Case Study /
Virtual, Hybrid, and In-Person Events To Strengthen Bonds and Culture Agreements Post-Pandemic
Virtual, Hybrid, and In-Person Events To Strengthen Bonds and Culture Agreements Post-Pandemic
The
challenge
The
challenge
Emerging from a challenging few years, we’ve heard from many corporate clients who are struggling to reintegrate their teams and establish new cultural agreements.
For three such clients, The Creative Executive facilitated one-day learning and development events for each based on the best format for their team: in-person, hybrid, and virtual.
IN-PERSON EVENT
Comms Infrastructure Company
5 Executive Participants
One Day In-Person Event +
Individual Coaching Sessions (x2)
HYBRID EVENT
Marketing Tech Company
23 Participants
Senior Managers to C-Suite Executives
Hybrid Event
VIRTUAL EVENT
PR-Comms Agency
50 Participants
Individual Contributors to C-Suite Execs
One Day Company-Wide Virtual Event
Coming Together to Design the future
Coming Together to Design the Future
Emerging from the pandemic, structural changes and the swift change to remote/hybrid left in its wake, presented similar challenges to three technology and communications clients.
- Resetting Expectations + Communications
- Helping People Reconnect + Form New Bonds
- Co-Creating + Updating Cultural Agreements
These challenges posed an opportunity for each of our clients: to strategically bring their leaders together to build and strengthen relationships and renegotiate the communication values and workplace culture (how the work gets done) in this changed environment.
GOALS + GROWTH AREAS
COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE COMPANY
Communications infrastructure company
After a long period of working remotely, our client wanted to create the opportunity for 5 senior marketing executives to reestablish and deepen bonds and to reduce team friction points. In addition to relating to one another, the executives desired an open a dialog about organizational and team culture and communication.
**In-Person Event + 2 Individual Coaching Sessions (per exec), Facilitated by 1 C/E Coach**
MARKETING TECHNOLOGY COMPANY
marketing technology company
For this client, morale was at an all-time low, particularly for managers, after a recent spate of job offshoring and change (impending M&A). Employees felt that leadership had unrealistic expectations for their people, which led to additional bad feelings. The company saw the strategic benefit of bringing together 23 remote and local senior leaders to build cross-functional bonds and develop new skills that they can bring back to their teams.
**Hybrid Event, Facilitated by 3 C/E Coaches**
PUBLIC RELATIONS-COMMUNICATIONS AGENCY
public relations-communications agency
During COVID and while being a fully remote workplace, our client added 40% more staff. With so many new faces company-wide, two goals surfaced. The first goal of executive leadership was to engage everyone in the ownership of the agency’s culture and history. The second was to create an opportunity for the whole company (50 people) to bond outside of their immediate circles and department silos.
**Virtual Company-Wide Event, Facilitated by 2 C/E Coaches**
approach
The Creative Executive approached each client event with a discovery process to understand where the client was and what their specific challenges and goals were. Then, we designed experiences around our clients’ needs, including the size of the group, what kind of event (in-person, virtual, or hybrid), and the desired outcomes. Below are summaries of our approach for each event.
What team agreements do we need to work together?
This full-day, in-person event was designed to help our COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE CLIENT unpack this question. After a discovery call with each of the stakeholders, we gave the 5 EXECUTIVE PARTICIPANTS some pre-event work.
The day was divided into two 4-hour sessions incorporating solo and group work.
The morning session centered around the individual leader and how they relate to the collective, including topics such as the neuroscience of change, creative vs. reactive leadership, individual leadership styles and strengths, and managing uncertainty.
The afternoon expanded this work to envisioning new culture agreements, including preventing burnout, values and behaviors (departmental and corporate), and where we’re going (and how).
We conducted two coaching sessions for each participant to help them put the new self-awareness into action.
How do we re-establish trust and model it for our teams?
Re-building trust was front and center for our MARKETING TECHNOLOGY CLIENT. We designed two hybrid team-building events for 23 LEADERS across the company’s global customer care team: one for Directors + Sr. Directors, and another for an executive and her management team.
Our client struggled with low morale amidst a period of big change (M&A), so we began each event with a SCARF assessment and a facilitated conversation to build awareness about individual triggers.
The events included discussion and learning about how EQ and conversational intelligence build trust, while interactive exercises gave participants a chance to start fresh and develop new relationships in a low stakes environment.
Using improv exercises, the participants learned how to fail and to appreciate failure as a side-effect of engagement and investment. The comeback story spine enabled participants to acknowledge their mistakes and failures in a more positive way.
How do we cultivate a bold, Strategic, vision-led culture ... with EVERYONE?
A period of huge team growth during a time of remote work brought this question to the forefront of company leadership. We worked in tandem with the CEO of a PUBLIC RELATIONS + COMMUNICATIONS AGENCY to create a full-day virtual event to enable big picture discussions and planning, but also help everyone create new relationships outside of their silos.
To get everyone out of their everyday work groups, we intentionally designed the breakout group to include different locations and mixed seniorities.
Varied content and fun were key to keeping the participants engaged across the entire 7.5-hour agenda (offline breaks, too!). Beginning with a state of the union from the CEO, the day included vulnerability and bonding with improv techniques and personal storytelling, co-creating company agreements through culture transition questions, and finally, learning and exercises about creative leadership.
RESULTS
First team mentality: Aligning around a shared vision
For our communications infrastructure client, establishing a foundation of trust to build on was paramount. Some big takeaways:
- Understanding everyone’s strengths, including their own, enabled participants to dig into motivations and uncover strategies for dealing with others in times of conflict.
- Aligning around the shared vision and connecting to the first team mentality, enabled participants to model this for their teams.
- Learning valuable everyday tools for keeping meetings on track and burnout mitigation (rate/negotiate the ask), help support their teams.
- Exercises built awareness around enabling play and more creativity, expanding the narrow focus on results to include factors outside the numbers.
- Participants were able to break down walls and develop new connections and improve existing relationships.
a new leadership model for growth and resilience
Our marketing technology client felt that our first event was so successful, they had us lead a second event. Here are some of their main takeaways:
- Senior leaders learned the language for how to approach leadership with a growth mindset, creating more space for their own development and the development of their people.
- With a M&A looming, the leadership team learned much more about each other on a personal level and came out of the end more bonded.
- Participants learned how to be more productive when it comes to professional conflicts and recognize the importance of creating space to make mistakes (both with client relationships and on their internal teams).
**The Creative Executive team modeled a successful hybrid workshop where remote and in-person participants can engage equally.**
cross-functional relationships + a clear direction forward
Company leaders at our public relations-communications agency client felt they surpassed their goals for the event.
- Employees and senior leadership have a greater understanding about where the company had been, where it’s going, and how it’s going to get there.
- The participants engaged with the company culture in a way that provided for more ownership of the culture going forward.
- Everyone from individual contributors to senior leaders began to develop relationships outside of their day-to-day silos.
The team building session facilitated by The Creative Executive was a game-changer for our Marketing Leadership Team. All of the participants appreciated the opportunity to learn more about themselves, relate to and understand each other better, and get on the same page. The work the participants started by creating a shared vision is a fundamental shift for us to a first-team mentality over our previous vertical silos. As a result, we built, rolled out, and hold ourselves accountable to our Marketing Manifesto. The benefits have rippled far beyond the individual leaders to the teams they manage. We see more trust, engagement, and better strategies for working through intra-team conflict. We plan to expand on this momentum with further leadership development with the C/E team.
CMO
Communications Infrastructure Company
