The top team, then the ones around it

The situation

A European leadership team of eight needed alignment on priorities, and the silos that had built up inside Europe and across the wider company needed breaking down. The team was accomplished and the problem was not capability, it was how they worked with each other.

What we did

Ran a driver assessment across all eight leaders before the session, and read the results three ways: each person alone, each pair, and the team as a whole.

Opened the morning on personal insight, moved to paired conversations, then had the group name where it works and where it sticks. Two openings surfaced: conflict, and how work moves between people. The team wrote its commitments before lunch.

The afternoon went on the team's own contentious issues, worked live, watched against the commitments written that morning. Afterwards, a summary of where the team had headway and where it did not, plus a separate report to the leader on how to hold the new norms.

What changed

The team left with commitments it had tested the same day rather than agreed to in principle. The design then ran for Sales, R&D, HR and Asia. One instrument, one structure, no rebuild between rooms.

Since then

Five teams have run the same design. Running a sixth takes a facilitator and a survey.