Carlsberg Group

Our Challenge

Carlsberg Group faces a tough competitive situation in the UK in which several larger players dominate the market. Senior leadership realised that in dealing with bigger rivals, its people were its main competitive advantage.

The company had recently considerably reduced its overheads and head-count and now faced a skills gap. The company needed to unlock the considerable potential of its middle managers, and as part of this change the senior leadership decided to create a coaching culture.

Associates from Maynard Leigh worked closely with both the HR director and the CEO to explore a leadership programme with a special emphasis on coaching. This was based around a 360° feedback process that was also supported by one-to-one coaching before and after the analysis.

Around forty senior leaders from Carlsberg attended the two-day programme. The participants explored in depth the reasons for coaching and the skills required, and what constituted effective coaching behaviour. This was well received, and a further follow-up day nine weeks later underpinned the learning by trouble-shooting problems, providing a place to share experiences, and delivering more advanced coaching tools.

In further support of the learning, Carlsberg became one of the the first users of Maynard Leigh's new holistic training evaluation service, ProgressIt ®. This provides up to nine weeks of support for participants pursuing objectives from a learning event. The Business Benefits report also showed in detail the many practical initiatives that people had pursued as part of their implementation of learning.

The programme with Carlsberg succeeded in shifting the internal culture so that coaching is now more widely embedded as a core leadership and management skill.

Colin Povey, then the company's Chief Executive, explained, "The energy and creativity produced by the team at Maynard Leigh Associates have really helped us to raise our game. I am convinced that without the support of the Maynard Leigh team we would not have been able to introduce so effectively the level of coaching skills required in today's business environment."

"The Maynard Leigh people that have met and worked with our executives have always delivered great results for us," added HR Director Julian Duxfield. "Maynard Leigh strikes a nice balance between responding to our agenda for change and bringing their ideas to us. We have used Maynard Leigh Associates for a number of different, but connected, interventions. They have always been able to link these events and build towards the change we are seeking."

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