This mass transit client had some significant challenges to deal with – managing many large, diffused and competing stakeholder groups to provide integrated transport services across road, rail and water. Adept at thinking systemically on operational delivery, the management team also had to work together relationally, to work through thorny issues.
Talik were asked to step in to support the CEO and team with a crucial strategic conversation that would determine key steps in strategy development and implementation plans. With individual responsibilities for transport modes, it was clear that members represented very different scales of budget, complexity and operational challenges, as well as diverse histories and tenure, all of which were reflected in the dialogue and dynamics in the team.
Our coach-facilitators met with the CEO and all the team members for one-to-one confidential interviews in the first instance to understand the needs and issues. Not designed as coaching sessions per se, but remembering that all inquiry is intervention, these conversations alone were able to help unglue a few of the stuck assumptions and patterns of relating that were proving problematic. We were also able to design a focused two-day workshop that could progress the strategic dialogue whilst attending to group dynamics.
The workshop itself offered a few simple but powerful tools to help the group orient themselves and their process according to the relative complexity and novelty of the matters under debate. Plus, with some new language and methods for engaging in difficult conversations, they were able to quickly make headway with more transparency, respect and knowledge of their own and others’ participative styles.
