What others say about working with Gershon Mader & Quantum Performance
I engaged Gershon in to help raise the performance of the EMEA region at Ciena shortly after the acquisition of Nortel’s MEN division. Our challenge was to integrate two organizations with different cultures and create a positive, cohesive mindset whilst dealing with complex workforce reductions across multiple European countries.
Gershon worked with us for over a year. The first impact of Gershon’s work was on my leadership team. Even though we had thought we were a cohesive team before engaging Gershon – we achieved a totally different level of ‘togetherness’ and ‘cohesion’ as a result of our work with him. There was more candor, more support between team members and the performance of the team in dealing with complex leadership issues was greatly enhanced. We also saw a change with most managers in the organization. We saw them take ownership, take a stand more often – voice their opinion to change the business for the better – and we saw less ‘complaining after the meeting’ behaviors.
Anyone who worked in Europe for Ciena at the time would probably agree that our work has a positive personal impact on them. For most people – it changed their relationship to the company – and very often to their colleagues. Our managers learned and applied a new paradigm for leadership that had a lasting impact on their effectiveness as leaders. For the business — we were able to rally 500 people across 15 countries with one a single definition of success and make significant strides towards the transformation of the region.
Gershon, we finished our quarter (very late last night) and I wanted to share with you the good news: we exceeded our plan for the first time in over a year! This is our first breakthrough 🙂
There is no doubt in my mind this comes from a super motivated team executing together, and the Transformation and Breakthrough Session with you was a key step toward this.
Thanks, for all your support!
In taking up my role, I was faced with both a challenge and the opportunity of having a new leadership team…many of my colleagues had not worked together, were located in different parts of the world and were very focused on their individual areas of the business.
Having heard about the great work Gershon had undertaken in other parts of the organisation, I was intrigued to see how we could also benefit and improve team productivity, relationships, alignment and, ultimately, performance.
After being Initially cautious, I can say with conviction that several months on, the team has strengthened considerably – relationships have developed, communications have become more open and, as a result, trust has deepened. From what was a geographically, and sometimes operationally, disparate group of individuals, we all now recognise that we have one strong cohesive team that is not only laser focused on the execution of our strategy but is, above all, engaged with one another.
This is enabling us to execute more efficiently and deliver superior results that, without the aid of the valuable Quantum Performance workshops, would have proved far more difficult to achieve.
Gershon Mader’s executive coaching has been essential in my career advancement in a highly competitive industry and marketplace (commercial real estate and New York City – unlimited opportunity meets occasionally hugely challenging environment!).
Gershon astutely mentored me in indentifying key components to achieving goals and success; in crafting near and long term business and negotiating strategies; and perhaps most importantly, challenging me be my authentic self and understand what truly motivated me to achieve success.
Gershon consistently provides keen and valuable insights that typically combine on-point pragmatism with the encouragement to think big and aspire to the life and career of my choosing. He is charismatic and a wonderful advisor and human being. In working with me he exhibited distinct empathy and patience. I was not given “cookie cutter” coaching. Rather he invested the time to know and understand me and made suggestions that were relevant and specific to my advancement.
An impressively competent guide to career development, he is compassionate with an in-depth understanding of work-life politics. He enthusiastically shares his knowledge and expertise while offering support and flexibility. Gershon exhibits care in evaluating my readiness for new materials while encouraging development of useful skills. He is a marvelous resource with an impressive range of knowledge. He is an essential and trusted advisor, and I unequivocally recommend his services.
Cushman & Wakefield’s New York office has engaged Gershon many times over the last five years to help us improve our communication, problem-solving, and to build collaboration amongst our top brokerage professionals. This is a challenging endeavor in our profession – New York City commercial real estate brokerage is one of the toughest businesses there is.
Gershon continues to achieve exceptional results for us, recently helping our office increase our market share from fourth out of the top six firms in our business to first. He is a natural leader, passionate about his work, and above and beyond that a very good guy.
You will really enjoy working with him.
Over the past three years, my leadership team, managers and I have benefitted greatly from the coaching and facilitation of Gershon Mader.
Three years ago, we were a rapidly growing, yet disconnected and somewhat dysfunctional virtual Technical Support team, located all over the globe. By defining a bold future for ourselves we were able to build a strong, cohesive trusting and highly collaborative and connected global team.
We articulated a set of big hairy audacious strategic promises, and we accomplished them and more. We learned to communicate, not hold back, and not participate in undermining backchannel conversations.
And although quite uncomfortable at first, we leveraged open and frank communication to grow collectively and individually in a way that none of us thought possible. The time we have spent with Gershon has created tremendous value to Cisco, our employees and as importantly to ourselves.
I’m so happy to have had a chance to work with you and I’m enjoying a level of success and in different dimensions that I expected.
We just had our Sales Kick-Off in Vegas again this year that included a session with the NA East team. We are now halfway through the timeline and have achieved most of our strategic promises already.
We focused on the mission statement & promises and reinvested/recommitted to them as a team.
It was an incredible year and with lots to celebrate.
Thank you for the tremendous support you have provided to me personally as well as my organization over the past year. Overall, our results were exceptional … [including a] 64% revenue growth year-over-year, with a return on sales of 27.5%. …
While these results certainly reflect the quantitative impact of our partnership, equally important to me were the ways in which you enabled us to strengthen our leadership skills and culture-change capabilities.
You facilitated my efforts in leading the team from being tactical and reactive to being strategic and proactive. [We have] driven $8 million in savings to the bottom line, which represents a 12% reduction in occupancy costs over the past 18 months.
In a short period of time we created a new culture, a new spirit, and a new future for our organization. We beat our expense budget by more than $100 million…