From a corporate-professional background this Director had worked hard over the previous 2 years to accelerate the development and growth of what was then a fledgling but increasingly successful business school.

He was supported by a typical conservative faculty and an Advisory Board comprised of representatives from the corporate community.

This Director's challenge arose from the speed with which he needed to develop the school in order to capture emerging growth opportunities. The school needed to grow to a sustainable and economically viable size. Given the explosion of business schools and graduate schools of management around Australia over recent years there was plapble urgency to capture emerging oportunities before competitor business schools.

Detailed discussion with the Director and an analysis of the current situation revealed that there was a lack of buy-in from the Advisory Board, which was providing only guarded support for the Director's plans delaying any significant fundraising effors amongst the Australian corporate community. The Faculty lacked confidence in and commitment to the Director's plans, continuously raising objections to details of the growth plans.

This Director had not had his leadership so directly challenged before and was struggling to find a path forward.

As a result of this strong challenge the Director became uncertain and defensive about his vision, unable to trust that his vision would stand up to further intense scrutiny. He saw the attempt to bend, accomodate and incorporate legitimate refinements to his vision as direct attacks on him, exposing his lack of experience outside the corporate sphere and his emotional fragility in a hostile environment.

The first issue to address was the fragility of the Director's emotions expressed as a lack of self-confidence. His lack of leadership skill in this unfamiliar environment had severely battered his self-image and had begun to affect his ability to perform.

Over a period of three months I helped to rebuild the Director's self-esteem and help him to map out a strategy to gain the commitment of both faculty and the Advisory Board.

Counselling focussed initially on identifying and exploring the precursors of the Director's emotional response to the challenge he experienced. Key elements included.

The Director was coached through a series of information sharing and information gathering sessions with the faculty and consulted with individual members of the Board. Having prepared the groundwork he was then able to facilitate a highly productive session of strategising the future for the school. This resulted in a vision similar in scope to his original but had more refinement and detail that satisfied all stakeholders' concerns and allowed for buy-in.

Consequently implementation of this much more robust strategy proceeded at speed and with significant success for the school and the Director.