Energise Leadership

The Vodafone Cook Islands leadership team has eleven leaders who are experts in their fields such as Technology, Networks, Growth, Project Management, HR, Operations and Finance. The team at Vodafone Cook Islands is 95% Rarotongan and they pride themselves on being a family-orientated service that is run by their people for their people. The opportunity to engage with the Executive Leadership team came when the CEO approached Thrive People to reinvigorate the team and to find their high performance again. 

 

“Jules delivers the course with professionalism and a commitment to help her clients achieve their goals and unlock their full potential.  She has the ability to understand the issues and helps her participants articulate the path to resolving those issues.” - CFO 

​

The Story of the Executive Leadership Team 

The Covid pandemic severely affected the well-being and financial viability for all of the residents in the Cook Islands. The community is tight knit and because of the family nature of this organisation, a promise was made that everyone would keep their jobs through the pandemic. Subsequently the executive team worked tirelessly to ensure this promise was fulfilled. They were successful in their mission, however the team used all their energy and was struggling to make progress and move forward from the covid era. The CEO wanted a workshop to energise his executive team and be a high performing team again.  

​

Why Vodafone Chose Thrive People 

The brief was to acknowledge the covid experience and to find a way for the team to move forward together. Thrive People has expertise in Leadership development,  Workshop facilitation, is accredited in a Team development tool - TMS, and can also provide Executive-level 1:1 Coaching. Thrive People was chosen because of our ability to address both individual and team development, quickly build rapport with the leaders, and Jules Simpson could relate to the team with her lived leadership and industry experience. 

​

How Thrive People Responded 

To establish an understanding of the current context Jules met with the CEO and HR Manager. Then Jule met with each of the executive leaders for 30 minutes to get to know each of them on a personal level and to hear their thoughts on the performance of the team. This information helped form a programme called Energise Leadership. This started with a two day workshop: focussed on Looking Back (at covid), (confirming) Who we Are, (establishing) How we Work, and Looking Forward (at their strategic goals). This was followed by 1:1 Coaching for each of the leaders for 1-1.5 hours to confirm their goals and how they would participate as an active member of the executive leadership going forward. 

​

The Results

The CEO, CTO and HR Manager requested additional follow on workshops and coaching from Thrive People following this experience. The team appreciated the way Jules was able to build trust and rapport with the team, inspire new thinking, and give the team practical frameworks to better communicate and work together. 

 

Feedback from the team per topic: 

• Looking Back: “it was great to drill down on what we have actually achieved during some challenging periods. It goes to show how well we handle pressure and the ability to make some 'out there' decisions to survive and keep the clocks ticking!” - COO 

• Who we Are and How we Work: “TMS Profiling - it was eye opening reading about myself. It was my first time seeing the profiling categories and I really enjoyed hearing the team sharing details about their profiles”. - HR Manager 

• Looking Forward: “Goal setting, it was good to see how asking more relevant questions can break down direction and purpose. I need to do more of this.” - Growth Manager 

 

General Feedback 

• “The impact of Jules' workshop and coaching on my professional development cannot be overstated. Her expertise in leadership development, coupled with a genuine passion for helping others grow, makes her an invaluable asset to any organization seeking to enhance their leadership capabilities. I am eagerly looking forward to having my team experience Jules' training firsthand and strongly endorse her for any leadership development initiatives.” - VAS Manager 

• “This was not only a fun week for the Vodafone Cook Islands team, we also learnt a lot about how to energize ourselves and put in practice new ways to get the best out of our extended team. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.....well Jules taught me a few. It was great to have her on the rock." - CEO 

​

Contact us today

If you would like to inspire understanding, effective communication, and high performance in your leadership team get in touch with Jules Simpson via www.thrivepeople.co.nz or jules@thrivepeople.co.nz