Teligent Management Team Use Gazing To Help Develop UK Business (page 2)

Gazing team trainer Ian Cochrane describes the company’s training courses in this way: “Through our work with high performance athletes and sports teams, we know that - even if the skills are in place - a ‘mental toughness’ is required for the athlete to reach high levels of performance whilst under pressure. But this mental toughness is not a God-given personal attribute. It is a transferable skill that can be learnt by anybody. Put simply, we give our delegates the mental tools that will enable them to deliver whilst under pressure”.

Central to this coaching are simple map-based structures that help the delegate ‘navigate’ his or her way around a problem. This flexibility appealed to Mark, who said,” Most training courses deliver big binders that are little use outside of the organization. Gazing’s approach is altogether more pragmatic. The map represents not just a piece of paper, but a reference point for the future and one that can be used both inside the company and outside in our private lives”.

Based on the Human Performance model, Ian and Mark jointly created a training programme for the six-strong management team and, within three months, they had achieved their objective; the management team had increased clarity about the company’s objectives; they knew what was required from them to deliver it, and believed in their ability to do it.

Specifically, the business plan that emerged for the UK Company was based around the four pillars of the business finance; people and processes; customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. And progress has been recorded on all four.

Due to commercial considerations, Mark remains understandably tight-lipped about the financial dimension, but will acknowledge that margins have improved. On the People and Processes he is more forthcoming, “the company gained ‘Investors in People’ (IIP) accreditation just eighteen months later”. On the customer satisfaction dimension, Mark believes the training “helped the company define a new customer management process, which has now been implemented” whilst rising employee satisfaction gave clear evidence that the fourth focal area had also been achieved.

Gazing remains involved with the company, despite having completed the initial training project. Mark describes the relationship as “having bought the philosophy, it’s now an ongoing process. The team uses the gazing maps continuously to plot their progress, both at a strategic level and on a daily basis”