Brochure
How are things in your company or organization? Do teams sometimes spend more time infighting than succeeding? Are there problems with communication? Do some conflicts fester? Do you or some other executives or senior managers have areas of interpersonal skills that might be improved to give more success? Are some of the problems thorny or do they even seem intractable?
Full Circle Consulting motivates teams to align and succeed rapidly (operational development, operational leadership); enables people and teams to communicate well among themselves and with other teams and silos, both orally and in writing; and dissolves conflicts. We have many years’ experience successfully consulting in, and doing, all of these. We enjoy dealing with thorny, even “intractable” problems.
Full Circle Consulting also coaches senior managers and executives to improve so as to perform their jobs better, to be prepared for promotion, and to influence and inspire others effectively. Weaknesses become strengths. We been successful in this for many years with people of many backgrounds, many cultures, and many levels in organizations.
We use whatever methods and tools are appropriate for the task. We start with whatever seems the best approach for the issue and move to other approaches as needed. We are not tied to one formula, one rigid method, or one fixed approach. We are eclectic.
How do we go about the work? We meet with a person or a small group in your organization, sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement, and ask you to choose a particular senior person to whom we will report: your and our contact person.
We explore the problem with you or your contact person. We feel out underlying issues that need to be addressed. We meet with the person or people involved in the problem to be sure there is mutual interest, a good chemistry. Sometimes we are able to make a proposal for the first phase of work at this stage. Sometimes more conversations and exploration are needed.
Usually, with you or your contact person, we discuss whom else we will need to talk with or interview during the ongoing consultation, what meetings we will need to attend, how we will proceed, and other parameters of the project. With mutual agreement, we write a proposal and then undertake the consultation.
The written proposal contains the plan for the first phase of work, the time-line for the first phase, and the phase’s cost. It also gives you estimates of other phases and rough estimates of their time-lines and likely costs. We explore each of these with you before writing the proposal. The proposal is a key piece of our contractual agreement. The proposal includes what confidences we will keep with the people you want us to work with, what we will discuss with the contact person, how often we will provide interim reports and to whom, and when we anticipate a final report.
We negotiate details and costs of each subsequent phase with you as we proceed.
Each problem is unique. If it can be measured, we will make measurements before intervening and at intervals while intervening to test whether we are going in the right direction.
Motivating teams.
Generally, we meet with the team, get to know the members, and talk with them as a team and also individually. If the mutual chemistry is good, we write a proposal and once it is accepted, we sit in on meetings to discern the interactions and particularly the difficulties.
What we do to motivate alignment and success depends on the difficulties. We may largely work with the team as a whole, perhaps exploring goals and tasks, or opening discussions of the team members’ interactions. This may be done at regular meetings. It may require specific, additional meetings, even off site. We may discuss specific personality issues with individuals on the team, with the team, and with your contact person. We may need to do all of these.
These steps give us information on how to work. They provide everyone who is involved a basis for further steps to motivate the team. Our intent is to encourage, nudge, suggest; to have the team be responsible to make decisions, accept or modify suggestions, to align and to succeed.
When the team has succeeded, we return at intervals, as negotiated with the team and your contact person, to encourage the team to remain aligned and targeted to goals and success. This follow-up may take weeks or occasionally, months.
Communication within and between teams and silos.
What we do depends on the kinds of communication needed, the problems in communication before we get involved, and the number of people. We listen to oral communications and read written ones. We discuss communications with the team and its members. With that information, we provide a written proposal as above.
Our work depends on encouraging, correcting gently but insistently, praising, and inspiring. Improvement is an evolving process. Once communication has improved, we discuss with your contact person whether further observations would be valuable, at what intervals, and for how long. The goal is to be sure improvements last.
Dissolving conflicts.
Each conflict is unique. What needs to be done depends on the conflict and its underlying causes.
In general, we meet with each party separately to get to know them and to ensure they feel we are the right ones to work with them and their counterparts. If everyone agrees, we write a proposal as above.
Usually the first task is to explore the conflict and seek its causes. This means observing and talking with people both alone and together. It may involve conversations with others who are affected by the conflict, or who are outside the conflict but who know the people involved.
How we proceed to the active phase depends on the personalities and the problems. We may mediate, discuss matters in order to seek compromises or an effective resolution; or use various tools to explore the conflict in detail, to help each party grasp the perspective of their opponent, or to examine whether parties are working in good faith. We may work with the parties separately, together, or both.
Executive coaching.
Once you and our contact person are agreed, we begin by meeting the individual, discussing coaching, seeing if there is good chemistry between us and seeing if we are likely to be helpful. If this seems the case, we write a proposal as above.
We generally work with the individual and your contact person, separately, to explore whom else we should talk to, or interview formally, and the topics. Often there are additional talks both with others in the organization and in the individual’s outside life. The topics concern the matters you, your contact person, and the individual want to improve. The conversations are all confidential. We discuss their gist with the individual we are coaching, but at most give only a general summary to the contact person.
The individual needs to decide on a couple of matters or behaviors he or she would like to change, a time line, and ways to communicate with others who can help the change and who can give feedback about it.
At first, we meet with the individual fairly often to discuss problems, methods, and progress, feedback, wins and losses, solutions and strategies. At intervals, we find out from those we have already talked with how they perceive changes. As things improve, the intervals for all of this get longer, eventually perhaps four weeks apart. The overall time varies with individuals and their pace of improvement. As a general rule, observation at intervals is needed for a year.
Please write to us at pieter@pkark.com or call 650-380-9717.
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