At a glance
National tax administration · Six managers with team responsibilities · LEAD-5 diagnostic and three immersive days
The challenge: Several reforms running in parallel. The risk is not refusal, it is fatigue.
Our approach: Three immersive days, built on each manager’s actual LEAD-5 profile.
Result: Each participant leaves with a 90-day leadership plan and written rules for deciding, delegating and holding firm under pressure. Management receives a collective map of its managers.
The risk in a reform is not refusal. It is fatigue.
The administration was running several heavy workstreams at once: new invoicing, an overhaul of direct taxation, digitalisation of taxpayer services, tighter transfer pricing control. Directorates steer their performance through objective contracts signed with the supervising authority. And ethical exemplarity is required in an environment where pressure comes from everywhere: taxpayers, economic operators, political power, public opinion.
What was at stake: giving managers the means to hold performance, integrity and endurance together, at the very moment when everything is asking them to speed up.
What the analysis of the specifications brought to light:
- A cumulative change load, with a risk of middle teams silently disengaging.
- Pressure on results that makes integrity harder to uphold, precisely where it matters most.
- Managers exposed on all sides, with no identified successors, who become unavoidable bottlenecks.
- Dense specifications (nine learning objectives in three days) and a tight preparation window.
The challenge for Lead: equip an already defined training framework, without rewriting it, and make it usable from the first day back at the office.
“Leading the reform”: three days built on each manager’s real profile
Lead designed a management design workshop, not a lecture-style seminar. The split requested by the client was respected: 30% input, 50% work on participants’ real files, 20% peer exchange and coaching. Each sequence follows Lead’s three-step cycle: activity first, analysis next, conceptual reference points last. Each half-day closes with a deliverable the participant takes away.
Before: diagnose and calibrate
- An online LEAD-5 diagnostic for each participant, before arrival.
- A day of learning design: individual reports, a collective map of the management team, content calibrated to the group’s actual seniority.
- Materials tailored to the tax profession: templates, situation cards, cases from other tax administrations used as a mirror.
Day 1: posture, vision and governance
Intention: start from how each person actually acts, not from a general theory of leadership.
- LEAD-5 feedback in trios: my dominant posture, and what it costs me.
- A collective reading of the management team on the 7S grid: which levers are covered, which remain orphaned. We talk about levers, never about people.
- Managing, leading, governing: what the distinction changes day to day.
- From the objective contract to a leadership vision, tested against a peer playing the sceptical officer.
Day 2: change, mobilisation and AI
Intention: look at where teams really stand in each reform, not where they should be.
- The reform timeline: what the team has let go of, what it is going through, what it has rebuilt.
- A mobilisation plan built on stakeholder mapping, with individual coaching from the trainer.
- A communication cascade put to the test with the chain exercise: what is left of the message after four rewordings.
- Three generative AI use cases tested “hands on the keyboard”, with no real taxpayer data, and a personal rule of use.
Day 3: influence, decision, integrity and endurance
Intention: move from positional authority to trust, and give yourself the means to last in the role.
- A diagnosis of one’s power of influence, backed by evidence, and preparation for the institutional conversation one keeps putting off.
- A decision and accountability matrix for one’s own scope: what goes up, what no longer goes up.
- A personal integrity pact, written without the trainer taking notes, which also sets out how to replenish one’s resources.
- A diary audit, delegation contracts and a first succession map.
After: embed
- A 90-day leadership plan, with three actions in “if… then…” format and a follow-up partner chosen in the room.
- A shared success criterion: at thirty days, being able to show one practice stopped, one practice introduced and one signal sent to one’s team.
- Full documentation sent out, plus additional fact sheets on topics that emerged during the sessions.
- As an option, a follow-up programme: two remote Management Labos (peer consultation) and an evaluation at three months.
The signature tool: LEAD-5 crossed with the 7S
LEAD-5 does not measure who you are, but how you act. Twenty-five management scenarios, with five possible reactions to rank for each. The forced ranking produces a contrasted profile across five postures: Strategist, Catalyst, Unifier, Pilot, Scout.
Its second reading is what makes the difference: each posture activates levers of the 7S model. Aggregated anonymously, the profiles of a single management team show which organisational levers are carried naturally, and which no one carries. A directly strategic question when you are leading reforms: are they technically steered but humanly endured?
A written leadership system, not a binder of concepts
- An individual LEAD-5 report: radar of the five postures, 7S reading, development pointers.
- A collective, anonymised 7S map of the participating management team.
- A reusable toolkit: decision matrix, delegation contracts, communication cascade, influence grid, integrity pact, succession sheet.
- A participant workbook in three parts: completed working templates, reference sheets, and a theoretical section that also sets out the limits of each model.
- A personal, dated 90-day leadership plan.
Managers who leave with rules, not just intentions
The programme aims for an observable change within thirty days of returning to work, not end-of-session satisfaction. At the end of the three days, each participant has:
- a clear reading of their dominant posture and of the situations where it becomes a brake;
- a leadership vision linked to the quantified targets of their performance contract;
- a mobilisation plan and a reform message tested in front of their peers;
- written rules for deciding, delegating and upholding their integrity under pressure;
- a first answer to the question of succession and of their own endurance in the role.
For senior management, the collective 7S map provides concrete material for composing teams and calibrating the next modules of a multi-year programme.
A proprietary diagnostic serving training that produces action
- A proprietary tool, LEAD-5, that links individual posture to organisational levers, and is presented for what it is: a tool for structured conversation, not a personality test.
- Tailored learning design, able to equip existing specifications without rewriting them, including as a partner’s subcontractor.
- A pedagogy where experience comes before input, and where each half-day produces a deliverable you can show your line management.
- A demand for intellectual honesty: the limits of the models are written down, and the confidentiality of what is said in the room is upheld.
Are your managers carrying several reforms at once?
If your administration or public organisation wants to strengthen the leadership of its managers without adding another layer of theory, we can build a programme based on your managers’ real profiles and your ongoing workstreams. Let’s talk.
