Graham was a successful programme deliverer in the IT world. He had a whole track record of successful projects but he had, it seemed, only one tool in his kitbag - a very large hammer, which he used to smash his way through his projects and, sure enough, he left quite a bit of debris behind. So, although he was very well respected for being able to come in and deliver a project and for being able to walk bravely into very difficult situations and achieve a turnaround, he wasn’t seen as somebody with real leadership potential because of the fallout left behind.
if you plot the curve he was in complete denial in the first stage. He wouldn’t engage and he told me afterwards why that was…. every piece of success he’d ever had in his career had been achieved by behaving and acting in one way and he was terrified that learning these new ways would undermine his performance and actually mean he would be less successful. He reached an inflection point, where he suddenly realised this actually could help him, and he went from being Ei World’s most difficult client to being their most engaged. He totally bought into it.
It was a very successful engagement. It helped us to think about his future and what it would take for him to develop into a leader and achieve a leadership position. 12 months after the intervention, Graham was promoted to vice president at the first time of asking and he could not have achieved that without the intervention from Ei World and bringing the Emotional Intelligence learnings to him.