From BA cabin crew to Thames Water coaching supremo has been unorthodox but her passion to learn has kept her firmly grounded
Andrea Grist, Thames Water’s coaching champion, has had an eclectic career path. After graduating as a speech and language therapist in 1998, she joined British Airways as part of its long haul cabin crew. “It awoke in me a real curiosity about people and a passion for customer service,” recalls Grist. “ I was fascinated by people’s patterns of behaviour and how they responded to the ever-changing circumstances around them.”
This fascination with the way people behave, and their capacity for transformation, led Grist on a journey culminating in her qualification as a coach last year, which she cites as a highpoint. She is currently bringing reluctant senior executives round to the idea of coaching in her new role as head of organisational development at Thames Water.
The organisation is currently going through significant upheaval as its parent company RWE prepares to sell it off. Grist’s role is to help managers feel con. dent enough to step up to the leadership challenges through this transition. “We’ve embarked on a transformation period to change the way we do business,” she explains. “This has affected behaviours and culture. The transformation of business is about driving performance from everybody in business.”
Grist first discovered the world of training and development when, after three years in the air with BA, she realised that she wanted greater involvement in other parts of the business and a more challenging role. She transferred to relationship marketing and managed the customer interface of the Blue and Silver tiers of its Executive Club. As part of her role in managing the fulfilment agency contract, Grist delved into the world of training.
She wrote a correspondence style guide and devised training courses, which ensured that the non-BA staff were fully cognisant with BA’s communication style and standards.
The penny drops
“It was at this time that the penny dropped and I found the world of training and development. It was like coming home,” she recalls. After two years in the relationship marketing department, Grist moved on to the customer service directorate of BA and became a training consultant, consulting with clients, devising training programmes and workshops, and delivering training.
She explains, “This is where I learnt the bread and butter stuff – all elements of the training cycle.” In this role, Grist worked with many of the ‘backroom’ customer area staff, such as baggage handlers and transfer personnel. “It was these times in the training room when people realised that they made a difference to the business, which were the most exciting and real part of my work.”
Although these jobs may seem diverse, Grist believes that they have had one common theme: “They were all about being intuitive and interested in people.”
In keeping with this, Grist studied psychology as part of her speech and language therapy degree and has been trained in psychometrics and Myers Briggs. She says this has given her a valuable insight into human behaviour.
While at BA, Grist climbed the managerial ladder to become a business training manager for cabin services. It was in this role that she had her first taste of coaching activities through a programme called ‘Breakthrough’, designed to introduce greater flexibility to the customer experience. Staff were encouraged to understand the needs of customers and adapt the service they offered, rather than rigorously applying a standardised customer service routine for all. As a precursor, Grist and her work colleagues participated in a ‘Leadership and Mastery’ programme in which they were encouraged to explore who they were, their dreams and self-limiting beliefs.
“While this was fascinating, what struck us was the need for people to resolve and move forward from issues after the workshops. Getting things out in the open is only half the journey; finding a way to change and move forward brings completion,” she reflects.
Water works
The millennium marked a change for Grist. She left BA and moved to Thames Water as training manager for business services. “It was a traditional role which I set about changing as the opportunities arose,” she says. “As the organisation evolved, I became more focused on the development of managers and leaders in the UK business.”
In 2004, Grist set up an initiative to understand in greater depth the strengths and risk areas in the management groups of Thames Water, so she could ensure that the organisation was focusing on the development model that would gain it maximum business benefit. She appointed Kaisen Consulting (a coaching company whose approach is to use psychology to help achieve measurable business success), to conduct a development needs analysis (DNA) of Thames Water’s senior management. “Within this process we looked at five key areas of emotional intelligence: self-regulation; self-awareness; motivation; empathy and social skills,” recounts Grist.
“We discovered that there was a tendency in those managers to hold back in influencing and managing others and change.” So while Thames Water’s leaders showed strengths in being operationally focused, they needed support in developing emotional intelligence. Grist believes that this was when the doors started to open around behavioural change – it was all about tapping into managers’ abilities to be transformational rather than transactional leaders.
But introducing coaching into the organisation wasn’t all plain sailing, she says. “We went to the director population as key stakeholders. They were aware of coaching but there was a real reluctance to bring that out in the open,” she recalls. “Coaching was perceived as remedial, so we did a bit of work around that, convincing them that it’s more about ‘moving forward’.”
Pilot schemes
Grist wrote a paper outlining how coaching is a unique tool for developing self-insight and change, which she showed to the managing director of the European region and his executive leadership team. “This was broadly accepted, so the next stage was to set up pilot coaching, both individually and in teams.”
Her arguments for coaching were persuasive. Since September last year, Lequin Executive Coaching has been coaching growing numbers of business directors. To date, three directors and their direct reports between 10 and 15 each are part of a 6–9 month programme in which they receive team and individual coaching, based primarily on the co-active coaching model. “The intention has been to use coaching as a development tool focusing on our core leadership competencies,” she explains.
The initiative has been benefiting the managerial level and has helped to build resilience, claims Grist. “We are using the management population to help the broader employee population understand how people add value.”
As part of the initiative, Grist will be measuring the change in leadership behaviours against a set of organisational and individual competencies through a 360-degree tool, which specifically asks for feedback on the degree of change observed by the respondents. The leadership behaviours include elements of emotional intelligence such as self-awareness and motivation.
On a less senior level, managers will be embarking on a ‘Coaching for Performance’ programme in the next few months. “This is about training managers to give and receive feedback and have coaching conversations,” explains Grist. The purpose of these coaching initiatives is to transform the style of management, says Grist. “We want a coaching culture that is more aligned to a performance culture, not in terms of control but where coaching helps to engage and motivate people.” She believes that coaching should become an integral part of the business.
“Looking to develop people’s talents should be an inherent part of the behaviours that you want to see in an organisation,” reflects Grist.
Ultimately, she sees the coaching culture within Thames Water as “an employee and manager engaging in a coaching conversation that is two-way and used as the basis of performance feedback”.
Grist trained as a co-active coach at The Coaches Training Institute. Co-active coaching is based on whole person coaching, where circumstances such as work and home life are integrated through work with the individual.
“The course is based on the premise that everyone is creative and resourceful and therefore coaching helps the individual find their own solutions and be accountable for change,” explains Grist.
Grist cites getting coaching on the business radar as her biggest achievement to date. “People were saying we are not that sort of company. To open doors and get coaching on the table and senior people to participate was a major achievement.”
Adding value
Grist is passionate about coaching, so she has strong views on the profession. “Lots of people do counselling and facilitating rather than coaching,” she argues. “Many don’t see it as a business-led benefit.”
She thinks that employees have a fear of business coaching. “There is a worry in business that when you coach people they might change and leave the organisation. But good business coaching should bring alignment: if people understand their values and purpose, then it adds more value to the business.”
She also argues that the coaching industry could be more professional in terms of standards and qualifications. “We need to be much clearer about how we define coaching and standards,” reflects Grist. “We need to get consensus on what qualified coaching is and how it can be measured.”
Grist has a clear vision of what she wants to achieve in the future. “In five years’ time, I want to see a culture at Thames Water where feedback and coaching behaviours are an inherent part of how people behave.”
Curriculum Vitae
Andrea Grist
1988: Qualified as a speech and language therapist at University College.
Joined BA as a member of the Long haul air cabin crew
1991: Transferred to relationship marketing at BA, where she managed the customer interface of the Blue and Silver tiers of the Executive Club
1993: Employed as a training consultant in the Customer Service Directorate of BA
1997: Promoted to business training manager for Cabin Services
2000: Leaves BA and is appointed training manager for business services at Thames Water
(Sept) 2005 : Promoted to head of organisational development for Thames Water