"I usually find it hard to sit down for long periods of time, but the workshop was really engaging, and I liked that we were able to discuss everything as a team."
The impact
LEaD became more than a leadership framework; it became a shared way of leading across one of Australia's largest retailers.
- Through an enterprise-wide leadership and change strategy, LIW helped Coles embed consistent leadership behaviours from the Executive Leadership Team through to frontline store teams, creating a common leadership language that strengthened culture, capability, and performance across the business.
- Over four months, this included more than 1,300 learning experiences reaching approximately 6,500 leaders and team members through a scalable, organisation-wide approach.
- 96% of participants agreed their facilitator created a positive learning environment where everyone felt comfortable to contribute.
The context
Coles Group is one of Australia's leading retailers, serving millions of customers each week through a national network of supermarkets and retail businesses. To support its future strategy and culture, Coles developed a new leadership behaviour framework, LEaD, designed to create a consistent approach to leadership across the organisation.
The challenge was not creating the framework, it was ensuring it became part of how leaders thought, made decisions, and led every day. Coles wanted LEaD to be experienced consistently across the organisation, strengthening leadership capability and business performance rather than becoming another corporate initiative.
Our approach
Embedding new leadership behaviours at enterprise scale required more than a learning program. It required leaders at every level to understand the framework, model it consistently and reinforce it through everyday conversations and decisions.
Working in close partnership with the Coles People & Culture team, LIW designed and delivered an integrated change and capability strategy that embedded LEaD across the organisation.
Leading from the top
We began with the CEO and Executive Leadership Team, helping them align around the role they would playing leading the change. This positioned LEaD as a business-wide leadership initiative rather than a People & Culture program, ensuring senior leaders visibly championed the behaviours from the outset.
Embedding LEaD across the organisation
From there, we partnered with Coles to embed LEaD through a coordinated suite of experiences spanning every level of the organisation.
Executive and senior leaders
- National leadership roadshows for more than 500 senior leaders across every capital city, creating shared understanding and consistent interpretation of the framework.
- Bespoke LEaD 360 assessments and one-to-one coaching debriefs for Executive leaders, helping them understand how effectively they were modelling the new leadership behaviours.
Leadership alignment
- Department-level leadership alignment sessions that translated the framework into each team's context and priorities.
Leadership capability
Practical capability programs focused on:
- Coaching
- Feedback
- Inclusive leadership
- Purpose-driven leadership
These programs equipped leaders to bring the framework to life through everyday behaviours.
Organisation-wide learning
- Self-directed digital learning experiences for leaders and individual contributors, reinforcing understanding and enabling consistent application across the broader workforce.
Frontline team development
Time to Thrive was a team-based learning experience grounded in social learning theory.
Following extensive research, store visits and focus groups with frontline teams, LIW customised Squadify (our team effectiveness diagnostic built on the 3 Conditions for Success model) to align directly with the LEaD framework.
Each team:
- Received a tailored LEaDreport
- Participated in a facilitated workshop
- Completed follow-up sessions to embed new behaviours into day-to-day ways of working
"The workshop kept the team very engaged and provided a foundation that was easy to achieve as a team." — Participant, Coles LEaD
The lasting result
Rather than simply launching a leadership framework, Coles embedded LEaD into the fabric of the organisation.
Leaders developed a shared understanding of what great leadership looked like, teams gained practical tools to strengthen leadership behaviours in their everyday work, and the organisation established a consistent leadership language that continues to shape culture, decision making, and performance.
LEaD provided a common foundation for how leaders at Coles show up, coach, and collaborate across the business. LIW's partnership with Coles has continued across multiple strategic initiatives, building on this foundation to strengthen leadership capability at every level of the organisation.