Immediate iEQ9 Leadership Programme
Immediate is home to some of the biggest and most loved consumer brands in the UK, including Radio Times, Good Food and BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine. As it navigates a complex shift towards digital delivery, the ability of its Extended Leadership Team to work together under pressure is critical.
CoCreate designed a focused development programme using the iEQ9 Enneagram as a practical performance tool. The programme delivered a clear uplift in leadership capability, trust and collective effectiveness across the Extended Leadership Team, supporting Immediate on its journey of transformation.
Challenge
Immediate Media was navigating a period of significant organisational transformation. Changing media consumption habits, an accelerating shift towards digital delivery, and increasing commercial pressure required the business to evolve fast, not only in strategy, but in how leadership operated across the organisation.
The Extended Leadership Team (ELT), comprising the Executive Team and the most senior leaders, played a pivotal role in determining whether this transformation would succeed. While the Executive Team had already experienced the impact of working with the iEQ9 Enneagram, there was a clear need to extend this work into the wider leadership system.
The challenge was to rapidly develop a cohesive, aligned, and high-performing leadership community, one capable of building trust and psychological safety, engaging in robust challenge, and leading the organisation confidently through complexity, uncertainty, and change.
As CEO Sean Cornwell framed it, the core question was how to accelerate the ELT’s development into a genuinely high-performing team, grounded in trust, respect, and collaboration.
Programme
CoCreate designed a bespoke leadership development programme for Immediate Media’s Extended Leadership Team, using the iEQ9 Enneagram as a practical framework for leadership performance rather than a personality model.
The programme began with individual iEQ9 assessments and group coaching debriefs, enabling each leader to build deep self-awareness. Leaders explored their core motivations, pressure points, strengths, blind spots, and instinctive approaches to conflict, challenge, and decision making.
This individual insight was then brought into a series of highly interactive workshops focused on shifting the ELT from a group of senior leaders into a cohesive leadership system.
Through the programme, leaders:
- developed a shared language for understanding behaviour, pressure, and performance
- built trust through greater openness, empathy, and curiosity across difference
- explored how individual Enneagram patterns shaped leadership relationships and dynamics
- identified collective strengths, gaps, and risk areas at team level
- applied Enneagram insight to real organisational challenges and priority conversations
True to CoCreate’s applied development approach, the work stayed rooted in live business issues. Leaders practised using the Enneagram in moments of tension and uncertainty, enabling faster, clearer conversations and more effective collaboration.
Impact
The programme delivered a clear and measurable shift in leadership capability, trust, and collective effectiveness across the Extended Leadership Team.
Evaluation data showed:
- 100% of participants agreed the programme supported their development as a leader
- 91% believed it had built greater trust and psychological safety across the ELT
- 91% stated it had increased the effectiveness of the leadership community
Leaders reported stronger dialogue, more productive challenge, quicker resolution of conflict, and greater alignment in how they worked together to lead the organisation through change.
The Enneagram provided a common language and a practical way to navigate complexity, enabling the ELT to perform at a higher level as a leadership system.
Client experience
Our ambition, and really the exam question, was how do we accelerate our development as a leadership team to become a high performing team? High performing teams are built on trust and respect, which creates psychological safety and ultimately drives collaboration and performance.
SEAN CORNWELL, CEO, IMMEDIATE
The Enneagram has been incredibly powerful. It was a no brainer to extend it to the Extended Leadership Team. We can see the impact clearly. People are embracing it, enjoying it, and using it. It leads to better conversations, stronger challenge, and it genuinely drives performance.
If you would like to explore how CoCreate harnesses the power of the iEQ9 Enneagram to help organisations drive collaboration, work effectively under pressure and navigate complex change, we would be glad to talk.
