Leadership Lab for a Major Government Agency
Overview
Blended leadership lab aligned to mission pillars, pairing cohort workshops, coaching, and analytics to build a dependable bench of ready-now supervisors.
Challenge
The leadership bench problem
This national agency manages more than 12,000 employees across dozens of field offices. Supervisors were retiring faster than replacements were ready, and the legacy leadership program boiled down to a slide deck, a compliance exam, and a handshake. There was no safe space to practice decision making, no structured peer learning, and no way to prove progress to mission owners.
The result was a shaky leadership pipeline that made it difficult to staff mission-critical projects. The agency needed a program that reflected on-the-ground realities and produced measurable readiness data.
Solution
Designing a leadership lab with Agile ADDIE
Working with SES leaders and HR, we co-created a capability map tied to the agency’s five mission pillars. The journey combined self-paced primers, scenario-based cohort workshops, and mentor touchpoints. Each lab used real incidents so supervisors practiced the choices they actually face in the field.
Power BI dashboards revealed readiness trends by region, participants captured action plans, and mentor conversations were logged. Leadership could intervene before a shortage became a crisis, and HR finally had a dependable way to show the bench they were building.
Results
"The lab gave us a repeatable path to build supervisors who can lead in our reality. HR, mission owners, and participants are finally aligned on the competencies that matter most."— Deputy Director, Talent Development, Major Government Agency