George Matyas

Senior Consultant

George Matyas, Senior Consultant

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As a certified ICF executive coach and consulting psychologist with a deep understanding of leadership development, George is a Counseling Psychologist whose training is based on a growth model with a focus on enabling others to fulfill their personal and professional potential. He has coached more than 2,000 leaders with extensive experience at the C-Suite level, globally (Europe, China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand) across a range of industries – consumer products, energy, entertainment, financial services, healthcare, pharma, and retail in Fortune 500 companies. He is known for having strong diagnostic skills and a reputation for being particularly effective at helping executives elevate their performance and broaden their leadership impact.

BACKGROUND & INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE

George has worked with a wide range of company cultures and business models and is particularly effective at helping clients address operational and business improvement opportunities. Clients describe him as a practical, business-oriented thinker who is adept at forging alliances across diverse constituencies. His areas of expertise include professional and career development, competency assessment of individuals, teams, and organizations, meeting design and facilitation, culture building, and working with global and virtual teams.

George has expertise in professional and career development, competency assessment in individuals, teams and organizations, meeting design and facilitation, and working with cross-cultural teams. He has worked with a wide range of industries, including consumer products, financial services, healthcare/pharmaceutical, real estate, and retail. He has provided services at the CEO/President, EVP, SVP/MD, VP/Director levels within Finance/Accounting, Human Resources, IT, Legal, Marketing, Operations, Risk Management, R&D, Sales, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Pharmaceutical organizations.

Coaching Approach

George’s approach is pragmatic, fact-based, business-focused, and designed to enable leaders to perform optimally and more effectively achieve their professional goals. He utilizes an assessment and detailed 360 interview feedback to confirm strengths/positive attributes and guide the leader in considering and developing insight into behaviors, attitudes or ways of thinking that are potentially self-limiting. This enables them to more readily own their development issues and recognize the benefits of acquiring new skills, as well as managing, modifying or eliminating self-limiting behaviors. He excels at helping leaders design and implement strategies for addressing the identified issues.

Facilitation & Teambuilding Approach

George’s training in Counseling Psychology and Systems Theory combined with his military experience allows him to employ a pragmatic and holistic approach to working with teams and organizations. The primary focus of his approach is in identifying/developing strategies for addressing a team’s critical success factors, including establishing its mission/purpose/key deliverables, current level of effectiveness and mobilizing the team on actions for addressing improvement opportunities that align with the organization’s business strategies.

Relevant Assessment Assignments

  • Assessment for Selection: Engaged in assessment for selection and placement since 1990; have assessed hundreds of leaders in the public and private sector, up to and including C-Suite positions. Recent examples include assessment for the purpose of selecting CEO and CIO candidates for a Health Care Company.
  • Assessment for Succession Planning and Talent Development: Evaluated 60 mid- to senior-level leaders in a global Pharmaceutical company over eighteen months for the purpose of talent planning and providing them with customized development plans.

Relevant Coaching Assignments

  • The 360 confirmed the Head of US Communications was very skilled in her role, but her style was more direct, sometimes hard-hitting, whereas her manager was more concerned about appearances. After some initial coaching, she quickly recognized the benefits of proactively managing this relationship, as he immediately allowed her a good deal more autonomy. Due to resource constraints, we also focused on reducing the number of priorities for her department, eliminating tasks that did not support her strategy, and considering how to say no or negotiate requests from internal customers. Post 360 feedback confirmed significant progress on her development goals.
  • The Managing Director IT, responsible for managing risk in a multi-national bank was in her role for less than one year and her challenge was to establish the Risk function globally. The focus was to help her become more confident and comfortable asserting herself, e.g., holding staff members accountable, dealing with difficult peers, speaking up in meetings. Shortly after completing the engagement, she received the highest score in IT on client/management satisfaction surveys.
  • Coaching focused on helping the CEO of an energy company soften his style, become more vulnerable, and build deeper relationships with his direct reports, while managing a business transofrmation. The coaching helped him humanize his style and become more confident in relying on his direct reports for advice/support. 360 feedback at the midpoint and end of the engagement confirmed progress on his identified goals, as well as those for the transformation. The Company was later acquired for a significant premium.
  • The Global Head of Intellectual Property of a pharmaceutical company’s stated goals were to connect with key senior leaders to establish confidence in him as an expert and get full alignment with his staff on both what is most important for the department to accomplish and how they needed to operate. The focus was on becoming clearer on his message and delivery as a speaker in order to better engage his audience, e.g., using practical language and being crisp and concise. He was scheduled to present to the CEO and his staff before the engagement ended. His post 360 comments indicated that he did an outstanding job presenting to them, now communicates clearly when speaking – people listen, and helped diplomatically deal with a sensitive situation.
  • The assessment and 360 feedback confirmed that the Senior Director in a business services organization was very capable, credible, well respected, and particularly skilled at dealing with complex issues and bringing people together to solve them. Because he was bright, insightful and solution oriented, the focus was to help him raise his profile, have more of a voice, and allow him to showcase his talents more broadly. Two months later, he was promoted to Vice President.

Relevant Facilitation & Teambuilding Assignments

  • Manufacturing: Worked with the Division President, VP of Manufacturing and newly appointed Plant Manager to resolve a facility with a long history of problems with waste and product quality. Collected data from key stakeholders at the Corporate and Plant levels including focus groups of 120 hourly employees. Implemented a series of individual/team coaching sessions with Plant leaders to establish an action plan for addressing improvement opportunities and outline strategies for engaging employees to support the transition plans. Improvement targets were achieved/exceeded in all identified areas and sustained in a one-year follow up.
  • Global Pharmaceutical Company: Conducted a series of team-building exercises over a one-year period with a Regional President and his team to establish understanding/agreement on the Critical Success Factors for the business, including actions to achieve them. Additional objectives were to obtain clarity/alignment/commitment on the Team’s critical priorities and establish shared leadership among members in achieving them. The Region led the Company in business performance and I continued to serve as a trusted advisor to the Regional President.
  • Top Five Global Generic Pharmaceutical Company: Retained by the EVP Technical Operations to work at a mission-critical Site with the General Manager, the team and corporate counterparts to establish operational excellence at the Site. Two major issues included high production costs and product failures. I conducted a thorough organizational assessment by interviewing the Site Leadership Team, thirty internal stakeholders, and key members of senior corporate leadership (SVPs), as well as conducting team meetings with the SLT to highlight key issues and outline action plans). Six months after the project initiation, the SLT presented a progress report to the SVPs in relation to the Site’s Strategic Imperatives and KPIs. There was clear progress on virtually all measures and consistent improvement in process reliability and customer fill rates: 72% to 94% on all products and 28% to 96% on the Company’s most important product (target was 95).
  • Retail Market Leader: The Company moved from a centralized to decentralized operating model. The assignment was to build a high-performing leadership team and organization with a new Field Division. All team members, including the Division President, were in newly created positions. The objectives were to define the role/purpose/deliverables for the Team, assess the capabilities of the organization in relation to current/emerging business needs and outline actions for addressing improvement opportunities. I conducted a series of team meetings at the Divisional and Regional levels to elevate team effectiveness and establish/align on actions to enhance business performance. The Division went from lowest performing to overall leader in the Company.
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Education & Professional Affiliations

  • PhD in Counseling Psychology – focus on assessment
  • Licensed Psychologist in NY
  • ICF Certified Coach
  • CCE Board Certified Coach
  • Member of the Society of Consulting Psychology
  • Member of the American Psychological Association
  • Member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
  • Selected assessment certifications and qualifications: CCL’s Benchmarks 360 assessment suite, Hogan Assessments, Influence Style Indicator, MBTI, Watson-Glaser III, WorkPlace™ Assessments