CASE STUDY
Cultural Shifts in a Leadership Team of a Legal Division
CORENTUS CLIENT CASES | ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE CASE STUDY | Cultural Shifts in a Leadership Team of a Legal Division
Addressing Accountability and Alignment Across a Top Leadership Layer
The senior leadership team of the legal division of a large company—comprised of 10 senior leaders—recognized that the 25 top leaders reporting into them were exhibiting a series of unproductive behaviors that were impacting performance and cohesion. The organization, known for its scale and complexity, needed this leadership layer to operate at a higher level. Instead, the leaders were showing signs of disengagement, working in silos, avoiding accountability, and missing critical tasks.
Identifying the Core Behavioral Challenges
The observed behaviors included:
Less overall engagement
Siloed work and lack of cross-boundary collaboration
Avoidance of difficult conversations
Lowered accountability and increased blame
Critical tasks falling through the cracks
A One-Day Intervention with Strategic Design
The company enlisted Corentus to help design and deliver a one-day workshop to take place during one of the legal division's quarterly leadership off-sites. The goal was to address the behavioral gaps, strengthen collaboration, and foster a shift toward shared accountability and enterprise thinking across the top 35 leaders.
Three-Part Workshop to Build New Norms
Working in close collaboration with the client, Corentus designed a highly interactive, facilitated workshop with three core components:
Abundance vs. Scarcity – Participants engaged in a structured “Offers and Needs” dialogue, identifying where they could both give and receive support—promoting a culture of resource-sharing and generosity.
Siloed Thinking vs. Enterprise Mindset – Corentus introduced the six practices of enterprise mindset and guided participants to identify behaviors and actions that would break down silos and foster broader collaboration.
Ownership vs. Mutual Accountability – Using the Corentus Thinking Path/RAFT™ Framework, leaders explored how one’s thinking/beliefs impact one’s feelings, how those feelings impact actions, and those actions impact results. When exploring the ‘ownership mindset’ they realized this mindset did not lead toward feelings, actions, and results they desire. With an ownership mindset they realized this is what makes people say “that’s my team”, “this will impact my budget”, “our team’s goals will be effected if your team takes the markting resources we need’. In a mutal acocuntability mindsetthe leader adjust their thinking and conversations more stategically togehter, hearing langiage ushc as “what budget allocations make the most sense strategically for the company” what needs to be shifted to make this new prioryt for the company occur?
Outcomes and Commitments to Action
The session closed with all 35 leaders standing in a circle, each naming one concrete action they were committed to taking. While the long-term culture change is still unfolding, the workshop succeeded in surfacing core behavioral challenges, aligning the group around the need for culture shift, and sparking a strong wave of both personal and collective commitment. The division’s leader expressed deep satisfaction, and participants shared that this was the most valuable use of their time compared to any other practitioner-led development experience they had encountered. We were equally energized. These are highly capable, thoughtful leaders, and it was a privilege to partner with them.
Early Momentum Toward Long-Term Culture Change
Although this engagement was recently completed, early indicators point to renewed energy, stronger alignment, and a clear commitment to building a culture of collaboration, mutual accountability, and enterprise leadership within the legal division.