Work We’ve Done

To give you and idea of how we help clients, these are a few examples of work WildFire Strategies has done.  There are lots of other examples; just ask us!

 

By Industry:

Law: leadership coaching, career transition coaching, individual assessment, professional development training, D&I strategy and planning

Non-Profit Human Rights/Advocacy: leadership coaching, board facilitation, individual and team assessment, strategic facilitation, professional development training

Non-Profit Arts: strategic facilitation, team building, team assessment, professional development training

Financial Services: challenging personalities, leadership coaching, career coaching, strategic facilitation, team building, individual and team assessment, professional development training, D&I strategy and planning

Publishing/Media: challenging personalities, leadership coaching, individual assessment, strategic facilitation, D&I strategy and planning

 

By Service Area:

Coaching

• Leadership Coaching: A C-level leader of a non-profit just didn’t understand how her communication style with colleagues made them cringe at the idea of working with her.  We assessed her style, taught her an array of alternate approaches, and helped her implement a new style that causes less friction and gets better results. 

 

• Team/Blended: Working with the Senior Team of a major NYC behavioral health hospital, we brought members who were butting heads together in dyads.  In dyads we clarified their challenges and improved their collaboration.  Simultaneously we worked  individually, doing assessments and coaching.  In  full team sessions we focused on overcoming communication hurdles.  The team is functioning smoothly as is on track to meet significant quality improvement goals.

 

• Career Transition: After decades in the financial services, our client was being asked to leave his company.  He saw this crossroads as an opportunity to take a fresh look at his career interests and goals, but didn’t know how to structure the process.  Through assessments, a project plan and coaching, we helped him understand and pursue a career path that fits best for him. 

 

• Support for HR and Management: Assessment interviews, workshops and multiple coaching engagements helped us recognize the organizational and cultural challenges that one of our financial services clients was facing.  As external advisors, we were able to report recurring themes to HR and management that they used in a range of strategic planning discussion and decisions.

 

Assessment

• Key Relationships: As the founders of an investment management company formed their venture, they had the foresight to recognize that they needed to fully understand and leverage their different work styles.  We conducted several assessments and debriefing sessions that taught them where their styles were complementary, where they overlapped, and where they might conflict.  They also learned more about what characteristics they needed to add to their team when making new hires.

 

• Role Clarity: With offices around the country and sometimes competing priorities, a non-profit development team was experiencing conflict, frustration and competitiveness in its ranks.  To help them, we wanted to start with something they could all agree on: their set of strategic priorities.   We worked with them to apply role clarification tools to these priorities, which resulted in a clearly-defined and understood set of roles and responsibilities. 

 

Facilitation

• Strategic planning for a major international aid organization.  We have designed and delivered a number of strategic planning on-site retreats for fundraising departments in order to strengthen their role within the organization, map to important relationships with leaders and develop fiscal and operating goals.

 

• WildFire facilitated a half-day session for the ERGs of a major news organization.  Our work focused on authenticity, creating value propositions that could easily be communicated to prospective members and new employees, as well as structuring conversation in which each group shared best practices and set new goals.

 

• Storytelling Coaching: We are working with a CEO of a social media firm on how to tell stories in a compelling way.  She’s been focusing on both the “creation story” of her company and a story that communicates the importance of the organizational culture.  Through her work with WildFire, the CEO is telling some of these stories at new employee orientations.  In one story, she tells of almost letting go an employee who was technically skilled but his gruff and sarcastic behavior was antithetical to the culture of “let’s catch more flies with honey”.  But through giving feedback and supervision, the employee changed his behavior and is growing as an important member of the team.  By telling this story, the CEO shows new employees both that their behavior is critical to their success and that the company is willing to work with skilled people who are able to adapt.