COACHING CASE STUDY
ICEOTOPE One of the main programmes with The Unlearning Company explores the relationships within teams and how people can better work together to improve efficiency and effectiveness at work. unLTD caught up with Sally Clark and Stephan Hollingshead from Iceotope to hear their experiences of working with Jonathan on this project.
Leadership should be about coaching too “A coaching leadership style enables colleagues to own their work, achieve better results and solve problems much more rapidly. You will get an insight into how colleagues think, create an openness to feedback and build trust within your team.”
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Productive relationships in a workplace are vital, and behaviour can be changed to allow teamwork to come more naturally, ultimately improving the effectiveness of the business.
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Iceotope is a Sheffieldbased precision immersion cooling company, offering chassis-level liquid cooling technologies to companies across the world. When chief finance and operating officer, Stephan Hollingshead, wanted to introduce some new processes within the business, he realised there was more work to do on their overall people strategy – particularly focusing on training and working collaboratively. It was this realisation that led Sally Clark, recruitment specialist, to get in touch with Jonathan Cooper at The Unlearning Company to start working on a bespoke training programme for Iceotope’s staff. Sally said: “I had worked with Jonathan previously and knew that his talent and expertise would benefit us greatly, so it seemed like the obvious thing to do to approach him in this case.” Stephan particularly wanted to change the ‘topdown’ approach to work, encouraging staff to take more initiative and to have more say in the day-to-day operations and practices. He said: “We wanted a better forum to see who worked well together. As we are a fast-moving business and we are evolving all the time, people are so busy they just focus on the tasks in
front of them. We wanted to give them the space and freedom to think more creatively and look at how they could solve problems within their daily working lives.” With that thought in mind, Jonathan developed a programme that would focus on the individual, the team and the organisation – titled Recharge, Reconnect and Refresh. Over a period of 12 months, he created processes and tools to support better one to ones and development reviews, coaching line managers in areas they found most difficult and facilitated a series of group workshops where they addressed topics like the components of a great meeting, communicating with confidence and team purpose.The team purpose
maps – which Sally refers to as an “absolute revelation” – helped people understand their impact on others and how they could work together to counteract workplace challenges. During the training, staff worked together to create a mini business proposal, with everyone communicating their own vision and feeding into the operational plan, coming up with ideas for how to make operations smoother and more effective. Using Print, Jonathan was also able to help staff better understand their motivations for working and what patterns and conditions enabled them to be their ‘best selves’. The training programme was a huge success, and Stephan says he has seen a “very tangible benefit” from the experience. He added: “We have now got a greater awareness of what we want to achieve and who works best in certain areas. Meetings are more efficient and all of our processes are so much quicker. “This is not a tired old training formula – it’s a journey. This is a far more open process that gives results you don’t get from a traditional programme. “I would highly recommend Jonathan to everyone, he has fantastic skills and offers a bespoke solution to any workplace problem.”
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