Empowering Excellence In Leadership And Organizational Development – Interview With Dale Halm

Dale Halm is the Founder of Dale Halm Consulting, LLC. He has held leadership positions for a Fortune 500 company and has contributed significantly to record-setting start-up operations resulting in multi-million dollar cost savings. Dale's extensive experience includes various training and organization development roles at Intel, Freescale (NXP), and Arizona Public Service Company. He is the author of The Excellence Agenda and specializes in transforming workplaces and maximizing human potential. Dale has been a speaker at numerous conferences and holds both a Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts from Northern Illinois University.

Dale Halm, Founder Dale Halm Consulting

Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.

My thing is excellence. I have an unrelenting passion for helping individuals and organizations excel. Helping others break through self-limiting barriers and be their personal best is just so rewarding. It must be in my DNA to do this type of work.

My wife Gail, our families, and our dogs Kona and Sky mean the world to me. My other passions include hiking, landscape photography, writing, and Tai Chi. I follow the stock market with great interest. Can you provide an overview of the services your consulting firm offers and the industries you specialize in?

Dale Halm Consulting specializes in executive coaching, leadership training, and organizational development. Common issues we resolve include ineffective leadership, inter-team conflict, dysfunctional culture, and mismanaged change. When people aren’t authentically aligned subpar performance is inevitable. We help individuals and organizations reach their goals by expanding people’s ability to embrace high-performance behaviors. We work with large and small organizations in a variety of industries including information technology, engineering, manufacturing, and public services.

What methods do you employ to help clients overcome business or professional challenges?

We use multiple approaches that enable our clients to succeed. For example, when it comes to organizational culture, we don’t implement a 15-step change process. Instead, we focus on strengthening leadership’s resolve toward reinventing their work environment. This demands that leaders engage in a thorough self-examination process regarding how committed they are to doing arduous work of creating a winning culture.

In the coaching realm, we often use a process based off my new book that will be released in September called, The Dare to Excel Field Guide. The book provides a framework for how to achieve big audacious goals. It’s about helping people do what they have never done before. The model challenges clients to create a structure for success and to understand the true power of intention. People can produce phenomenal results when they are maniacally focused and adopt a bias for action.

We must be doing something right because we keep getting more requests for our coaching services. Over ninety-five percent of our clients report that they have grown both personally and professionally because of the coaching they receive. It’s such a joy. For me there is nothing better than witnessing or participating in the transformation of another human being.

Could you share some success stories where your consulting services made a significant impact on clients' businesses?

Recently we helped a small construction business go from $4 million to $20 million in sales. The CEO said the growth was made possible because of the systems we helped them implement. The biggest challenge was getting the CEO to think differently about the impact she could make by showing up as a powerful voice for the company.

Another example is the work I did partnering with the General Manager of a large technology firm. I helped him recognize his blind spots and provided tools that enabled him to significantly improve his performance. Now he says he is multiplier of talent versus a diminisher. Recently he told me that employee engagement scores in his division have increased 34%.

Allow me to share one more. Several years ago I helped a Supply Chain organization complete a complex restructuring process. This large-scale change effort resulted in $90 million dollars of cost savings over a three-year period.

The most fulfilling part of the project was delivering a series of experiential learning sessions in support of the initiative. Participants were introduced to super skills such as straight-talk, disagree and commit, do-what-you-say-you-will-do, self-management, and proactive alignment. At the end of each four-day session participants shared their key outcomes with the executive team. They insisted leadership double down on reinforcing the new culture that was emerging. The dramatic shift in people’s openness and desire to collaborate was remarkable. Really, it doesn’t get much better than that.