Commend UK is the British arm of a global business that has spent more than fifty years building intercom and integrated communications systems for places where reliable communication matters most. Its leadership team was scaling up inside a growing international group, and wanted to grow in capability and cohesion at the same pace as it grew in revenue. From the start, the work was designed as an ongoing relationship, built on a steady rhythm of leadership offsites, development sessions, and one-to-one coaching for members of the team.
Commend UK is part of a global business that has spent more than fifty years building intercom and integrated communications systems for places where reliable communication matters most, from rail networks and airports to stadiums and public buildings. The UK arm has a strong, proven position in the rail sector and real ambition to grow across airports, stadiums, and other public spaces.
When Sharok Gerami first brought me in, the conversation focused on a leadership team scaling up inside a growing international group, wanting to make sure it grew in capability and cohesion at the same pace as it grew in revenue. That is the kind of brief I most enjoy, because it is really a brief about rhythm. We quickly agreed the work was never going to be one event. It was going to be a relationship.
We started with a three-day strategy offsite, and then settled into an ongoing cadence. We work together across the year through a combination of leadership offsites, ongoing development sessions, and one-to-one coaching for members of the leadership team. The shape flexes with what the business needs at the time, but the rhythm stays constant, which is the whole point.
A typical offsite combines the two halves of the work I believe always belong together. We review the strategic picture, where the business is strong, where it wants to grow, and the choices in front of it. And we work on the team itself, through honest reflection, leadership development, and practical tools the team can use straight away.
One recent session moved from a review of the company's key strategic objectives, through a set of reflection prompts the team chose between to surface the issues that mattered most to them, into work on leadership and growth, and finished with a structured look at the team's own talent and development.
Between the offsites, the relationship continues. I coach individual leaders on the things that are hardest to work on in a group, and I stay close enough to the business to bring the right thing into the room each time we meet. Because I am not arriving cold to design a fresh workshop every quarter, the work builds on itself. We pick up where we left off, track what was committed last time, and keep the thread running through the year.
The value of working this way shows up in ways a single workshop never could. The leadership team has grown more confident in making decisions on its own terms. Individual leaders I coach have changed how they communicate with their teams, in ways their own people have noticed and named. Conversations that would once have been avoided now happen as a matter of course, because there is a regular, trusted space in which to have them.
Most of all, the work has become part of how the team operates rather than an event in the calendar. Strategy stays under review, the team keeps developing, and progress is deliberate rather than left to chance. That is exactly what the cadence is designed to produce, and Commend is one of the clearest examples I have of it working over time.
It is a genuine pleasure to work with a leadership team that takes its own development this seriously, and to be trusted to stay in the room with them as the business grows.
Most work like this starts with a 30-minute call to understand the team, the context, and what good would look like. From there we agree the shape of the work together.
