THE CHALLENGE
In 2008 Nokia sought to develop
its strategic leadership bench-
strength across the Asia-Pacific
region. These top level leaders
make a significant impact on
their country teams and the
business in the region. The
primary goal of this development
project was to get them all to
become even better leaders, with
many of them being exposed to
this type of concentrated
development program for the first
time. A second goal was to
develop a coaching culture
across the Asia region initiated
using this coaching program.
THE SOLUTION
Hudson provided 5 senior
regional managers with
individual coaching over 6-9
months to enhance their strategic
leadership skills. The coaching
was flexible aiming to work with
each manager on their individual
needs and accomplish significant
material change to their
underlying management and
leadership skills.
THE RESULT
All top executives who went
through the program worked
arduously on their goals with the
help of their executive coach in
areas such as strategic thinking,
motivating and leading their
teams, opening cross functional
communications and focusing on
high performance deliverables.
All were evaluated at the end of
the program and succeeded in
consistently demonstrating their
new leadership skills. The
Regional VP expressed that he
was very happy with the
coaching program and especially
with the Hudson coach, Bernard
Bulens.
HUDSON
Hudson is a leading provider of
permanent recruitment, contract
professionals and talent
management services worldwide.
From single placements to total
outsourced solutions, Hudson
helps clients achieve greater
organisational performance by
assessing, recruiting, developing
and engaging the best and
brightest people for their
businesses. The company
employs more than 2,000
professionals serving clients and
candidates in approximately 20
countries. More information is
available at hudson.com.
DELIVERING KEY STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP SKILLS
TO TOP EXECUTIVES FOR NOKIA ASIA PACIFIC
Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the
transformation and growth of the converging Internet and
communications industries.
THE PROJECT
Nokia took a corporate decision to have their
entire bench of top executives engage in
individual executive coaching developing
programs. This was done in order to enhance
their key strategic leadership skills where
executive coaching was deemed far more
effective than the best training programs.
Executive coaching shows a significantly higher
rate of return than training alone.
With the help of their coach each top executive
developed individual goals. These were clearly
identified and agreed against a background of
improving general management and team
leadership skills. This goal-setting was followed
by 6-9 months where the coach challenged their
mind sets, helped them to identify novel ways of
approaching problems and gradually got them out
of their comfort zones to embrace far more
effective ways of thinking, leading and
communicating.
Finally, although tracking results was done on a
three monthly basis, feedback was asked from the
top management in order to ascertain the change
which had occurred and the sustainability of the
results. Consistently high results were observed
by the top management from those participants
coached by the Hudson coach.
Hudson supported in:
Identifying the best executive coaches in the
market place.
Giving each executive a chance to meet three
coaches in order to select the one with whom
the executive was comfortable to work with.
Keeping track of work in progress and results.
Monitoring the coaching and giving advice
and support to each coach as the assignment
progressed.
THE CHALLENGE
To give each Nokia executive the best coach to suit
their particular needs. The challenge was to clearly
identify those aspects of leadership which would
make the most impact from the individual on Nokia
and its strategic business growth and sustainability.
HUDSON.COM
When the goals were clear and in line with
Nokia’s strategy, each individual executive had to
work on ‘how’ and ‘what’ they needed to do in
order to make a step change in their leadership
skills.
Each executive had to challenge their own mind
sets and the status quo. They needed to step
outside their comfort zone and progress by trial
and error until the results were acknowledged and
perceived by others.
During this time of challenge, their coach offered
new insights on how to ‘break the mould’ and
deliver to each executive exactly what was
needed to progress quickly and deliver results.
TH E S O LU TIO N
To offer Nokia the best executive coaches in the
market. Each coach was thoroughly vetted by
Hudson so as to deliver quality coaching and all
had more than ten years’ experience in executive
coaching at the highest levels. The selected
coach, Bernard Bulens, was given half the cohort
by Nokia and was singled out by the Project
Manager as highly successful.
This choice of one Hudson coach for half the
cohort proved to deliver a consistent approach to
the coaching and maintain the challenge and
deliver results. Hudson coaching provided a safe
platform of total confidentiality, the executives
were able to ‘open up’ and say what was on their
minds.
Bernard helped clarify and solve ‘what was on
their minds’ and at the same time help discover
what was ‘not’ on their minds which could have a
strategic impact on their leadership skills.
All the best coaching techniques were applied as
appropriate to deliver the results expected.
TH E R E S U LT
With the focused support of their coach and
Hudson, the executives who engaged in the
coaching assignment went through a journey of
discovery, were given practical advice to move
forward to the stage where each executive could
overtly show their new skills which were
recognised by the top management, colleagues
and subordinates throughout the Nokia Group
and Asia Pacific in particular.
“You cannot teach a man anything, you can
only help him discover it in himself.”
GALILEO
FROM GREAT PEOPLE TO GREAT PERFORMANCE ®