The challenge
This executive team brought significant expertise to their individual portfolios, but they weren't yet operating as a first team. They weren't spending enough time thinking together, relationships were strained, and the effects were being felt in how their respective functions worked together.
The challenge wasn't capability. It was how that capability came together.
How we worked
Using CSC's EAGER methodology, we coached individual leaders and the team as a whole. We surfaced real-time challenges, established shared working agreements, and used Enneagram profiling to understand how individual motivations shaped team dynamics. Through responsive facilitation and coaching rather than a rigid program, we continuously adapted to what the team needed to build accountability and improve collaboration.
What shifted
People began to listen to understand rather than simply respond. They asked more curious questions, developed greater appreciation for one another beyond their roles, and made concrete commitments across functional boundaries. Conflict didn't disappear. But when conversations became difficult, they had something to return to: the agreements they had made about how they wanted to think and work together.
What became possible
As the executive team changed how it worked, leaders became more conscious of the interdependence between their functions – and of how their own leadership could enable or inhibit collaboration elsewhere in the organisation. They became better able to think together, problem-solve together and take shared responsibility for the wider system they were leading. And one of the team's early sceptics eventually described the group as genuinely feeling like a team: greater trust, deeper dialogue and people pulling together in the same direction.
Observed outcome
From individual expertise to collective leadership
Stronger trust, more honest conversations and greater ability to navigate complexity together
