Coaching leadership spreading within Sanomat

Personnel are more committed and business develops when managers get the best ideas out of their teams. That’s why Sanoma Media Finland engaged Verona Consulting to develop a culture of coaching leadership.

The desire to develop management in a coaching direction emerged clearly from Sanoma Media Finland’s personnel employee surveys.

Sanoma’s personnel consists of experts who know how to look for the best solutions in everyday situations. A typical Sanoma employee is a proactive thinker rather than a resource waiting for instructions.

”When you ask employees for their own ideas in their work, they become happy and engaged, which in turn delivers business results”,

says Sanoma Media Finland’s HRD Lead Hanna Myllymaa.

The key idea is for a purposeful, informal and professional culture to support the implementation of the strategy. People-centred and coaching leadership is also a response to Sanomat’s leadership promise, which consists of four elements.

• I trust in a professional. I share information and responsibility. I listen. I learn from others.
• I make room for joy. I am nice. I bring good energy. I enjoy work.
• I encourage boldness. I tell people why. I coach. I do not leave anyone alone.
• I treat people as people. I am present and genuine. I tell things as they are. I say ‘thank you’.

Practical tools for creating a coaching culture

Sanoma chose Verona Consulting with which the company has been working for several years, to develop its coaching leadership. The coaches are the entire Sanoma Media Finland team of managers and experts, each with their own tailored coaching programme.

Approximately three months of coaching includes face-to-face teaching, small group coaching and tasks to be completed between coaching days. During the programme, discussion is held on what coaching means in practice, what is required of a leader and what methods he or she can use to create a coaching culture.

The coaching looks at different leadership situations, and participants exchange best practices and experiences with each other in small groups. Participants are also set personal development targets.

Similar skills are also needed by experts who are not in a management position.

“It is useful for them to understand how they, for example, can build trust and can support the independent thinking of participants,” says Hanna Myllymaa.

Targeted training for team needs

More than 30 groups have already been trained and hundreds of Sanoma employees have taken part. We can already say that this cultural change is evident in the staff surveys that Sanoma Media Finland regularly conducts. “According to the personnel, the coaching approach of participants has improved. It’s also great for the managers themselves when they can motivate their team by challenging them with questions,” says Myllymaa. Developing the employee experience has been a key objective of the coaching programme.

The coach has had a brilliant way of letting the team choose the themes through which the programme proceeds. That is why the coaching has responded well to the different needs of different groups. It demonstrates the professionalism of the coach.

Agile renewal of training methods was also needed in the spring of last year, when an epidemic changed plans around the world.

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