Aligning a newly formed leadership team
The challenge
A large division had recently been formed by bringing together several distinct functions, disciplines and workplace cultures under one leadership team. The division needed its leaders to operate as a single, high-performing team rather than as heads of separate areas, and to align behind a shared strategy at a time of significant change. Openloop was engaged to design and facilitate a two-day leadership offsite that would build genuine self-awareness across the team and then convert it into strategic alignment and clear commitments.
What we delivered
We structured the offsite in two deliberate parts, moving the team from understanding themselves and each other, to committing as a team. Day one focused on the team itself. We ran a Myers-Briggs (MBTI) review that built on profiling completed at an earlier offsite, refreshing rather than repeating it. We facilitated a conversation about how each leader's profile had actually shown up in the way the team operated, what had shifted since the previous offsite, and how those changes were already reflected in how the team worked together. The result was a shared understanding of how their mix of profiles shapes decision-making, communication, conflict and collaboration. Day two turned that self-awareness toward the strategy. Using a “strategy on a page” approach and a facilitated fishbowl, each group worked through what the strategy meant for them, what needed to change and how they would enable it, while a force-field analysis surfaced the forces driving and restraining progress. We then confirmed accountabilities, clarified who owned what, and closed with signed team commitments, so leaders left with a documented, collective agreement rather than a set of good intentions.
The outcome
A brand-new leadership team left with a common language for how they work together and a single, agreed line of sight to the strategy. By pairing self-awareness work with disciplined strategy facilitation, Openloop helped the team move from a collection of capable individuals to an aligned leadership group with clear accountabilities and documented commitments.