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One of my direct reports is a technical department manager with >15 years of experience. He leads a group of ~20 engineers. His team delivers up to the standards,  reaches targets and in terms of "figures" is doing very well.

However, there are two points which concern me:

1) Firstly, he has a relatively bad reputation among his peers and other managers, in particular concerning his "customer orientation" - I get feedbacks that he is reluctant in assuming tasks, often says "no, cannot be done" and is not supporting other departments (yet, often he says "no" and the next minute I see him working on that topic).

2) Secondly, his team is (compared to other ones in my area) under "authoritarian" rule - they are afraid to voice their opinions and to do anything without his approval. Moreover, he sees little value in developing his team in soft skills and fostering open, transparent communication.

I've been doing O3's with him for a year now, since few months.
I give him feedback on the behavior (positive and negative) I see or get reliable feedback about from third parties. 
We started rolling out the trinity one month ago in his team and now we have our coaching sessions during O3.
I see small incremental improvements and would like to improve it even more: encourage him to work on Win/Win approach, communicating in a positive way and to develop his subordinates.
Since he delivers very good results I would like him to improve the points I mentioned.

Any ideas what I can do in such case? What else I can do to see positive turn around?Thanks in advance for your advice.

Mark's picture
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You're just now building enough of a relationship with him, I would guess, that you can start encouraging him to make the changes he needs to make.  I think you have the right idea.

As long as he's not ruining his team, or arguing violently with others, if he's producing, I believe your slow but steady approach is the right way.  Give him time, and don't let up.

Mark