The Current Organization
A Federally recognized Tribe located in Nevada southeast of Reno with a membership of about 3,000 and a land base of 325,000 acres. The governing body is an elected 7 member Tribal Council, and 26 separate program directors.
Objective
To transform the seven member Tribal Council and the 26 program directors into a unified leadership team: Before the coaching workshop, this group operated individually in territorial fashion with factions, petty jealousies, personality conflicts filled with distrust, divisiveness over years, and insufficient integrity. The intention of the workshop was to create themselves as a team of one where there is alignment, trust, and integrity to achieve a new level of leadership, vision, communication and effectiveness.
Coaching Approach
Using Gemini’s coaching methodology, participants distinguished their individual and collective barriers that were impeding the Tribe from maximizing its potential performance. The impact on the participants was decreased productivity, low morale and an absence of vitality and self-expression. The impact on the entire Tribe was lost developmental opportunities and less than optimal service to Tribal members.
Over a 3 day coaching workshop, participants transformed their complaints into opportunities for action by inventing new empowering and effective ways of operating. Participants learned a process to create breakthroughs from apparent failures and distinguished a new way of winning that empowered them to achieve unimaginable results.
Focusing on team, participants identified their own personal pretenses regarding being a team. They identified qualities of being an effective team and then created themselves to be the Walker River Leadership Team with an inspiring vision statement for creating an extraordinary Tribal future. Participants were coached in effective communication that created alignment and support for each other in being accountable to achieve common goals.
Participants realized that integrity was the foundation of workability and breakthrough results. They were coached to un-conceal where integrity was missing. They then restored their integrity with each other by being responsible for their part in the divisiveness and friction. Additionally, they committed to minimize and resolve future upsets with velocity.
Results
During the workshop, two participants publicly reconciled their multi-year standing differences and animosity. Another participant transformed her committee from being angry and upset with much internal strife that had been lasting for over a year to a committee dedicated once again to maximizing service to Tribal members. In the end, participants became more aware of their own personal power to be responsible leaders for Tribal results.
The Team’s first project was to create the Tribe’s economic future by creating a list of potential economic development projects and additional structures to research, evaluate and initiate the most viable projects. The Tribe is now fulfilling on a new future by creating breakthroughs from upsets and breakdowns that occur with velocity and pursuing their economic development initiative.