Workplace Culture Change Case Studies
Government Department

Transforming a Senior Management Team from Disconnected Individuals to Shared Leadership

Following the BeTheCultureChange™ team coaching programme, this senior management team built trust, innovation and accountability to develop faster, more collaborative decisions and action. The team moved from individualised, transactional working towards a human-centred, connected, collaborative and accountable leadership culture.

Before the programme

The Senior Management Team experienced:

• separate, siloed working

• transactional interactions

• guarded, limited communication

• unclear accountability

• uncertainty about the purpose of the SMT

• resentful interactions and misunderstandings

What changed?

1. Leadership development outcomes

Leaders developed greater insight, empathy and understanding of one another. Vulnerability became more accepted, enabling more open and honest communication. They began building trust through meaningful dialogue rather defaulting to positional or expert authority. They identified key areas of work for effective joint working to improve impact and results.

2: Senior management team culture change

The team coaching enabled a shift from 10 separate leadership portfolios to more integrated, interdependent, joined-up ways of working. The leaders developed stronger relationships, clearer shared goals and more focus on the success of the whole department, rather than just their own areas of responsibility.

3: Sustainable culture change

The team normalised curiosity and collboration, becoming more comfortable challenging each other constructively. Where the status quo was blocking progress, they began changing long-standing ways of working. Ripple effects started to show across wider teams in the department, as the SMT leaders modelled new, more effective leadership approaches.