Case Studies
Sysco Foods Canada: A Leadership Coaching Success Story
Winner of the 2007 PRISM Award for Excellence in Leadership Coaching
SYSCO Foodservices, Canada Inc. is a major wholesale food distributor that has embraced significant changes over the last five years. The company made a series of acquisitions of regional distributors and set aggressive sales growth targets. As a result, there was a need to ensure that the management team was prepared to meet future challenges.
The key issues identified by SYSCO Canada’s corporate change team were the pacing and execution of numerous change initiatives and the development of a leadership bench.
SYSCO worked with Prophet Coaching on a three-year, multi-phased leadership development program that started in 2004. The program entailed many elements, from training, conference calls, peer coaching and communication support. The project launched with one to one coaching of SYSCO’s 16 executives.
Over time a dedicated Prophet Coaching/Sysco Team was created to facilitate long-term efforts and as new executives were brought into the fold. The coaching team’s ongoing role includes orientation around assessment tools (VOICES 360, Hay EI, Hogan Personality Assessment Suite, Human Synergistics Life Styles Inventory and face to face coaching sessions with the executives. These sessions provide executives with objective support and help in designing an implementation plan for their leadership objectives.
The coaching program has allowed SYSCO to strengthen the leadership skills of its growing management team and provide them with the tools to develop action plans, identify strengths, and transfer their skills to their respective teams. Executives are more disciplined, have reduced cycle times in achieving results, increased their accountability, and are able to implement ideas with greater confidence. There is greater collaboration between executives and many have requested further executive coaching as they progress. The training and coaching has given SYSCO a strong pool of talent to draw from. Over the last three years five of the participants have been promoted to President.
Coaching Feedback with Cassandra Gierden (CG) of Prophet Coaching and Andrew Miller (AM) HR Director of Training at Sysco Canada
CG: What prompted you to include coaching in your retreat design?
AM: Our leadership program at Sysco was designed to groom our future EVP’s and Presidents. I wanted to ensure the management team participating in the retreats understood that the focus of the program was to develop them further as leaders and that the training at the retreat was insignificant compared to the ‘implementation’ on the job that would be necessary in between our retreat sessions. I felt the executive coaching component would help emphasize what happens in between as more important. By having them work with an executive coach, I felt it would give them someone objective to develop a plan of action. I relied on the executive coaching to help ground them further, identify what they excelled at, ensure they got the most from their assessments and understood how to handle the feedback. More important, working with a coach, allowed them to experience coaching, and transfer the learning so they were able to practice a coach-like approach with their teams.
CG: What benefits have you experienced working with a coaching team? And what were the unexpected benefits?
AM: There have been two major benefits and one surprising benefit. First, the feedback from the presidents who chose to work with a coach after the retreat, is that they are more disciplined and are having faster cycle times in achieving results. Those that are only meeting with their boss or management trio from the retreats are not achieving as much as those who are talking to their coaches on a consistent basis.
Secondly, those who are investing in having someone focused just on them and outside our own system are able to reflect and implement ideas with greater confidence. In the internal ‘coaching’ trios, they come to the calls wanting to share what’s been going on and they end up talking about each other’s situations, rather than really getting someone trained to help coach them on results. When they met with their presidents they likely get caught up with working in the business vs. on the business. For example, they talk about the latest ‘issue’ that has arisen and what they are doing to fix it rather than talking about their leadership development goals. In time, as they move up into those positions themselves they will have learnt the skill set and discipline to improve on that.
The surprise is the difference between those who are getting executive coaching outside the retreat vs. those who are not. Having that objective person they can trust and open up to and the fact that they are paying for it – they had to go to their bosses and show that they were serious in investing further in themselves with executive coaching – has those individuals putting a little more skin into the game. They’ve really stepped up a level and increased their accountability to their bosses to make some changes; this really has been a catalyst compared to those that haven’t made that additional commitment.
At the retreats they show more progress with clearer action plans, examples of what they have been working on and the results, as well as having more energy and seem to feel better about where they are at. With some of the others they are half making it up or perhaps feeling guilty about what they haven’t done. I think for others the program may seem like a commitment enough but the challenge any organization faces is those costs are hidden so the participants don’t see the investment the company is making in their growth and development.
CG: How has having Prophet Coaching administering the Associate Coaches for your management team vs. recruiting them directly on your own been beneficial?
AM: Goodness, I could even add up how many hours working with you has helped save me time and money. I likely would have had to interview at least 15 coaches to get 6 qualified ones, then I would have had to coordinate and communicate with each one individually on the logistics, details, agenda’s for our team. Let alone educate and answer their questions relating to the different assessments we were using. Multiply all those hours by each individual coach vs. just relating information to you. Having you coordinate, communicate and get your team up to speed has been an amazing benefit. My hands are full designing, planning and facilitating the retreats, let alone starting our second group and new ones in the pipeline.
CG: If you could ask for more support from Prophet Coaching and/or an Associate Coaching Company what would it be?
AM: I don’t think there’s anything more. What’s nice is that they are taking initiatives to pursue coaching on their own. There really is a different conversation going on about the coaching too, where the participants were more skeptical at first they now seem to be championing the coaching itself.
CG: In your mind what has been the ROI for you, the participants and the company as a whole?
AM: We’ll use our 360 Feedback at the 2 year mark to help measure the results. It’s not a major focus at this point, though maybe it should be. We have what we call “Agility Training” where we are working with the management team so they are able to manage and react to change faster. The coaching has been instrumental in heightening their awareness, helping them learn faster, and change old habits. I have 27 participants in two leadership programs; unfortunately I just don’t have the time or perhaps even the objectivity or skill that the coaches bring. Since this program is designed to develop and groom our future leaders, measurements would be our retention rate within the organization. Our hope is that these individuals do move up and that they are effective and efficient as leaders - confident and happy to stay here. Perhaps even helping identify those who may not want that next step, but gain their continued investment with us, in the role they are in.
Note: As a continued investment with Sysco Canada, Prophet Coaching is taking initiatives to help identify some critical areas and tools to measure the ROI and enhance their coaching roster to meet ongoing needs for different coaching expertise as well as locale.