Client case study / Leadership development / Feedback culture
High standards, human leadership
How do you help leaders speak honestly when they worry that honesty could damage a relationship? At Vodafone Albania, we designed a People Leader’s Lab around that tension and gave leaders space to work through it together.
See what changed
What Vodafone reported afterward:
More thoughtful written feedback. One-on-one conversations to discuss it. A greater willingness to address difficult issues.
Qualitative follow-up shared by Vodafone’s team.Read the outcomesWHY HONEST FEEDBACK
The partnership began with a 90-minute leadership keynote in Tirana. I designed it as a shared experience. Through Cross the Line and other activities, colleagues connected, moved, and explored what it means to show up fully at work.
We talked about leadership as a practice of listening: to one another and to what is true in our own hearts. When the world keeps changing, that listening can help us find our footing and choose how we respond.
THE REAL CHALLENGE
After the keynote, Vodafone invited me to support a specific leadership challenge. Their team brought clear goals and a strong understanding of the organization. That made discovery focused and the design collaborative.
Leaders cared about their relationships. Yet that care could make direct feedback feel risky. The team described overly generous ratings and difficult conversations being avoided. Development needs could remain unspoken, even when the performance process was completed.
The design principle:
Help people experience honesty
as an expression of care.
That principle shaped the questions, the practice, and the conversations that followed.
LEADERSHIP HABITS
Together, we co-designed the People Leader’s Lab: High Standards, Human Leadership. Senior leaders attended on the first day and other people leaders on the second. Each group had a full day to learn, practise, and reflect.
I asked leaders to remember feedback that had helped them become who they are. Their stories made the value of honesty personal. We could then explore why offering that same honesty to someone else can feel so difficult.
Kim Scott’s Radical Candor framework gave us shared language: care personally and challenge directly. Role-play revealed the gap between recognizing good feedback and offering it when a conversation feels personal.
In a demanding team challenge, colleagues had to guide a blindfolded teammate across a course. As pressure rose, some teams rushed, gave instructions, and left that person out of decisions. The activity made a familiar habit visible: we can become so focused on moving forward that we stop listening.
Connected to Vodafone’s own work. We began with Vodafone’s Grow My Impact framework. The team clarified performance and potential. Across the day, HR and Legal contributions connected the learning to expectations and evidence. My role was to help leaders practise what the process asked of them, especially when the conversation felt uncomfortable.
04 / TURN THE EXPERIENCE
The debrief was where we connected the activity to leadership. We examined what helped, what got in the way, and what each person wanted to do differently. Closing reflections included being “less nice, more honest” and learning to “balance empathy and transparency.”
I captured the patterns in a report with recommendations for continued practice.
The experience became a starting point for the work ahead.
THE LEARNING CONTINUED
In follow-up, Vodafone’s team reported changes in how leaders approached feedback. One concrete milestone was that, for the first time, all feedback was submitted before the deadline. The quality of participation mattered too.
More people completed their feedback thoughtfully and with a more critical eye. The reviews gave people more substance to work with.
Leaders scheduled one-on-one meetings to discuss feedback and showed greater willingness to address difficult issues directly. Colleagues continued referring to the workshop in their everyday conversations.
Vodafone invited me to facilitate further sessions for other senior leaders and their teams, extending the partnership beyond the original brief.
Post-program outcomes reflect qualitative follow-up shared with Mentor Dida by Vodafone’s team. The February 2026 Lab report supports the participation figures and participant reflections; the client testimonial was provided in April 2026.
What stood out most was the facilitator’s ability to connect leadership concepts to real-life business and people scenarios.
Irisi Kosta and Klejdi BetiVodafone Albania
A QUESTION TO TAKE BACK
Before adding another feedback framework, consider the conversations people are already finding difficult.
01Where might protecting a relationship be keeping someone from useful feedback?
02Do leaders have a place to practise difficult conversations before they have them?
03What would show that the learning is reaching everyday work?
YOUR ORGANIZATION
I design and facilitate learning journeys that help people work through the human challenges behind organizational change. If your leaders know feedback matters but still avoid the conversation, let’s start there.
Discuss your team’s challenge