How a niche consultancy transformed an IT manager's relations with staff by Alison Maitland The FT's article detailed the problems that a recently-promoted UBS Warburg IT director had in dealing successfully with her team. She knew she had the right ideas but couldn't put these into practise and found she was pressurising her staff rather than providing them with support. Directors from SKAI Associates - Sharon Bajer and Irena Sobolewska - saw the manager had difficulty delegating and began discussing with her how to reduce the time she spent firefighting. They coached her to delegate so that she could spend more time on strategy, and to help her team make similar changes to their own roles. The article goes on to describe how SKAI initiated weekly teleconferenced coaching sessions with the director and her two most experienced managers to help them talk through and implement the changes. After each session, the three managers themselves coached the other eight members of the team. The impact was profound, says Ms Bajer. "They went from being hunted, prickly and defensive and spending all their brain-time coming up with excuses, to sharing problems and being creative about how they were going to change things". The manager says she built up an inventory of skills for dealing with her team and has since been promoted again. She still has Ms Bajer as her personal coach and has applied what she learned from SKAI to her current work.

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