INGO Operations

Client: A leading INGO in Nepal 

Type: Leadership Training Workshop 

Format: Half-day · In-person 

Focus: Self-awareness · Working styles · Difficult conversations 

Delivered by: J.D. Research Corp (JDRC)

All participant names referenced in this case study are aliases.

One of Nepal's leading INGOs was investing in its people, not because something had gone wrong, but because they wanted to build stronger leaders before problems had a chance to surface.

As part of a broader internal leadership development initiative, they brought JDRC in to design and deliver one focused workshop for their senior management team: iLEAD WEevolve, a Comprehensive Mindful Leadership Workshop.

Who was in the room:

• Experienced managers, senior executives, and directors
• People who had been leading teams for years
• People who had been through enough workshops to know within twenty minutes whether one was worth their time

What they came for: not a solution to a crisis. An investment in becoming better.

Designing for experienced leaders is harder than it sounds.

They have heard most frameworks before. They have attended enough sessions to spot a generic one immediately. And they disengage the moment something does not feel genuinely relevant to their reality.

The Big Five, Working Style, FBI Model, these are not new. The theory is out there. Any organization can find these frameworks online, print them out, and run through the slides.

What cannot be replicated is how they are delivered.

The real challenge was not the content. It was the facilitation, creating an environment where experienced, senior people felt genuinely curious, genuinely reflected, and genuinely engaged. Where the learning happened not because someone presented information, but because the room built it together.

JDRC's approach to this was straightforward: the trainer does not walk in as the expert with all the answers. They walk in as someone who is also here to learn, from the room, from the people in it, from what surfaces when the right questions are asked. That tone, set from the start, changes how people show up.

Added constraint: a half-day meant every module had to earn its place. There was no room for filler.

Opening — Icebreaker

A short activity to shift the room from work mode into learning mode. Simple, but necessary. It also signaled something from the start: this is a space where you participate, not just attend.

Module 1 — Big Five Personality Test

Participants completed a 50-question personality assessment, pen and paper, self-scored, no digital shortcut.

Each question asked participants to rate how much they agreed with a statement about themselves on a scale of 1 to 5. The scores mapped onto five core personality traits:

Scores ranged from 0 to 40 per trait. Participants calculated their own results by hand, slowly, deliberately, and sat with what they found.

Then the trainer did something that changed the room.

Rather than moving on after the scores were calculated, the trainer paused. Going through each participant's results, they began reading people, not in a clinical way, but in a way that felt immediately personal. Looking at someone's numbers and reflecting back who they likely are: not just how they work, but how they are. Their natural tendencies. The way they probably process things. How they might be showing up in their relationships, at work and beyond.

This was not about professional labels. It was about the person.

For a room full of experienced leaders, this was unexpected. They had filled in personality assessments before. They had never had someone look at the numbers and say, here is what this might mean about who you are, and how that shows up in the people around you.

That was the hook. That was the moment the room leaned in.

People did not just recognize themselves in what came back. They recognized each other. Years of working patterns, the colleague who always needs more data, the one who decides in five seconds, the one who keeps asking how everyone is feeling, suddenly had a name and a reason.

And something interesting happened as the director listened to his own results being read aloud.

The managers and executives in the room watched. And they became more curious. There is something particular about hearing someone more senior than you engage openly with something personal, their tendencies, their patterns, who they are, that makes the room feel safer and more alive. If the most senior person in the room is willing to sit with this honestly, so is everyone else.

The trainer's curiosity about each person was genuine. That came through. And it invited the room to be equally curious, about themselves, about their colleagues, about what they had all been carrying without a name for it.

"This is me" lands differently than "this is an interesting framework."

Module 2 — Working Style Assessment

Four working styles. Four corners of the room. One instruction: go to where you belong.

• Analyzer — detail-oriented, process-driven, needs data before deciding
• Director — results-focused, decisive, moves fast
• Collaborator — relationship-first, team-centered, values consensus
• Promoter — energetic, creative, big-picture thinker

What happened when people physically moved to their corners was the point.

This was not a slide. It was not a self-report on a form. It was a room of senior leaders standing in four different corners, looking at each other across the space, and seeing years of working patterns made visible in one image.

The exercise created three things at once: engagement, because people were physically moving and choosing; learning, because the framework became something experienced rather than explained; and reflection, because standing in your corner and looking across at where your colleagues stood made the dynamics impossible to ignore.

This was also a co-learning moment for the trainer.

Something became visible in the room that confirmed what experience had suggested before: organizations often already know where their gaps are. They sense the friction, they feel the misalignment, they just have not had the language or the space to name it clearly. Standing in those corners, the team could see that there was no Promoter bridging the Analyzers and Collaborators. That gap, the missing connector, explained years of dynamics in seconds. The trainer did not deliver that insight. The room arrived at it together.

What people realized:

• Why certain decisions felt slow to some and rushed to others
• Why some collaborations felt effortless and others felt like friction
• Why specific team tensions kept recurring, and what was actually behind them

"Now I understand why our meetings always go the way they do." , an Analyzer, looking across the room at the Promoters

Module 3 — FBI Model: Difficult Conversations

The energy in the room had shifted by this point. The Big Five had made it personal. The Working Style exercise had made it visual. People had already been more honest about themselves than most workshops ask for.

That openness carried directly into what came next.

A structured approach to giving honest feedback without making it personal. You name what happened, describe the behavior specifically, and explain the impact, without attacking the person.

The roleplay: Abhishek and Bibek (aliases)

The scenario: You are Abhishek's supervisor. He has just found out about the bonus difference. You now have to have that conversation.

Participants chose their own roles, no assignment, no pressure. That ownership made the roleplay feel real rather than forced.

Then the director stepped forward.

Without prompting. Without hesitation. They took on the supervisor role and stood in front of the group, not as the most senior person in the room, but as a participant, willing to try something uncomfortable in front of everyone.

That was leadership by example in its most literal form.

For the managers and executives watching, this was the moment the session became something else entirely. The curiosity that had been building since the Big Five turned into something more alive. If the director is fully in it, there is no reason for anyone else to hold back. The trainer had set the tone from the start, I am also here to learn from this room, and the director's choice to step forward was the room living that out completely.

The supervisor worked through the FBI conversation live:

• Fact: the attendance pattern and frequency of delegation over the review period
• Behavior: the specific actions that were observed and documented
• Impact: how it affected the team, the workload distribution, and ultimately the evaluation

Abhishek pushed back:

"I deliver results. Isn't that what matters?"

The room worked through it together, not watching, not evaluating. Participating.

Closing - Reflection Exercise

Each participant named one specific thing they would take back and actually use. Not a general impression. A named action.

The Big Five shifted the energy of the entire session.

The trainer read the room, and the people in it.

After the Big Five results were calculated, the trainer did not move on. They went through each person's profile and reflected it back, not just professionally, but personally. Who this person likely is. How they show up. What they carry. What the people around them probably experience.

That level of attention was unexpected. And it changed the energy of the room from measured participation to genuine curiosity.

The co-learning was real from that point forward. The trainer was not presenting conclusions, they were exploring alongside the group, genuinely curious about each person. When the director's results were read and they engaged openly with what came back, the managers and executives watching became more alive. Seeing someone more senior than you sit honestly with something personal signals to everyone else that it is safe to do the same.

The Working Style exercise made the invisible visible.

Seeing your team physically distributed across four corners of a room tells you something that no slide ever could. People understood their colleagues differently after that exercise, not as personalities to manage, but as working styles to work with.

And the room filled in its own gaps. Standing in those corners, the team could see clearly what had been missing. They already knew something had been off. This gave it a shape.

The director led by example — and the room responded.

As participants settled into the Abhishek and Bibek scenario, the director stepped forward to play the supervisor. Naturally. Without prompting. No hesitation. No sense of rank.

This was not a small thing. Leaders talk about being open to learning. This director showed it, in front of their entire team, in a scenario that required genuine vulnerability. That is what leading by example actually looks like.

For the managers and executives watching, it was the spark. Curiosity became excitement. Holding back stopped feeling necessary. The trainer had created the conditions, through the icebreaker, through the Big Five, through the working style corners, through the tone of co-learning set from the beginning. The director walked through the door that had been opened.

Throughout the session, JDRC made sure three things happened:

• Engagement: people were physically active, choosing, moving, participating at every stage, never passive
• Learning: frameworks were not explained and moved past, they were experienced and reflected on
• Reflection: every module created genuine space to sit with what you found, not rush to the next thing

That combination, engagement, learning, reflection, sustained across a half-day, is what made the session feel different from the workshops this group had attended before.

Three takeaways the room arrived at together:

1. Self-awareness is not about personality types. It is about understanding how you show up, and what that means for the people around you.
2. Understanding how your colleagues work is not optional. It is a prerequisite for effective collaboration.
3. Difficult conversations do not get easier by avoiding them. The FBI Model gives you a way in.

Time ran out before the design did

The Big Five ran longer than planned, because the trainer reading each person's profile created a depth of engagement that could not be rushed. That was the right call. But every extra minute came from somewhere else.

One part of the original design did not get the space it needed. It was touched on, not practiced. For a group that navigates complex conversations across layers of hierarchy every day, that was a real gap worth naming.

The half-day created a ceiling.

The curiosity in the room could have carried an extra hour. The conversations that were starting were good ones, and the session ended before they could go further.

What participants left with:

• A clearer sense of who they are, not just professionally, but as people, and how that shows up at work and in their relationships
• A visual map of their team dynamics and why certain patterns kept recurring
• A practical structure for difficult conversations that, at their level, come up regularly
• Specific commitments from the closing reflection, named actions, not general impressions

What the trainer took away:

This session confirmed something that keeps showing up across organizations: most teams already know where their gaps are. They feel the friction. They sense the misalignment. What they are often looking for is not a new answer, it is someone to help them name what they already know, and space to finally say it out loud.

The working style corners did not reveal anything the team had not experienced before. It just made it impossible to look away from. That is what co-learning looks like in practice, the room teaches the trainer as much as the trainer teaches the room.

From the room:

Someone finally understood why certain conversations had always felt harder than they should, their Big Five profile named something they had carried for years but never articulated.

Someone standing in the Analyzer corner looked across at the Promoters and said: "Now I understand why our meetings always go the way they do."

"Most people in that room had either been Abhishek, managed one, or avoided that conversation entirely. Leaving with the FBI Model meant leaving with something they could use the following week."

Post-session feedback confirmed what the energy in the room had already shown: the tools were practical, the session delivered what it set out to, and participants left more self-aware and more confident than when they walked in.

The closing reflection was a strong end. Participants left with specific commitments, not just a good feeling.

But a workshop is only as valuable as what actually changes in the workplace after it.

Did the FBI Model show up in a real conversation two weeks later? Did the Working Style insight change how someone ran their next team meeting? Did knowing their Big Five profile change how someone showed up for their team?

We do not yet know.

Over the next 30 days, JDRC will follow up with participants to understand what insights translated into action, what behaviors shifted, and what impact was created beyond the training room.

We will be sharing those reflections in a future case study.

Because the measure of a good workshop is not the energy in the room on the day.

It is who people become after they leave it.