Another restless Sunday night, anticipating another Monday staff meeting, another verbal bludgeoning… Before she even opened her eyes, Kate was overwhelmed by a sense of panic and dread.  It was the start of a typical work week.

Kate has been Vice President of Human Resources for Serv Com, a medium-sized telecommunications service provider, for three years.  Her boss, Russell, had been appointed CEO last year.

Kate has always been a top performer -- until Russell. Unlike his predecessor, Russell sees Human Resources as a strategic function in determining the profitability of the organization. In the past, Kate’s goals were limited to areas within her direct control like legal compliance, benefits administration, training delivery, employee dispute resolution, recruiting and hiring.

This year, for the first time, the Human Resources team shares goals for division profitability.  Kate cannot understand why her team shares responsibility for profitability when she has no control over operational decisions. The division VP’s seldom implement HR programs because they don’t view them as mission critical.

Once again, this morning she will face the senior team and answer what HR has done to increase profitability.  And once again, she will report that her supervisor training program has been implemented in only one of six divisions. And once again, Russell will humiliate her in front of the team with his disparaging comments, patronizing tone and thinly veiled threats of termination.

In desperation, Kate pulls out a business card someone gave her for a business coach. She made a quick visit to the website and read a story about a manager in a similar situation – his problem had been taking responsibility. Kate thought Russell was the problem, and that he was beyond the reach of a coach - but she had to do something. 

After a preliminary discussion, Kate began a 3-month coaching process with four components:

• Personal Assessment: to identify her unique talents and motivation. 
• Gap identification: to objectively determine her current position and what goals she intended to  reach (only three to five goals were allowed)
• Attitudes and Behavior Analysis: to eliminate self-limiting attitudes and unproductive behavior
• Goal Setting: to implement and maintain an action plan for personal change.

From the assessments, Kate recognized that she was a proactive, people person and was motivated to provide services of economic value to the company.  She saw a contradiction reflected in her own actions: she had been working on administration and compliance, generating profit only indirectly by preventing loss.

The coach’s next assignment was to read several articles on strategic HR.  As she read, Kate learned that Russell’s plan actually reflected current HR best practices. She was surprised to find she agreed with its proactivity and became excited about expanded career opportunities. 

Next, Kate identified two attitudes and corresponding unproductive behaviors that were in her way.

Self-Limiting Attitude	Unproductive Behavior	Negative Consequence
She believed that Russell was setting her up for failure by imposing goals that were out of her control.	She was uncooperative, negative and argumentative with Russell.	Her behavior triggered Russell’s anger and humiliating and threatening tactics.
The HR function was not as important as Operations so she should not impose her ideas on division leaders.	Kate introduced her programs without conviction or ROI data to influence implementation.	Her programs were seldom implemented because the division VP’s did not see her as partner even though she shared their goals.

When Kate changed her attitudes and behaviors, her relationships with Russell and the Division VP’s immediately began to improve.

Her first major goal was to implement a supervisor training program in four of the six divisions. She began by developing several scenarios of potential ROI to share with the division VP’s. Her confidence and convincing data influenced two more divisions to do trial implementations.

Kate realized that the problem was larger that her. None of the senior leadership team regularly employed techniques to influence change. After their formal education, most of them had concentrated on training in their respective fields rather than developing their people skills.  Even those with MBA’s, especially Russell, seldom applied basic leadership principles in their jobs. 

Kate determined that HR’s strategic contribution was to implement a comprehensive leadership development process for all of Serv Com’s leadership and professional team, including herself and Russell. Focus on maximizing the human assets of the business was a key strategy for increasing profitability.

Kate made her case, becoming a role model for change. Serv Com will follow her recommendation in this year, and Kate no longer dreads Monday morning.

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