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Samples of Engagements

The Woodland Group Team has created value for hundreds companies around the nation and across the globe. Here are a few examples of the type of work our collaborative team has participated in.

A multi-billion dollar global company has collaborated with The Woodland Group over 8 times in a Strategic On-boarding process for new product line leaders. This creative and innovative approach to integrating new Leaders into established teams has proven extremely valuable and a very high return on investment. This program has been conducted across the United States and in Japan.
Several of these individuals have been promoted to upper levels of management and did so exponentially quicker than their counterparts that didn’t receive Strategic On-Boarding.

A Southeastern US state Department of Liquor, essentially a regulatory body, had never met as entire leadership team until this new Commissioner realized that there would be value in bringing all of the Leadership stakeholders together in one room. There was pre-session assessment work the data from which was used during the full day session. In addition to private coaching for the new Commissioner, there were clear deliverables created which were due in 3 months at the follow up session. Additional follow up sessions to keep the process on track happen at months 6, 9 and 12.
The most significant outcome of this Strategic On-Boarding was the fact that it even occurred. The next significant outcome was there was a safe and serious place to air old issues and agree to move beyond them. Another huge outcome was the alignment of the Leaders’ understanding of “Current State” and “Desired State” so that they could, for the first time in their history, all Lead in the same direction.

A group of engineers at a global manufacturing company was unable to work effectively with other groups within the company. TWG was engaged to create effective working relationships between the engineers and their internal customers. Over the course of three months there was a concerted effort to collaboratively uncover the real issues and for the individuals involved to create the best solution.
One of the engineers decided to return to an individual contributor where he was able to create renewed value at a more appropriate level without direct reports. The other engineers reorganized and restructured their working relationship to be more effective and more efficient.

A northern New England non-profit group that focuses on Teen Development thought they were severely hampered by the presence and behavior of one individual Team member. TWG was engaged to discern to what degree this was true and to help create a strategy to effectively deal with the negative impact of this dynamic. What TWG learned was that the individual’s performance was indeed inappropriate and cause for many disruptions. The larger underlying issues of the management system were also examined such as the hiring process and the performance evaluations.
While the individual was clearly performing poorly, there were more systemic issues at play that were reviewed and revised as a result of this engagement. The individual decided to self-outplace and the Team has experienced a resurgence of vitality, teamwork and effectiveness.

A 5,000 person State-owned petroleum company in the Caribbean engaged TWG as part of a team of professionals to assist with the challenges of Union/Management dynamics. This lead to a large array of interventions from Process Mapping, Flow-charting, Coaching, Leadership Development, Executive Coaching and purposeful planning on how to become a Learning Organization. As TWG became more immersed in the issues we realized there were top management dynamics that created difficulty throughout the organization.
The individuals and the smaller groups advanced their skill levels relative to their respective levels of the organization. Unfortunately, a leadership vacuum occurred when the CEO changed and the Champion of this effort retired. TWG continues communication with this client in hopes of building upon the initial investment made.

A key TWG collaborative colleague co-created a year-long, integrated, practical and grounded Leadership Development program. This specific Leadership Development innovation was a Corporate Consortium where a variety of industries such as Health Care, High Tech, Manufacturing, Banking, Education, Utilities and Public Service participated on a membership basis. In depth learning, multiple learning sessions, inter-session assignments, project work and formal presentations were all part of the learning and development process. Each attendee was required to demonstrate learned strategic skills in the form of formal presentation to the Executive Leadership Team.
The participating companies realized economy of scale due to cost-sharing, the attendees realized an unexpected cross-pollinization of learning from different industries in the same room, individuals experienced expanded perspectives which increased their ability to think and act differently. Many of the individuals chose to add their learning outcomes to their performance management system. Some of these attendees were able to apply the learning to their degree programs. With few exceptions the attendees went on to higher levels of responsibility with their organization or some other company.

A High Tech company in based in Texas requested a Leadership Development program for its first line supervisory level employees from across the nation. Each attendee conducted a formal presentation to address his/her leadership challenges and, from a systems level, map effective strategies which were shared with their upper management at the end of the program.
This intensive week long program challenged and, according to the evaluations, catapulted their leadership understanding and capacity to new levels.

A Police Department in a large New England city needed a practical and effective Leadership Development program for its police officers. Beginning with individual assessments and having the group be part of the creation of the learning content and process afforded a committed learning process. The police officers ended the program with presentations that shared their planned leadership development and effective change strategies for their spheres of responsibility.
Sadly funding for this program ended after just a couple of years however those that did attend the Leadership Development sessions stated in their evaluations that the concepts and practical nature of the course “raised the level of their game” exponentially.

A large east coast construction company owned by a European corporation retained TWG for a long term Leadership Development process. TWG worked with each region's Leadership Team separately on their local issues. Once a quarter the groups came together to share best practices and deal with more global issues that affect the larger group.
The leaders from the three divisions decided to create a set of guiding principles that would form the basis for how leadership and management would be conducted at all three states. These principles to this day form the bedrock of their performance evaluations and their yearly 360 feedback reviews.

A Midwest local chapter of a national non-profit organization was in a crisis mode of not having direction and was suffering from less than effective leadership. TWG was called to conduct a survey, assess the situation and work with the board of directors and other stake holders to affect a plan for needed, sustainable and appropriate change.
This engagement was challenging and complex for a number of reasons. Without getting into too many details, there was an effort to listen to the employees in an effort to shift to a more participatory Leadership style. Unfortunately the Leadership – for many reasons – was perceived as not listening to the employees and an exodus of key employees occurred. Not long after this there was a major change of Leadership and the organization today is a much different and higher functioning due to the needed change that had to occur. TWG was responsible for bringing to the surface the issues that were perplexing the organization.

“All that a person achieves and all that a person fails to achieve is the direct result of his or her own thoughts.”

James Allan

A CEO concerned about his longer term vision, his employees' satisfaction and the future of the company's future leadership engaged TWG to assess, survey, interview, analyze, report and work with the corporation to create its own future in a purposeful and planned way with direct employee input. After conducting employee focus groups and compiling data from on-surveys, TWG was able to provide the CEO and his key team with some valuable insight into how to guide their strategic decisions going forward.
This is an on-going relationship that initially turned into an extensive Leadership Development effort with particular focus on new and emerging leaders. Candidly, the organization has a ways to go.

A new Commissioner of a State Department of Transportation in his wisdom knew he needed to, as Stephen Covey would say, “Seek First To Understand Before Trying To Be Understood”. He engaged TWG to survey his entire 2,500 employee base with separated and detailed data for management and non-management employees. The data could also be divided by the numerous locations.
The Commissioner used this data extensively. First he and TWG debriefed the data after which he used the data to align his direct reports who in turn did the same thing their respective smaller groups and teams. At each meeting, reactions and suggestions for moving the organization forward were solicited, captured and reported back to the Commissioner. Many process inefficiencies, personnel issues and cost savings were dealt with in improved ways as a direct result of having hard data to work with.

A Priest was assigned to a newly combined/merged set of two churches located in the southwestern United States. These two churches were quite different in many respects from years of existence, socioeconomic, Priest leadership legacies, traditions and financial stabilities. TWG worked with this Parish Priest for several months. The first objective was to gather hard data so that any decisions were made with the benefit of some facts and objective information in addition to what was historically or intuitively thought true. This helped the Priest, his combined Parish Councils and TWG to obtain an aligned understanding of what we call “Current State”. Part of this process included a number of focus groups and an extensive survey conducted both via paper and pencil and on-line. The next part of the process involved aligning the Pastor’s, the Councils’ and the Parishioners’ understanding and articulation of “Desired State.” These two exercises proved extremely valuable for make wise decisions for both operations and strategic vision. Parallel to these activities, Executive Coaching was occurring with the Parish Priest.
The Parish Councils have taken a much stronger and reinvigorated role in defining the future of this new Parish of two different churches. There is a clearer and well articulated vision and mission and the Parish Priest requested a transfer because, in part, he felt as though the time was right for a new Priest to step in to be the Leader of the new vision.

A number of Executives including Presidents and CEO’s have engaged TWG for Executive coaching processes the dramatically impact on how they create organizational value and how they interact with colleagues and the outside world. Specific references are available.

A high level leader in a major New England hospital was caught in a triangulation within the Leadership structure. This caused a variety of difficulties for this high level leader such that TWG was asked to provide Executive Coaching to help her redefine her role, her department and its relationship to the rest of the larger Hospital.

A President of a family owned business engaged TWG on a monthly basis to meet for 3 hours to discuss and debate the variety of challenges that he faces as a relatively young but talented President and CEO. This relationship is going on four years now.

A general manager for a high tech firm located in Connecticut engaged TWG to help deal with his ever expanding leadership role that causes him to travel extensively. He was concerned about the impact of his expanding role on the communication and interpersonal infrastructure of his direct reports so TWG was hired to craft and facilitate a purposeful and effective process to assess, redesign and implement an employee-driven communication and interpersonal infrastructure.

A Principal of Catholic School in the mid-west was let go from his employment of 20 years. The Diocese engaged TWG to provide career coaching to further enable this individual to prepare for and secure employment.

A global manufacturing company, which is one of the oldest companies in the world based in Paris, sent some of its leaders to sessions taught by a TWG collaborative colleague. In those sessions, leaders were taught the critical role that Coaching plays in their respective roles.

The new family-member CEO of a two-generation family-owned manufacturing company requested regular coaching sessions to purposely plan how the new CEO would assume the role and take the company to a much needed higher level of operations.

A parent company in Ireland has retained the services of TWG for over 6 years to conduct personality profile assessments of prospective employees for its various locations around the world.
TWG and this company remain close and consistent collaborators for specific interviewing situations requiring more informed questioning resulting in better hiring decisions. This on-going relationship has developed into TWG providing 360 degree process for its Executive Team.

A family owned five generation construction company over 100 years old decided that to remain competitive in this increasingly competitive industry, they need to actively pursue a culture change. In 2003 this company engaged TWG to begin the strategic journey of changing the behavior and mind sets that had been in place for over a century.
After working together for 3 years, the company has been able to successfully conduct 360 degree review processes that have had dramatic effect on employee/manager relationships, accountability and overall performance. Now seven years later, we are still a consistent and collaborative partner with this forward-thinking, history-rich company.

A global high tech firm needed two of its divisions to conduct more effective and efficient interviews. TWG created several workshops for the interviewers focusing on Structured Behavioral Interviewing with follow-up sessions to assess the learning’s effectiveness.
The follow-up session proved to be key in this situation due to the attendees knowing that in 3 months there would another opportunity for each of them to show their peers what they have tried and learned from the learning and development sessions.

A large regional hospital needed a department head to step up his level of effectiveness. He continually and seemingly unknowingly berated his department team members as well as some of his peers. TWG worked with him and through a purposely designed two month coaching process.
After sharing feedback data with this department head and having candid conversations about his perception of “fit” and a careful examination of what he really wanted in his professional life, he decided to self-outplace. This was a much cleaner and in the long-run, a less expensive way to realign a critical leader.

A North American manufacturing company recently purchased by a privately held global German company needed a long time employee to re-examine his ways of doing things and to strongly consider becoming more in line with the Leadership competencies that the new organization demanded. This was not easy for this person to even consider let alone accomplish. The initial meetings with TWG were strained and only after continuous efforts, candid feedback and partnering with his direct manager did the evolution of his leadership competencies begin. The effort required his thinking to shift first. Only then could the behavior be altered.
Today this employee is a high performing individual and the feedback from his direct reports and his manager has been very positive. One year later it appears as though the kinds of changes he needed to make have taken hold. This is not to say he is perfect. There is still growth that is needed. The main difference is that the company now gets more of what it needs from this employee and the employees are working more collaboratively.

A Leader (manager) of the accounting office within a large regional paving company owned by a European parent corporation had two employees that were continually arguing and having shouting matches. This behavior spilled over into the larger organization during lunch, in the hallways, staff meeting and even after hours. Each of the two employees would go separately to the Manger and this triangulation became quite disruptive. TWG was requested to objectively document both the symptoms and the root cause(s) of this unacceptable workplace dynamic.
Once TWG conducted its data gathering process, there was clearly a need to look not just at the two employees but also the role that the Manager was playing in this dynamic as well as a couple of other employees that feed the negative behaviors. Essentially the Manager realized that TWG was being called in to deal with issues she should have been taking care of and doing so more decisively. Today the department no longer has the disruptive behavior and the Manager has realized a new level of Leadership within the organization.

The examples provided here are but a small portion of the scope of services that TWG and its Collaborative Colleagues have provided literally hundreds of organizations in the United States and in many other countries around the world.

To request examples of prior engagements that are specific to your industry and/or your unique situation, simply click the image below and let us know what you need.

"In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message...the drawing out, not the pumping in."

-Ashley Montagu