Uniting Leaders Across Borders: Strengthening Collaboration in a Pan-African Executive Team
Client: Pan-African Multinational Financial Services Group
Industry: Financial Services (multi-industry operations across Africa
Focus: Executive Team Development & Strategic Collaboration
What They Were Up Against
The client was a large, complex multinational financial services group, operating across multiple African countries and spanning a variety of industries within each region. The Africa business had been underperforming against its targets due to a combination of unforeseen external factors and significant internal change.
In a short space of time, the business had gone through mergers, acquisitions, and operating model changes. The Africa Executive Team, comprising central functional leaders (e.g., IT, HR, Marketing) and Country CEOs, was tasked with driving stability and performance. However, the team struggled to align on priorities and ways of working across geographies.
The complexity was compounded by team composition: some executives were long-standing leaders, while others were new to the group or freshly appointed into new roles. Building collaboration, coherence, and clarity between the central team and country leaders was critical to ensure the Africa business could return to growth and deliver on its strategic priorities.
Where We Chose to Focus
To map out the dynamics of the Africa Executive Team, we began with in-depth interviews and implemented the YellowSeed Agile TQ Team Diagnostic, which measures team performance across eight high-performing team dimensions. Crucially, this included not only self-perceptions but also feedback from direct reports, providing a multi-dimensional view of effectiveness.
Insights highlighted three priority areas:
Communication
Improving openness, clarity, and day-to-day alignment
Feedback & Accountability
Creating mechanisms to hold one another to commitments
Innovation
Finding space for creative thinking across regional and central priorities
The Enneagram was introduced to this team for the first time, providing a common language to understand individual motivations and collective strengths better.
How We Partnered for Impact
The journey was launched at the annual Africa strategy session, where a dedicated full-day team development track was embedded.
Key elements included:
Team Diagnostic & Feedback
Sharing insights from interviews and surveys, sparking candid conversations about team perceptions
Enneagram Assessment:
Creating awareness of behavioural patterns and helping to integrate new members into the team dynamic
Rules Of Engagement
Co-creating principles for how the team wanted to work together, including communication, accountability, and support
Follow-up activities included individual Enneagram feedback sessions and further alignment conversations with the CEO. A subsequent session focused on communication and influencing, using interactive activities to strengthen trust and establish clear agreements on collaboration.
What Shifted
The intervention created a foundation of clarity, alignment, and renewed direction for the Africa Executive Team.
Team members reported greater empathy and understanding of one another’s styles and motivations
The group agreed on clear rules of engagement, creating a shared framework for collaboration and accountability
While the Africa business still faced external challenges, the Executive Team emerged with stronger alignment and a clearer way of working together, vital building blocks for navigating complexity and change.
Success Enablers
Diagnostic Depth
Combining executive interviews with direct-report perspectives created a multi-layered, evidence-based view of effectiveness.
Practical Tools
The Enneagram gave leaders a common language to understand differences and reduce friction
CEO Sponsorship
Visible involvement of the CEO elevated the importance of the work and secured commitment across the team
