Sometimes the work actually starts in the wrong room
Recently I was partway through a workshop with a large leadership team in a well established organisation, when I began to realise something…
The people in the room were being asked to collaborate more effectively, take greater ownership and work with more clarity.
They were engaged, committed, and genuinely wanted to improve. But the conversation kept coming back to the same point. They couldn't create the clarity they were looking for on their own.
That's when I realised the work probably didn't start in this room. The leadership system above them wasn't yet providing the clarity they needed.
This was happening within a large organisation going through significant change. New structures were emerging, priorities were shifting, and leaders were trying to prepare their teams for a very different future.
Looking back, I don't think the workshop was the wrong intervention. I just think the work had started in the wrong room.
Key takeaways
This experience reminded me:
Not every team problem belongs to the team
A well-designed workshop can still reveal that the original brief was incomplete
Clarity has to flow through the leadership system, not just be created locally
Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is follow the problem to the level where it can actually be solved.
Not every team problem is a team problem
I’m often asked to help teams improve:
Collaboration
Ownership
Accountability
Prioritisation
Decision-making
But their ability to improve depends partly on the environment around them. A team may struggle to align because senior priorities are unclear. People may avoid decisions because authority hasn’t been defined. Different leadership teams may pull in different directions because the executive team hasn’t yet created a shared direction.
You can ask a team to take more ownership, but ownership becomes difficult when people are unclear about where they are heading, what matters most or which decisions genuinely belong to them.
The workshop was useful - but not in the way I first expected
The workshop still mattered. People had honest conversations and surfaced frustrations that had often remained unspoken. But it also became clear that asking this group to solve everything themselves was simply unfair.
The workshop wasn't badly designed. It was trying to solve a problem that didn't fully belong to the people in the room.
Following the thread upwards
Rather than designing another workshop, I found myself asking a different question:
"Who else needs to be part of this conversation?"
That question took me to the leadership team above. And now it's taking me into conversations about clarity, alignment and decision-making at the very top of the organisation.
I don't yet know exactly where that work will lead but it feels much closer to where the real opportunity sits.
One of the things I enjoy most about this work is that organisations rarely need exactly what they first ask for.
Good support doesn't protect the original solution
It would have been easy to keep selling workshops to each individual team. But that would risk treating the same issue repeatedly at different levels without addressing the conditions creating it.
I don't think my job is to defend the workshop I originally designed. My job is to keep asking what will genuinely help.
And, it’s reminded me that good support means:
Listening without immediately diagnosing
Respecting the original brief but not becoming trapped by it
Sharing difficult observations without blame
Working at the appropriate level
Knowing when a workshop is useful and when something broader is needed
Where does the problem really sit?
Here are four questions you might want to explore before commissioning an intervention:
Are we asking a team to solve something they do not have the authority to solve?
Is the direction clear enough for people to take meaningful ownership?
Are different leadership layers aligned around the same priorities?
Are we treating a systemic issue as a local capability problem?
What to do
If you’re seeing the same issues appear across different teams or layers of your business, the answer may not be another local intervention.
Sometimes the most useful first step is to step back, look at the wider leadership system and understand where greater clarity or alignment is needed.
That's often where I begin.
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PS. Good facilitation isn’t only about helping the people in the room. It’s also about recognising what sits beyond their control.