Bringing the Coles Leadership Framework to Life

Embedding LEaD required more than introducing a new leadership framework. Working in partnership with Coles, LIW helped embed a consistent approach to leadership from the Executive Leadership Team through to frontline store teams, creating a shared leadership language across the organisation.

• 1,300 learning experiences were delivered over four months, reaching approximately 6,500 leaders and team members through a scalable, organisation-wide approach
• Leadership behaviours were embedded from the Executive Leadership Team through to frontline store teams, creating a common leadership language across the organisation
• LEaD became part of everyday leadership, strengthening leadership capability, culture and performance across the business
• 96% of participants agreed their facilitator created a positive learning environment where everyone felt comfortable to contribute

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.

The challenge was to translate LEaD from a leadership framework into everyday leadership. Coles wanted the behaviours to shape how leaders consistently worked across the business, strengthening culture, performance and the experience of teams and customers, rather than remaining a “poster on the wall”.

Working in close partnership with the Coles People & Culture team, LIW designed and delivered an integrated change and capability program to embed LEaD across the organisation.

Before designing the solution, LIW invested time understanding the Coles business, visiting stores, speaking with team members and conducting focus groups across the Store Support Centre to understand how leadership was experienced in practice. These insights informed a solution that reflected the realities of working at Coles and the role LEaD needed to play in supporting culture and performance.

Executive alignment

We began with the CEO and Executive Leadership Team, helping them align around the role they would play in leading the change. This positioned LEaD as a business-wide leadership initiative rather than a People & Culture program, ensuring senior leaders championed the behaviours from the outset.

Executive leaders completed bespoke LEaD 360 assessments and one-to-one coaching debriefs, helping them understand how effectively they were modelling the new leadership behaviours.

This was reinforced through national leadership roadshows involving more than 500 senior leaders across every capital city, creating a shared understanding of LEaD and a consistent interpretation of the leadership behaviours expected across the organisation.

Building capability across every level of the organisation

With Executive leadership aligned, the focus shifted to equipping leaders with the confidence, capability and shared language to apply LEaD in their everyday leadership.

The strategy went beyond communication and skill development, engaging leaders at every level to take ownership of the environment they created for their teams. Department-level leadership alignment sessions translated LEaD into each team's context and priorities, while practical capability programs developed leaders in coaching, feedback, inclusive leadership and purpose-driven leadership. Self-directed digital learning reinforced the behaviours and supported their application in day-to-day work.

Embedding LEaD acrossthe organisation

For frontline teams, Time to Thrive was designed to develop consistent demonstration of the LEaD behaviours through a team-centred learning experience grounded in social learning theory.

Following store visits, focus groups and extensive frontline research, LIW customised Squadify, our team effectiveness diagnostic built on the 3 Conditions for Success model, to align directly with the LEaD framework and provide teams with data about their effectiveness against the LEaD behaviours.

Delivered through a cascading rollout from Heads of Store Operations to Regional Managers, Store Managers and their teams, Time to Thrive reached approximately 6,500 participants across 1,300 facilitated learning experiences over four months. Each team received a tailored LEaD report, participated in a facilitated workshop and completed follow-up sessions to consolidate learning, reinforce new behaviours and support application in the flow of work.

LEaD became embedded in how leadership was understood and practised across the organisation. Leaders developed a shared understanding of the leadership behaviours expected across the organisation, supported by a common leadership language that shaped how they coached, collaborated and made decisions in their everyday work.

LIW's partnership with Coles continued across multiple strategic initiatives, building on this foundation to strengthen leadership capability at every level of the organisation.