desired future state and vision, major roadblocks and enablers associated with moving from A to B.

Results:

  • Leadership Commitment: The Symphony Group coached the CEO on leadership effectiveness, ownership, and leadership modeling.
  • Employee Ownership: The Symphony Group facilitated an all-hands employee retreat. During this retreat, the employees identified the values and underlying behaviors necessary to create their ideal work culture. Experiential learning exercises were used to allow employees to 'practice' these behaviors and 'catch themselves' behaving in ways that help and/or hinder their success.
  • Process Alignment: The Symphony Group facilitated a strategy meeting for the employees to identify how to actively implement their behaviors and values into everyday work behavior, systems and processes.

2. Creating a Sense of Team Among New Employees

The Challenge:
A renowned global accounting firm discovered that new employees felt disconnected from their large corporate community and something needed to be done to make employees feel a sense of connection and community within their region prior to being shipped off to various projects throughout the country and abroad.

The Journey:
Working with internal HR and Training partners, The Symphony Group created an orientation program with the following outcome goals:

  • Enable new hires to recognize the value of continuous learning and improvement
  • Illustrate the benefits of collaboration, team work, and knowledge sharing
  • Encourage new hires to explore the concepts and challenges of implementing 'exceptional client service'
  • Build trust and synergy among new hires
  • Enhance professional and personal relationships among new hires
  • Motivate new hires to face upcoming challenges
  • Create learning partnerships among new hires
  • Engage new hires in a stimulating environment consisting of fun, learning, and challenge

Results:
The Symphony Group conducted this orientation program for over 140 new employees. The program has been so well received that it has been implemented by 3 different business units within the company and is being recommended to other regions.

3. Eliminating Barriers to Communication and Performance

The Challenge:
The Symphony Group was asked to help a team within a large consulting firm realign themselves around their common purpose and create a culture of collaboration and support.

The Journey:
The Symphony Group conducted individual interviews with each team member to identify their strengths and improvement opportunities and determine what behaviors were getting in the way of their success. Based on the information gathered from these interviews, A 2-day leadership development intensive was designed based on the interview results that focused on rekindling commitment to the team's vision, identifying team values, opening lines of communication between team members, and developing coaching skills among team members.

Results:
Throughout the 2-day program team members were able to open previously non-existent lines of communication and clarify and recommit to their common vision. This was done through dramatic experiential challenges and guided coaching sessions which enabled team members to communicate openly and catch themselves behaving in ways that often hindered the team's success. During the session the team created and agreed upon a set of sacred operating principles which now guides their daily behavior. The 2-day intensive served as the launch of the team's journey toward high performance and the team has plans to use the sacred operating agreements as the basis for a 360-degree feedback tool created to continuously measure each team member's performance.