Partners
How AQai® Certified Partner Jay Reid guided a 12-person leadership team through measurable cultural shifts within six months.
The full 12-person leadership team of the provincial farm federation completed AQ® assessments.
Three phases: Teaming with Joy, AQ Awareness, and AQ Action.
Two 1:1 coaching sessions with each of the 12 leaders, between group phases.
AQai® Certified Partner Jay Reid of The Making Box guided the 12-person leadership team of a provincial farm federation through a two-phase adaptability programme that surfaced critical team dynamics, built a shared language for change, and produced measurable cultural shifts within six months.
A provincial farm federation representing tens of thousands of farms is one of its province's largest agricultural advocacy organisations. As a not-for-profit body, its 12-person leadership team carries responsibility for navigating an increasingly complex agricultural, policy, and regulatory landscape on behalf of a broad farming community.
The federation's General Manager identified an urgent need to strengthen trust, psychological safety, and collaboration within her 12-person leadership team. While individual leaders were committed and capable, the team lacked a shared framework for navigating change together. Early signs of defensiveness at the leadership level were beginning to affect team dynamics, and in a not-for-profit environment where mission alignment and human energy are the primary assets, fragmentation at the top carries compounding organisational risk. The team had no common language for adaptability. Leaders were managing relationships and making decisions without visibility into how each person engaged with change, ambiguity, or challenge, and the gaps were beginning to show.
Without intervention, defensiveness and misalignment at the leadership level risked cascading downward through the organisation, creating patterns of swirling, blame, and inefficiency that would erode both productivity and well-being. For an organisation representing tens of thousands of farms across an entire province, the cost of a fragmented leadership team extended well beyond internal culture. The General Manager recognised that if the top team could not model adaptable, collaborative leadership, the mission itself would be undermined.
Across three phases from April to May 2024, Jay Reid of The Making Box paired AQai's assessment science with game-based learning experiences. All 12 leaders completed the AQ® Assessment, generating individual profiles and a composite team report. Key findings included grit as the team's dominant strength, a wide emotional range, an even distribution across extroversion and hope, and a critical gap in team support: not one team member reported high team support. Between phases, Jay Reid conducted 1:1 coaching sessions with all 12 leaders (two sessions per person), surfacing cross-team themes around slow change, internal communication, recognition, and persistent team dynamics. The engagement layered the trust-building methods of game-based learning onto the scientific rigour of AQai's assessment framework: connection before data.
A playful, in-person session designed to build trust through laughter, positive shared experiences, and game-based learning. This established an interpersonal foundation before any AQ® data was introduced, especially important for a not-for-profit leadership team accustomed to pragmatism over professional development.
A three-hour group session introducing the AQai framework: defining adaptability, building shared language across Ability, Character, and Environment, and giving each leader space to explore their individual profile without pressure to disclose scores. Between phases, Jay Reid conducted two 1:1 coaching sessions with each of the 12 leaders.
The full team came back together to explore their collective report across four priorities they had named: innovation, risk tolerance, retaining motivated people, and leadership development. A "Start, Stop, Continue" ideation exercise surfaced the team's own solutions, culminating in group commitments that participants owned and voiced themselves.
AQ® assessments across the 12-person leadership team generated individual profiles for each leader. While Ability scores supported the leaders' capacity for the work ahead, the team had no shared framework for navigating change together.
Grit emerged as the team's dominant strength, consistent with the organisation's not-for-profit mission and deep roots in the agricultural community. The team also showed a wide emotional range and an even distribution across extroversion and hope.
The composite team report revealed a critical Environment gap: not one team member reported high Team Support, and a perceived constraint in the work environment was identified. That single data point catalysed the most significant conversation of the programme.
The General Manager felt the team was fragmenting; she could not prove it. AQ® gave her the measurement. The composite team report showed grit as the dominant strength, but a critical Environment gap: not one of the 12 leaders reported high team support. That single data point catalysed the most significant conversation of the programme, and the team committed to specific behavioural changes (stop gossip, assume positive intent, move sensitive conversations to live calls) that the General Manager reported were still holding six months later. AQai® owns the measurement that turned felt fragmentation into a named, fixable problem.
Six months after the engagement, the federation's General Manager reported measurably less complaining and significantly more collaboration between meetings. The cultural shift, from guardedness and fragmentation toward accountability and mutual respect, was attributed directly to the programme. Leaders had moved from operating in silos to actively supporting one another across organisational priorities. Team members demonstrated a greater inclination to extend grace to one another. The group made and honoured collective commitments during the AQ Action session: to stop gossip, assume positive intent, and move sensitive conversations to live calls rather than text or email. Participants described the individual coaching sessions as an exceptional experience. The team is actively planning an AQ® re-assessment, signalling sustained investment in adaptability as an organisational capability.
Jay helps people foster adaptability and creativity at work, aiming to do so with minimal fuss and maximal joy. He's served teams at Shopify, Google, University of Calgary, The Co-operators, Nature Conservancy of Canada and hundreds more.
View partner profile →AQ® surfaces the specific dimensions where a team is exposed (including Team Support, psychological safety, and emotional range) at both individual and group level. In this provincial farm federation engagement, the composite team report identified that zero of 12 leaders reported high team support, catalysing the conversation that drove the cultural shift.
Yes. This Agriculture engagement worked with a 12-person leadership team and used the same AQme individual reports and AQteam composite report as larger engagements. The small group size enabled deep 1:1 coaching alongside collective work, producing measurable cultural change within six months.
A.C.E. stands for Ability, Character, and Environment, the three dimensions AQai® measures to give a complete view of adaptability. Ability covers learning agility, mindset, and mental flexibility. Character covers traits like grit, hope, and emotional range. Environment covers team and organisational support. In the farm federation engagement, the team scored high on Character (grit) but had a critical Environment gap.
Jay Reid, an AQai® Certified Partner at The Making Box, designed and led the two-phase engagement. He paired AQ® assessment science with game-based learning experiences, tailored for a not-for-profit agricultural context where pragmatism is valued and professional development is not always the cultural norm.
Yes. In this provincial farm federation engagement, AQ® was paired with game-based learning to suit a not-for-profit agricultural context. The General Manager reported measurably less complaining and significantly more between-meeting collaboration six months on, and the team is actively planning an AQ® re-assessment.
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