The Workshop Is Not the Work

Jessica Davey didn't come to Singapore to run a regional office. She came to build one.

GUT's first footprint in Asia wasn't about planting a flag. It was about proving that a creative business could operate with serious impact in one of the most culturally layered regions in the world, without losing the edge that made it matter.

Eighteen months in, the numbers looked right. Zero to fourteen people. Early client wins. Strong creative talent. By most external measures, the build was working.

But something else was happening underneath.

When the System Outgrows Itself

In the early days, the team moved fast. Small group, shared context, decisions in real time. No architecture needed because the business was simple enough to hold itself together intuitively.

Then it wasn't.

More people brought more perspectives. More work brought more dependencies. What had been understood implicitly now needed to be said out loud.

The tension was clear: the energy that built the business was starting to outrun its own alignment.

The Type 7 Trap

When I work with a creative leadership team, I start with an iEQ9 assessment for every member. Not as a diagnostic exercise, but to build a shared language that makes it possible to talk about behaviour without making it personal.

What became interesting at GUT Asia was watching the team's evolution through that lens.

Early on, the group had strong Type 8 energy. Direct. Decisive. Willing to challenge. As the business grew and the team expanded, that profile shifted toward Type 7. More expansive, more idea-driven, more possibility-oriented.

The shift brought real strengths. Creative momentum, optimism, the ability to generate and excite. But it also brought a recognisable pattern.

A natural pull toward the next idea before the current one had fully landed. Energy moving forward faster than accountability could follow.

What the team began to notice aligned closely with that pattern. Strong engagement. Real motivation. But recurring friction around communication clarity, execution structure, and the willingness to surface tension directly.

These were not signs of a team in trouble. They were signs of a team that had outgrown its informal operating model.

Three Phases, Not One

The work with GUT Asia was structured across three phases, and the sequence mattered.

The first phase was individual: every team member completed an iEQ9 assessment followed by a one-to-one debrief. This established a baseline of self-awareness and, crucially, reduced defensiveness before the group work began. People arrive at team sessions differently when they already understand something about their own patterns.

The second phase was the leadership layer: a dedicated session with Jessica and her senior team to align on what they were seeing and what they were willing to name. This is where the shared framing happens before it is taken into the room.

The third phase was the full team workshop: how the team makes decisions, where accountability sits, how disagreement gets surfaced and resolved.

The Moment That Changed the Room

The inflection point came early in the leadership session.

Jessica spoke candidly about stepping into the Managing Director role. The transition. The pressure. The uncertainty of building something new in a market that does not operate the way other markets do. There was no polish in it.

It was a simple moment. But it created permission.

From that point, the quality of conversation in the room changed. People spoke more directly. Feedback became more useful. Misalignment got surfaced instead of deferred. The team built a shared language. Decision-making became clearer. Creative energy did not disappear. It became more deliberate.

What Happens After the Room

Here is what most leadership interventions get wrong.

The workshop is not the work. It is the beginning of it.

A single session can create insight. It can shift the quality of conversation for a day, sometimes for a week. But behavioural patterns that have been operating for years do not change because a team spent a day together articulating them.

What changes patterns is sustained, specific, individualised attention over time.

For GUT Asia, that meant a continuity programme running well beyond the initial workshop. Individual coaching for team members on the patterns their iEQ9 profiles surfaced. Specific ongoing work with Jessica on how to sustain the openness that changed the room as the team grows and the pressure increases. Targeted nudges for each person: the Type 7s on follow-through and staying with discomfort rather than pivoting to the next thing; the Type 2s on boundaries and receiving as well as giving; the Type 1 on trusting that speaking up is an asset, not a disruption.

None of this is the same conversation twice. That is the point.

The iEQ9 does not produce a generic team report. It produces individual insight that needs to be worked over time, with someone who knows the team well enough to know when a nudge is needed and what form it should take.

What This Makes Possible

GUT Asia is a stronger team than it was eighteen months ago. Not because a workshop changed it.

Because the work continued.

The creative energy is still there. It is the reason the business exists and the reason it has been able to attract the talent it has. What has changed is that the energy has somewhere to go. Decisions get made. Difficult conversations happen. The gap between intention and execution has narrowed.

Jessica is not carrying the team alone. The team is operating as a system.

That is not a one-day outcome. It is the result of sustained work, individual, relational, and collective, over time.

“What JM gave us was a common language for the conversations we needed to have. The workshop opened the door. The work that came after it is what actually changed how we operate.”

— Jessica Davey, Managing Director, GUT Asia

The Principle

Leadership development is not an event.

A workshop creates shared language and surfaces what the team already half-knows but has not said out loud. That matters. It is necessary.

But it is not sufficient.

What makes a team actually change is what happens after the room. The individual coaching. The ongoing accountability. The practitioner who knows the system well enough to know what it needs, and when.

A team that has been through this process does not go back to square one when pressure increases or the dynamic shifts. They have the language. They have the framework. And they have someone on the outside who can see what they cannot.

That is what continuity makes possible.