Past Winners – In addition to JOEY
“In the spring of 2008, Andrew Martin, JOEY’s Vice
President of Human Resources asked us to come
discuss what we had to offer the company,” said
Marjorie Busse, MCC, of Essential Impact Coaching.
“Creating a coaching culture would fit the bill on all
counts, at every level of leadership.”
“Since we knew that eventually they wanted to be
instructors in the program, they had to first be an
accredited coach,” said Busse. “That’s the line that
we draw. We didn’t want them to be just in there one
day teaching the program, we wanted them each to
be a coach.”
The new coaching initiative began with strategic
selection of the most senior leaders in the
organization, with the idea being they could be
coached and trained as Internal Coaches while
running their respective restaurant groups. 13 out of
the 28 most senior leaders were chosen to initially
participate, including VP of Operations Al Jessa,
VP of HR Andrew Martin, and JOEY Executive Chef
Chris Mills. The other members of the group included
In order to meet this requirement, the first group
couldn’t simply take the first 24 hour three day
Excelerator program, they also needed to complete
Essential Impact’s 36 hour Excelerator Essentials
program, which would give them altogether 60
hours of coach specific training. This extraordinary
commitment to coaching by JOEY meant that these
original 13 champions of coaching were fully on their
way to ICF Coach Credentials.
15 Coaching World | February 2012 | www.coachfederation.org
Research
The initial group then took Essential Impact’s threeday Excelerator Coaching™ workshop, an ICF
approved coach specific training program. Since
JOEY’s eventual goal was to have this entire program
in-house, with their own coaches facilitating the
leadership development program, there was a need
for coach accreditation.
Marketing
RESTAURANT GROUP and BC Housing
of Canada previous winners of the
prestigious ICF Internaitonal Prism
Award are 2010: Genentech, Inc. and the
TINE Group 2009: www.ibm.com (North
America) and Solaglas Windowcare
(United Kingdom) 2008: British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and
SYSCO Food Services of Canada 2007:
NASA (APPEL 4-D Systems) and Deloitte
and Touche 2006: University of Texas at
Dallas (UTD) and Verizon Business and
in 2005: IBM and MCI. Nominations for
the 2012 award will start in March. Watch
CoachFederation.org for more details.
The program that JOEY envisioned was heavily
focused on leadership development, conflict
management, and personal growth. They also felt
that an internal program that could be sustained and
replicated would be the best fit for their organization.
In starting this daunting process JOEY turned to
Essential Impact Coaching for assistance.
“The process started with a relationship awareness
tool, the Strength Deployment Inventory ® (SDI ®),”
says Busse. “We feel SDI comes from a real
motivational place. It’s not about behaviors; it’s about
what motivates each one of us.”
Benefits
Andrew Martin, JOEY Restaurant Group
Vice President of Human Resources
the Regional Managers from across Canada and the
Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Profiles
The International Prism Award is
an amazing acknowledgement.
To be recognized by the coaching
community for taking on an
innovative approach to leadership
development causes us to take
a breath and celebrate what we
have accomplished to date.
“People think we are here to serve food,” explained
JOEY Vice President of Operations, Al Jessa. “We
are actually in the people development business. If
kids can come here and work while going to college
or sorting out their young lives and then whether they
choose to stay or leave, they say they started their
self-awareness journey and learned their coaching
leadership skills at JOEY, then we’ve succeeded.”
Leadership
Coaching Culture in JOEY Restaurant Group: How Cool Is That?