Case study: BWS Area Manager Summer Sesh
The brief
Each year, BWS hosts a Summer Summit, an energising forum designed to focus, inform, and unite the team ahead of the critical trade period.
This annual rhythm brings every Area Manager from across the country together in the same room, and this year, the opportunity was seized for something extra: a leadership “Summer Sesh” to launch a new phase in their development as leaders of leaders.
Following a period of organisational change and fresh leadership appointments, BWS wanted to refocus this pivotal group on what it means to lead at the next level: moving beyond day-to-day operations to strengthen strategic thinking and leadership balance.
The brief: create meaningful moments for connection while supporting Area Managers to think more systemically, less reactively.
The response
Partnering with the Senior Capability & Team Experience Partner and anchored in the brand’s upbeat, people-first culture, we designed a session that felt unmistakably BWS — energetic, experiential, and grounded in real operational context.
The session centred around a specifically designed “Blocks & Balloons” game, a light-hearted yet insightful activity that captures a universal leadership challenge: knowing when an issue is a problem to solve versus a tension to balance.
As laughter filled the room and teams raced to keep a balloon in the air while building the tallest tower, the metaphor clicked: leadership is about balancing dual goals that both matter - like pace and presence, results and relationships, today and tomorrow.
Recognising and navigating these tensions through continuous micro-adjustments is what separates leaders who repeatedly fight the same fires from those who make lasting progress.
Facilitated reflection connected the activity back to the Area Manager role, surfacing the specific tensions that make or break performance in how they lead, prioritise, and support stores.
The activation
The Summer Sesh opened and closed with the GM of Store Operations, who modelled the very behaviour the session was designed to inspire. He shared his leadership intentions for the summer, anchored by a personal story about making moments matter - a reminder that your time and attention are often the greatest gifts a leader can give.
This invitation struck a chord. Many Area Managers volunteered to read their own leadership intentions out loud to the group, creating a sense of shared ownership and momentum that carried through to the Summer Summit.
The design intent of the Summer Sesh didn’t start and end in the room.
With the support of the Senior Capability & Team Experience Partner, the ideas and insights surfaced through the session will continue to be woven into Area Managers’ connection cadence, ensuring an ongoing placeholder for peer coaching and alignment as part of their monthly meetings.
Additional organisational experiments are also underway to help Area Managers balance the tensions they face, including weekly diary “blackout” periods to focus on store engagement without interruptions from the Support or Ops teams.
The message to Area Managers was clear - you can’t do leadership on autopilot.
Balancing tensions takes deliberate effort, ongoing reflection, and mutual accountability.
The results
Shared language: Leaders gained a clear, memorable distinction between problems to solve and tensions to balance, now used across meetings and decision-making.
Leadership engagement: Many Area Managers actively contributed stories or examples during the session, signalling genuine buy-in.
Behavioural reinforcement: Leadership intentions were embedded into follow-up cadences to sustain focus through the peak trading season.
Brand alignment: The playful, hands-on format reflected the BWS brand and made learning feel natural — “fun, but with a message that hits home.”
Why it worked
The Summer Sesh succeeded because it embodied four core elements of the LDS Wheel™, a practical model for visualising what makes an effective leadership development system (LDS) beyond one-off events and programs:
Coherence — The experience connected leadership behaviour directly to the realities of retail operations and the organisation’s seasonal rhythm, creating immediate relevance.
Integration — Concepts and language were linked to ongoing business routines - from monthly meetings to store visits - ensuring learning flowed through the system, not just the session.
Continuity — Follow-up peer coaching and leadership intention check-ins transform an event into a continuing practice.
Sponsorship — The GM of Store Operations played a key role in shaping, opening, and closing the session, signalling visible sponsorship. His role modelling of the behaviours being developed reinforced both the message and the mindset shift being asked of Area Managers.
Playful. Purposeful. Purely BWS.
The Summer Sesh turned a pre-summit gathering into a springboard for sustained leadership growth, proving once again that the best development moments don’t compete with business rhythms; they work with them. When development feels like business-as-usual, not something added on, leaders lean in.
Let’s talk if you’re ready to design a development experience where leaders learn, apply, and keep growing long after the session ends.
BWS Area Manager Summer Sesh highlights.