Jim McCarron, Founder and PrincipalA proven leader himself, Jim McCarron knows this fact better than anyone else.
Having led two large firms in the residential construction industry, McCarron established McCarron & Company in 2011 with the goal of helping organizations develop leaders and build cohesive, high-performance teams.
Today, McCarron & Company is a well-known boutique leadership development firm in the Southwest that takes the role of a thought partner for its clients. The company offers a unique blend of operational experience and a strong coaching style to help leaders encourage teams to make informed business decisions and work cohesively.
In an interview with Manage HR magazine, McCarron elaborates on how his company assists leaders in building high-performance teams and leading them with a singular vision to achieve a common goal.
What are some of the challenges your clients face, and how do you address them?
One of the most prominent issues for organizations is their inability to build and retain an efficient, cohesive leadership team. We have seen many talented leaders and executives failing to operate as a team, causing unproductive conflicts that bog down an organization’s growth. This is primarily due to the lack of a strong, unified direction to drive the team forward. Everyone’s individual goals get in the way of team objectives, resulting in inefficient and compromised outcomes.
By leveraging our leadership coaching expertise, we work with individual leaders and leadership to build high-performing, cohesive teams.
Companies also lack an effective organizational structure to assign the right people to the right leadership positions. Organizations often end up creating positions that fit their existing workforce rather than identifying what the company needs to become successful. In many instances, people get into leadership roles without proper preparation. To this end, wehelp companies look at the larger picture, identify the missing links, and ensure the right people capable of leading organizations occupy the leadership roles.
Could you elaborate on McCarron & Company’s service portfolio?
At McCarron & Company, we believe that leadership, for the most part, is an acquired skill that can be learned and developed. We help leaders nurture skills and competencies to transform organizations into results-driven companies that support a culture of teamwork.
We adopt a highly collaborative and comprehensive approach in our onboarding process. Our team starts by developing a strategic plan that establishes a clear vision of the client’s short-term and long-term goals. Team McCarron & Company then move on to execution, where we look into how clients can build on their goals and execute them. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of their long-term plans, and we narrow it down to a one-year objective. Clients are then encouraged to focus on it for 90 days at a time, which establishes a progressive and linear approach to fulfilling their long-term goals.
Our leadership development program helps leaders identify the full potential of each team member and the strength of the team. We use our world-class assessments to evaluate the current leadership structure and DNA of the entire team and compare their predetermined competencies to build a vision around it.
We also have a signature program to teach clients how to ‘team.’ We instill the ‘Five Behaviors’ program as advocated by Patrick Lencioni in his book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” in partnership with Wiley Workplace Learning Solutions. The program helps teams understand how they score on the key components of The Five Behaviors model—trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results. Through this program, each team member gets better clarity on their personality styles and how it all contributes to the team’s overall success.
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Our leadership development program helps leaders identify the full potential of each team member and the strength of the team
Could you talk about the factors that set McCarron & Company apart from the competition?
What gives us a competitive edge in the highly dynamic leadership management space is our deep industry expertise. Our team is welltrained and has extensive experience working with organizations across various industries, including higher education and nonprofits. This helpsus embrace an industry-agnostic approach to leadership, organizational development, and management training. We go beyond the stereotypical top-down style and help them become more autonomous and team-based with the ‘Five Behaviors’ program. This model fits the need for a higher level of engagement and collaborative decisions in teams across the organization.
Contrary to other firms, we teach companies to develop their own strategy. It is the result of ourtwo-component processes—strategic planning and strategic execution. We help clients formulate a strategic plan that defines the company’s vision and long-term goals. Based on the plan, we work on strategic execution, teaching organizations how to implement their long-term goals by breaking them down into small, incremental, executable steps. This helps organizations to easily adjust and adapt to the new processes along the way and get immediate feedback on how they are furthering their goals. We also ensure everybody is aligned around the plan to get the desired results.
Empowering organizations to develop and execute their own strategies also helps them to be sustainable in the long run.
How do you envision your company’s future?
Since the pandemic, we have made significant changes in how we communicate and coordinate with clients. Technology adoption has opened several opportunities for us to expand our program to larger organizations across the U.S. and worldwide.
We also want to focus more on emerging leaders. There are potential leaders within many organizations, and we enjoy grooming those firsttime leaders to run a high-performing organization. We’ve evolved in that arena, and it has been very wellreceived by our clients.
Our organization’s brand is synonymous with my personal coaching style. Clients like the fact that they are talking to someone who’s been in the trenches with large and small organizations. They see me as a trusted partner and thought leader who can help them mobilize and energize their team to execute goals.
