Coaching helps managers to reflect and develop their leadership styles. Through individual feedback and targeted exercises, they learn to lead more effectively and motivate their teams better. This can also be seen in a project that we carried out for a renowned company in the automotive industry:
You have probably already heard of it. You may still have a few questions about deploying this approach. A real-life example is therefore better than too much theory! For this reason, we would like to share with you a situation in which OTP was recently involved.
Applicants today increasingly want to know whether the company matches their own beliefs and working methods. When filling new positions, it is important to pay special attention to this point. You will be successful in attracting candidates if they are convinced that they will fit into your company.
With our Topscore® approach, we look at the question of which values, standards, working methods and communication characterize our clients’ corporate culture as early as the evaluation of the requirements profile.
Thanks to our specific approach, we are able to make accurate statements about your company’s corporate culture and framework conditions as early as the job advertisement stage. In this way, we ensure that incoming applications are not only analyzed on the basis of their professional skills, experience and social skills, but also in terms of their cultural fit.
Important advantages of the “cultural fit” are:
A good cultural fit promotes harmonious team cohesion. Employees who fit in well with the corporate culture tend to interact better with their colleagues and work together more effectively to achieve company goals.
Employees who identify with the company culture show higher morale and commitment. They feel more connected to the company values, which has a positive impact on their performance.
A positive company culture fosters an environment that encourages creativity and innovation. Employees who feel comfortable in their working environment are more likely to come up with new ideas and develop and share innovative solutions.
Cultural fit contributes to employee retention. Employees who identify with the corporate culture are more likely to stay with the company. This can reduce turnover and significantly reduce the cost of recruiting and training new employees.
Employees who are a good cultural fit with the organization tend to have better communication and are more effective in resolving conflicts. Shared values and norms create a foundation for a positive communication culture.
Colleagues who fit in well with the company’s culture are often better able to adapt to change. A strong cultural base can help reduce resistance to change and facilitate the adaptation process.
Employees who represent the corporate culture help to build a positive image of the company. This can have an impact on the external perception of the company and on the attraction of potential candidates.
The corporate culture is the personality of your company. It influences how employees work and communicate with each other, how structures are set up and how the company itself functions.
To ensure that the candidates are a “cultural fit”, we use our Topscore® approach to record specific characteristics of your corporate culture according to the following dimensions:
By examining your company values and comparing them with the ideas and values of the candidates, we obtain solid information on the accuracy of fit. We identify and present you with candidates who show a high level of identification with your values!
We look forward to an initial discussion with you! We take the time to look at the situation from your perspective and find individual solutions.
Rolf Sommer
Senior Consultant
That is quite normal. While some people appreciate confrontation, many others prefer to avoid conflict. This is even more pronounced in a professional environment where you don’t necessarily want to “make waves”. In fact, people tend to play down or even suppress conflicts within a team. This strategy is risky. However, confronting them can be too. But if a conflict is handled correctly, it also brings positive elements with it.
Contrary to all expectations, conflict can be positive. When conflict arises in your team, it means that the team members are reacting to each other, contributing and getting involved. From this perspective, it is therefore positive. Of course, the biggest challenge is to manage the conflict successfully. This is also the reason why many of us dislike conflict: dealing with it can be painful. It is never pleasant to “put your finger where it hurts”.
Through situational role-plays, the teaching of specific methods and the transfer of best practices, OTP supports your teams and managers in successfully managing conflicts as part of training courses.
First, the team’s situation is examined in a reflection phase, the team members are listened to and the severity of the conflict is analyzed. Is the conflict emerging? Is it already entrenched? Is it recurring? These are questions that make it possible to defuse the conflict as early as possible or to deal with it if it has already become entrenched.
The manager then has to choose the right course of action. Depending on the scenario and configuration of the conflict, they will sometimes adopt a more mediating stance (mediator). Sometimes they will take on more of a leadership role that sets the direction. If the leader is part of the conflict, the intervention of a third party is recommended.
Our case takes place in a medium-sized company. Within this organization, several teams from different departments work together. The managing director calls us and reports recognizable tensions between two very heterogeneous teams. The conflict is already deadlocked. Communication between the two teams is deteriorating. Individuals are finding it difficult to work with others and the actual business mission is being undermined. In this context, we intervene by offering a one-and-a-half day workshop on team building.
As a player outside the conflict, the role of the OTP consultant is to act as a facilitator, so that things that cause anger can be said. By providing a framework and avoiding certain excesses.
The consultant also shares keys to communication, enabling participants to take a step back and realise that each person has different needs in terms of interaction and expresses themselves in a different way.
The second part of the day focuses on summarising the conflict situation, and above all on finding solutions, first individually or in sub-groups, and then together. The aim of this first day is to produce a plan with concrete, measurable actions.
It is advisable to schedule another half day several weeks or months after this first day to take stock of the situation in terms of managing the conflict and how it is evolving. And potentially to make relevant adjustments to the actions decided upon. During this final stage, it is interesting for the teams to take a step back and observe the progress made. It can be rewarding for the team to see that it has been able to move forward, evolve and progress.
To prevent conflict situations and provide managers with tools, we can design training workshops that will not provide “turnkey” solutions, but will be fine-tuned according to your own structure, and to the needs of your company and your team.
In the case of a proven and established conflict situation, we can also intervene in the form of “team-building” days, as explained in the case study above.
Whatever the nature and format of the conflict, we’ll take the time to put together an appropriate package to meet your specific needs. So don’t hesitate to contact us.
So that the conflict can be positive and help your team to progress.
Upskilling and reskilling on the basis of a personal career management are key concepts in the modern workplace, where lifelong learning and adaptability are crucial. Reskilling and upskilling are vital as requirements and technologies are constantly evolving.
The ongoing development of the IT market and the associated digitalization in companies are revolutionizing the tasks of IT service employees, especially in contact with customers. Beyond pure technical support, these experts have the opportunity to offer their customers real added value through product recommendations, additional service offerings and advice on digitalization processes.
Resilience has become an important term in today’s world. It is the ability to deal with challenges, stress, and setbacks and to emerge stronger from them.
A high level of resilience can significantly enrich your life and contribute to a successful and fulfilling working life.
Onboarding: a key stage
The appointment of a new manager is a pivotal moment in the life of a department or organization. Like the arrival of any new employee, the onboarding phase is a key stage. It’s just as important for the new manager, who needs to get to grips with his or her new duties, team and working environment.
Leadership skills are particularly important today. To realize your full leadership potential, you should take advantage of coaching services. Developing a coaching program, aligned with HR, can be critical for companies after the challenges of the last three years.
With the increasing complexity of IT systems, the job of IT service technicians in contact with customers is changing fundamentally. In service, social and communication skills, in addition to technical know-how, are becoming more and more important for the company’s business success.
One of OTP’s customers, an IT firm, planned to promote its highly qualified service specialists by professionalizing their customer service skills.
Background: Because this company’s service technicians work with complex e-commerce systems, the “just be friendly all the time” approach to service is not sufficient. Customers increasingly need proactive advice on how to get the most out of the systems. In challenging situations – malfunctions, time delays, system failures, customer anger – the service technicians should also be able to communicate in a professional manner so as not to create problems for further the cooperation with the customers.
The IT company wanted the IT technicians to have command of the communication tools needed to actively shape a positive customer relationship in the scope of their service activity. This includes a customer-focused and benefit-oriented argumentation, taking a de-escalating approach in crisis situations, and binding the customer to the service provider through a professional approach in discussions and presentations.
The “Consulting Competence” training program, developed by OTP, comprises various modules that extend over six months. The first step is an individual competence-oriented assessment of the participants. Then, the various aspects of consulting competence are trained and practically applied based on theoretical background information and exercises.
The assessment is the basis and the key for the learning process in the training program. The behavioral styles of the participants are analyzed, and a forecast is made of how their behavioral characteristics will affect the desired consulting activity in IT service. This gives a picture in which competencies the participants have their strengths and in which they would need special support from the training program (e.g., through exercises in the seminar, through personal feedback, and through coaching).
The assessment tool used by OTP is the digital test OPQ32 (“Occupational Personality Questionaire”). This test evaluates 32 personality traits in three personality dimensions that provide information about individual work behavior. The high accuracy of this assessment tool is internationally recognized.
The test consists of 107 questions measuring 32 specific personality traits. There are no right or wrong answers. Traits that are desirable for some tasks and positions may be detrimental for others.
The OPQ32 gives companies insight into how aspects of employees’ individual behavior affect their performance on the job. In the context of human resource development, the test can be used for a wide variety of objectives, whether it is to align the internal career promotion (as in the present case), for internal career management, for evaluating the talent pool, or for evaluating applicants as part of an assessment.
The analysis of the OPQ 32 is focused on the following three dimensions:
| Interpersonal Behavior | |
| Enforcement | convincing, leading, direct, independent |
| Contact | sociable, eager to contact, self-confident |
| Empathy | restrained, cooperative, caring |
| Thinking Style | |
| Analysis | data-oriented, critically evaluating, behavior-oriented |
| Flexibility | Traditional, conceptual, innovative, looking for variety, willing to adapt |
| Structure | Forward thinking, detail oriented, conscientious, follows rules |
| Emotion and Motivation | |
| Selfmanagement | Forward thinking, detail oriented, conscientious, follows rules |
| Motivation | Dynamic, competitive, success-oriented, decisive |
The assessment at the start of the training program was first analyzed with all participants in one-hour individual meetings. In this analysis, the participants were encouraged to focus on their strengths and weaknesses. They determined individually in which areas they personally saw a particular need for learning. For her part, the training leader and coach was able to use this exchange to determine for each participant the specific learning objectives that needed to be worked on in the training and the individual coaching.
In particular, the OPQ32 analysis made it possible to track and reflect the continuous progress and results of each participant over the course of the training and coaching – e.g., professionalization of presentation skills. Using specific checklists for the different areas of competence – presentation, rhetoric, consultative selling, conflict management, leading discussions, understanding of business roles – the personal learning progress was determined in a before-and-after analysis and future learning areas were identified. In addition, it was also possible to determine the specific strengths of each participant in respect to his or her approach to the customer.
Last but not least, the test results of the OPQ32 also gave the supervisors the opportunity to evaluate on site with the customer the work of their collaborators in the ongoing appraisal meetings and to define goals for employee development.
Overall, working with the OPQ32 test tool proved to be extremely fruitful for the IT company, its employees and managers. For its part and on the basis of many years of work with personality assessment, OTP was able to open up another interesting use of this job-related personality test as part of the training program.
