Sustaining a Positive Workplace Culture

The Inclusive Education Foundation (INED) is a nonprofit organization based in Mae Sot, Thailand. INED works with teachers, schools, and education leaders to ensure that all children on the Thai-Myanmar border can access high-quality and contextualized education that meets their needs.

Challenge

Since the Myanmar coup, INED has experienced rapid growth in the organization and changes in the workplace culture, creating the need to strengthen leadership cohesion and align culture with its evolving mission to cultivate and sustain a positive workplace culture amidst the rapid growth of the organization and constant change in the context.

Approach

In November 2024, Rippletree partnered with INED's Senior Management Team to co-create and implement a 12-month leadership and team coaching program for the INED SMT members and Project Leaders.

Purpose

Cultivate and sustain a positive workplace culture amidst rapid growth and change in a complex environment.

Process

• Discovery: Developed and conducted online survey and one-on-one interviews with INED SMT and project leaders to understand strengths, challenges, and aspirations for themselves as leaders and the organization.

• Co-creation: In collaboration with INED, co-created the objectives and components of the overall program as well as the agenda and content for workshops.

• 3-Day Leadership Development Workshops: Designed and facilitated a 3 day workshop: Day 1: Coaching Skills for Leaders: Days 2–3: Personal & Interpersonal Leadership grounded in emotional intelligence and values-based leadership.

• Team Coaching Kick-off: Facilitated a half-day workshop with SMT and Project Leaders to define a collective team coaching goal for the organization to work towards strengthening in 2025. Results of the workshops led the team to want to formally establish INED's organizational values in their upcoming staff retreat and focus their team coaching goal on bringing those values to life in the organization.

• Values Exploration Process: Designed and facilitated a values exploration process and guidance toolkit that enabled all staff to collaboratively examine one organizational value in depth. Each group developed creative ways to teach their assigned value - exploring its meaning and identifying behaviors that align or misalign with it - and shared their presentations during a full-day professional development session. This collective process deepened understanding and built a shared vision for living these values in the workplace. INED staff are now actively integrating their organizational values into daily practice, modeling aligned behaviors, and embedding a focus on values into regular processes.

• Ongoing Team Coaching and Progress Review: Rippletree will provide follow-up team coaching at the end of 2024/early 2025 to review progress, problem-solve challenges, and refine strategies for sustaining values-driven practice.