The Challenge: You're probably already an excelled leader with a winning executive team! You're at the top of your game. But great
leaders and teams continue to evolve. You can be guided during this journey by an expert in organizational development, a specialist who can facilitate and enhance your ability to work smarter, more cohesively,
creatively and with greater job satisfaction.
Organizational Development (OD) is a management discipline designed to improve an organization's effectiveness and productivity. Rooted in behavioral science
foundations, OD focuses on complex interpersonal skills as they affect the problem solving activities critical to your organization. Following an in-depth assessment of your organization's select needs, activities such
as coaching, visionary planning, and group change processes are utilized to address pivotal areas necessary for success.
Joyce Hoffspiegel, Ph.D. offers organizational development services exclusively to
top-level leaders who face the new world of rapid transformational change. The goal is to provide consulting services that meet the unique needs of leaders who serve as change agents in the 21st century.
Consider tapping into this expertise and gaining insights and skills that place you in the forefront of your industry.
 Change Management Activities
"The challenge of change, perhaps more than anything else, is the challenge of managing paradoxes and tensions...of finding readiness and excitement amidst resistance, creating positive opportunity
and growth out of threats, and ultimately developing an organization that relishes change as a challenge." (Todd J. Hicks, "The Challenge of Change," Harvard Business School lecture noted, 1989)
Peter Vail, a leading OD expert, compares the modern corporate milieuto a canoe negotiating "permanent white water": a setting of change, uncertainty and turbulence, vastly unsettling to the
human problem solver.Moreover, corporate visions, commitments, teams and agendas are likelyto continue existing in this state of flux and intervals of chaos.
Change management activities are geared toward ushering individual leaders,teams and organizations through critical juncture points, such as change of key leadership or strategic
direction, enabling the system to achieve its
goals. Working with individual leaders and teams, the OD specialist helps this core group define an
enduring vision of the corporate goal anddevelop the means to clearly communicate this vision in a coherent,consistent manner.
The team is guided through the process of change with the goal oflearning new skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for success. Processes aimed at encouraging the individuals commitment to
change are developed through team problem-solving activities, which leads to a feeling of personal investment in the organization goals.
Development and Coaching Services "Coaching is the process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge and opportunities they need
to develop themselves and become more effective." (Peterson & Hicks, 1996) Often top leaders of an organization recognize the need for some internal change in a key individual, yet some inner
resistance blocks the necessary reorganization. Coaching services address the organization's and the individuals leader's identification of some general need for change and growth (more creative
planning, better people skills, etc.)
The coaching process itself is a confidential one-on-one interaction provided to a leader by an OD
specialist with expertise in helping the leader move toward success-oriented goals. This involves assisting the individual to define job-related goals, to stay committed to change,and to develop the
interpersonal and problem-solving skills necessary for greater success.
The coaching usually occurs during a number of individual sessions, allowing time for assimilation
of new ideas and behaviors. Clearly defined goals and necessary steps for accomplishment are identified in a collaborative effort. Additionally, the coach may provide guidance to the leader's
broader organization to create an environment that
reinforces the leaders' personal changes and strengthens the system as a whole.
Executive Leadership Assessment and Comprehensive Feedback
Executive Assessment and feedback services facilitate your company's decision making process as
you select individuals for key leadership positions. These services are also valuable tools in enhancing the job performance and satisfaction of leaders already in place within your organization.
Assessment tools are designed to provide individuals with an in-depth evaluation of their strengths, weaknesses and development needs with the goal of highlighting directions for positive, job related
change and growth. Tools include:
- In-depth psychological interviews.
- A variety of assessment questionnaires.
- Standardized personality and leadership inventories.
- When applicable, 360-degree feedback reports from direct reports, colleagues and immediate supervisors.
During an individual feedback session the OD specialist shares information derived from the evaluation in an integrative format with the leader, with the goal of creating a personal development
plan to reinforce new interpersonal, leadership and strategic planning skills.
Group Process Consultation and Team Building
"Teamwork doesn't happen automatically, and it doesn't result just from the exhortations of a single
leader. It results from members paying attention to how they are working together, issues that block teamwork and working them through, and consciously developing patterns of working together that
all members find challenging and satisfying."(Peter Vail, Managing as a Performing Art, 1989)
Periodically a team's ability to rally around goals is blocked by simple group dynamics, and the
team gets stuck, lowering morale, productivity and job satisfaction. Group process facilitation is powerful tool introduced to break this cycle. During ongoing meeting with a team, group change
activities, including insight-oriented techniques and experiential exercises, are used by an OD specialist to promote awareness among group members members of their own unique personal
styles in communication, collaboration, group roles and conflict resolution. Members develop increased sensitivity and enhanced perspective-taking skills as well as an understanding of different
communication styles among group members. All of these skills promote greater group cohesiveness and an ability to work productively toward a common goal. As individuals develop greater
interpersonal awareness, qualitative changes occur in the group as a whole.
Leadership Training Seminars
"While you're going through the valley of death, you may think you see the other side, but you can't
be sure whether it's truly the other side or just a mirage. Yet you have to commit yourself to a certain course and a certain pace, otherwise you will run out of water and energy before long."
(Andrew Grove, Only the Pranoid Survive, 1996)
Comprehensive leadership training programs offered in either a three or five day format are
designed to meet the unique needs of leaders facing the ambiguity and rapidly shifting demands of current organizational life. Leadership is a composite of complex personality characteristics,
including particular interpersonal skills, problem solving
abilities and attitudes about change. These qualities can be enhanced and developed through leadership training programs that are comprised of:
- Feedback from assessments and 360 degree feedback information obtained prior to the seminar.
- Insights derived from experiential team activities and structured feedback from other leaders.
- Educational materials that help integrate the above findings.
- A personal feedback and facilitation session with the OD specialistin a one-on-one setting.
These seminars are offered at off-site locations and include executive level participants representing different organizations, or they can be designed to meet the exclusive needs of one executive team.
Merger Integration and Facilitation
"Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one identity." (James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name)
Individual coaching and group process services provide valuable stabilization assistance during the time a company anticipates, plans and transitions through a major reorganization, such as a merger
or acquisition. The system itself is thoroughly shaken at a time when endurance and strength count the most.
Consultation involves as assessment of the leader's, team's and the organization's needs during this
transition as key individuals engage in process consultation with an OD specialist. Stabilization and facilitation services that may be recommended by the assessment findings include providing an
opportunity for leaders to deal with the emotional process of transition in a group setting where feelings can be processed; support provided by others on the team; and adaptive skills acquired by
team leaders. Such skills include planning termination techniques, dealing with employee feelings of distrust and betrayal and planning for integration with new executive team members. Attention to
individual and group needs during these critical junctures allows the organization a much smoother ride. |
