Training the dragons: Management skills and keeping culture alive through values

The context:

Here Be Dragons was growing.

New people joining. Long-standing relationships shifting. Bigger ambitions in play.

The leadership team wanted to pause and make sure the way the team worked together still felt like HBD. Not just busy. Not just successful. But intentional, human, and true to who they are.

The work ran in two connected parts.

Part one focused on culture and values in action.
Part two focused on good line management and feedback.

Part 1: Culture in Action

The challenge

HBD’s values already existed. Courage. Compassion. Curiosity.

But as the team grew, those words started to mean slightly different things to different people. The risk was not bad culture. It was fuzzy culture.

The aim was not to rewrite the values.
It was to make them feel shared, practical, and lived.

Our approach

We designed a highly interactive session to help the team reconnect with each other and with what the values actually look like at work.

A core part of the session used LEGO® Serious Play®.

People built models to show what Courage, Compassion, and Curiosity mean to them in their role. But also how they show up as collaborators and communicators.

Who pushes ideas forward.
Who asks the questions others miss.
Who brings calm.
Who challenges.
Who connects people.

This made strengths and styles visible very quickly, especially helpful for a team made up of newer and longer-standing members.

From there, small groups worked on turning values into action. Behaviours, rituals, and ways of working that made sense for real agency life.

What changed

By the end of the session, the team had:

A shared understanding of what the values actually look like day to day
A stronger sense of how different people work, think, and collaborate
Clear ideas for rituals and habits that reinforce culture naturally
A renewed feeling of ownership over “the HBD way”

The values stopped being abstract. They became something people could recognise and use.

Part 2: Good Line Management and Feedback

The challenge

As the agency grew, more people were stepping into line management roles.

Most were doing their best. Few had ever been taught how to manage, give feedback, or handle tricky conversations properly.

The leadership team wanted managers to feel confident and consistent. They also wanted the values from the culture work to show up in everyday management behaviour.

Our approach

We ran practical, scenario-based training focused on real agency situations. The sessions covered:

What good line management looks like in practice
How and when to give feedback
How to make feedback clear, specific, and grounded in impact
Running better one-to-ones
Handling emotional reactions without avoiding the conversation

Managers practised real conversations, not idealised ones. They were given language they could actually use the next day.

Outcomes:

The results speak for themselves. Yellow Fish left their away day buzzing with energy and clarity.

Together, the two phases connected culture to behaviour.

What HBD stands for and how it feels to work there.

Why it worked

The culture session set the direction. The line management training made it stick. Values were not treated as posters on a wall. They were treated as something people live through everyday actions.

“Thank you to the HappyHQ team for bringing such energy and expertise to HBD. Even during an incredibly busy period, not a single person disengaged or used the workshop as an excuse to step away from deadlines. Everyone arrived and left smiling and that’s a true testament to what HappyHQ created in the room.” CEO, Paul McEntee