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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. Ownership vs. Accountability – Using a “thinking path” framework, leaders explored how thoughts, emotions, and actions affect team outcomes—and how to shift from blame to mutual accountability.

Outcomes and Commitments to Action
The session concluded with all 35 participants standing in a circle, each publicly naming one action they committed to take moving forward. While long-term results are still unfolding, the workshop successfully surfaced core behavioral challenges, aligned the group around the need for culture change, and initiated a strong wave of personal and collective commitment.

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, accountability, and enterprise leadership within the legal division.