Strengthening Team Identity After Restructuring
Client: Large Telecommunications Group
Industry: Telecommunications; Digital Financial Services
Focus: Team Development and Engagement; Agile & Resilient Teams; Team Coaching; Clifton Strengthsfinder; Agile TQ Diagnostic
What They Were Up Against
The client team had recently experienced significant restructuring and change. As a newly formed group, they were struggling with low engagement and a lack of connection. Team members did not yet have a clear sense of each other’s strengths, contributions, or ways of working. Without intentional focus, there was a risk that the team would remain disengaged and fragmented, limiting their ability to collaborate effectively and support the wider business.
Where We Chose to Focus
The discovery work highlighted the need to build connections on three levels: self, others, and the team as a whole. The focus was therefore placed on:
Supporting each member to better understand themselves and the unique strengths they bring to the team
Helping the team understand and relate to each other more effectively
Defining a shared set of team values and ways of working that could guide them going forward
To enable this, we used The Yellow Seed Agile TQ Team Diagnostic Tool, and CliftonStrengths reports, to provide each team member with personal insights and create a foundation for conversation and development.
How We Partnered for Impact
We co-designed and facilitated a workshop designed to balance reflection, dialogue, and creative collaboration. The session included three core elements:
Understanding Self
Each individual explored their CliftonStrengths results, reflecting on their natural talents and how these shaped their contribution to the team. This also included an introduction to the Neuroscience of behaviour, which highlighted the underlying motivators or drivers for their own behaviour patterns, emotions, and responses to their environment
Understanding Others
Through interactive activities, team members responded to structured prompts that surfaced how they were perceived, what others valued about them, and what they needed from each other. This created practical insights for improving day-to-day communication and collaboration
Understanding Us
The team co-created a set of values and behaviours that would guide how they worked together. To make this tangible, they designed a unique emblem to represent their identity. As a close-out, each person painted a section of a canvas in a paint-by-numbers activity, which, when assembled, revealed their emblem with icons symbolising their chosen values
This combination of reflective, relational, and creative exercises allowed the team to move beyond surface-level conversations and build a shared sense of purpose and belonging.
What Shifted
Following the session, engagement survey results showed measurable improvements. Team members reported feeling more connected to each other and more confident in how to communicate and collaborate. The workshop gave them a clearer understanding of themselves and their colleagues, making it easier to relate to one another and work through challenges constructively.
The creative activities, especially the emblem and canvas exercise, became enduring symbols of the team’s shared values and identity. These artefacts served as reminders of the commitments they had made to one another during the workshop.
Success Enablers
Strengths-Based Foundation
Using CliftonStrengths as a development tool gave the team a positive, shared language for understanding themselves and each other
Psychological Safety
The structured activities gave everyone a voice and created space for honest, practical conversations
Step-by-step Design
Moving from “self” to “others” to “team” created a natural progression that helped people build trust gradually. This sequencing ensured that by the time the group defined values, they were grounded in personal insight.
Sense-Making After Change
The workshop gave the group a contained space to process recent restructuring, reset expectations, and re-energise around shared values and agreements
Tangible Identity
The emblem and paint-by-numbers canvas turned abstract ideas into something visible and memorable
