Aligning a Leadership Team in a Turbulent Time.
Partnering with the top team of a leading non-profit to regain strategic clarity, rebuild trust, and align with the Board around a bold path forward.
3 Big Wins
1
A clear, data-driven view of leadership effectiveness
- Objective insight into individual and team strengths, gaps and a focused roadmap for growth.
2
Deeper team trust and alignment
- The ability to tackle tough strategic issues with honesty, resolve, and shared ownership.
3
A strategic plan with traction
– Clarity, alignment, and momentum - even in a politically charged, high-pressure environment.
The Challenge.
A leading institution in a highly disrupted sector faced a critical inflection point. Political, economic, and reputational pressures were mounting, while repeated crises had left the leadership team fragmented and reactive. Strategic focus was slipping and relationships were strained. The team needed to reset, rebuild alignment, and define a bold path forward – quickly.
We were stuck in a reactive mode – responding to the crisis of the day and putting out fires. Everyone was stretched, relationships were strained, and we were operating as separate functions, not a unified team. Instead of driving a clear strategy, we were trying to be all things to all people.
Our Approach.
We partnered with the CEO, executive team and Board to reset: What are our critical strategic priorities? What does great leadership look like in this new reality? And how does this team need to evolve to secure the future for the organization?
What we did:
- Defined a future-focused leadership signature for the top team.
- Conducted deep-dive individual assessments of each team member (psychometrics, leadership impact interviews and 360° feedback).
- Ran a team diagnostic to benchmark team performance against a global database.
- Built an integrated development roadmap for each leader and the team.
- Facilitated a series of team sprints to tackle the biggest obstacles – low trust, lack of clear strategy, siloed decision-making, lack of accountability to the ‘first team’.
When we first stepped in, this team was in real trouble: fragmented, reactive, and drifting off course. In moments like this, most teams push development off until ‘later.’ But there was no later. To their credit, the CEO and team had the courage to stop, regroup, and take on the hard development work in the middle of a strategic firefight. That decision became the turning point.
The Impact.
- The team regrouped and aligned around a clear strategy that secured broad stakeholder support.
- Leaders demonstrated a stronger “first team” mindset, breaking down silos and lifting their focus from functional firefights to enterprise strategy.
- Individual leaders made visible progress on their development goals.
- Trust deepened, candor improved and the team built the muscle to handle difficult conversations constructively.
- A renewed discipline in how they worked together: more disciplined meetings and clearer decision-making helped drive momentum.
- The team grew in confidence and resilience, with a stronger sense of shared purpose and belief in their potential to operate as a truly high-performing team.
Elevate your top team performance. Start here. >>