Embedding a High Performance Culture: UK + Scottish Parliament Teams
We’ve implemented the Working With Me™ approach with numerous teams across both the Scottish and UK Parliaments, including the team I personally led for many years. That lived experience means I understand what it’s like to work in high-pressure political environments, with shifting demands, tight timelines, and the need to deliver consistently while managing people, expectations, and relationships.
We’ve supported everything from newly established teams still finding their rhythm, through to mature teams already operating at a high level. What we’ve seen, time and again, is that the Working With Me™ approach works regardless of team stage or seniority, because it creates a shared understanding of how people work, what they need to thrive, and how to hold each other to account.
Read more about how we’ve implemented the working with me approach with teams working in a fast paced and ever changing environment.
Jill McAlpine, Creator of Working With Me™
For newer teams, we’ve used the Working With Me™ approach to help them build understanding and trust from the beginning of their working relationships. This included creating the space to talk openly about working styles, expectations, and what each person needs to do their best work. We introduced simple tools that allowed them to spot miscommunications early, agree on shared standards, and build a solid foundation before habits were set.
With more established teams, the work was different. We focused on surfacing the things that often sit under the surface such as the tension points and blurred expectations that can quietly affect how a team functions. We used the Working With Me™ structure to reset agreements, clarify decision-making, and support the team to focus on executing in excellence.
Here’s what that’s looked like in practice:
Running facilitated sessions to help teams better understand how each member works, what motivates them, what derails them, and how they prefer to communicate.
Supporting leadership transitions by helping new leaders and existing teams co-create shared ways of working.
Introducing simple, repeatable tools that help track actions, hold each other to account, and reduce the reliance on informal backchannels.
Creating structured opportunities for teams to speak honestly about what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to shift, without it becoming personal or unproductive.
If you are interested in exploring how we can implement the Working With Me™ approach with your team, get in touch or book a call.
Case Study: UK + Scottish Parliamentary Teams
I found the “Working with Me” tool invaluable for working cohesively with my colleagues. The system Jill created was easy to use and accessible to all. From insights into preferred working patterns to the best way to contact someone, as well as learning little personal insights, it was helpful to have such information in an easy-to-access way. As a result, our team performed better and was more mindful of each other’s approach to work.
Alasdair Laing, UK Parliament
Alasdair used the Working With Me™ approach both in an established team and when he joined a new, emerging team.
Working With Me
Inclusive team development for high performing teams
Your team’s operating system for working better together.
A structured, inclusive way to build the rhythms, clarity and working agreements your team needs with a manual that’s designed to be used, not filed away.
Working With Me™ is a practical, inclusive team approach that helps people understand how they work and how to work better together to improve team collaboration, and it’s grounded in something real: the day-to-day experience of your team.
This is a hands-on, team-led process that turns reflection into real high-performance team habits. It helps your team turn honest insight into everyday structure and support.
How the Working With Me™ Approach works
Working With Me™ helps people understand how they work best and how to work better together. It’s designed for founder-led teams, public bodies and organisations navigating change, pace and complexity.
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We speak with your leadership team to understand the context — your challenges, dynamics, and what’s under the surface and we design the delivery of the approach and workshop to suit your team.
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Each team member follows our guided process to complete their manual before the workshop. This allows space to reflect and helps people show up with honesty and insight.
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In a half-day workshop, we get to know each other. They will share, spot patterns, and co-create your team charter and working agreements. Your team will leave with clear expectations, a team operating rhythm, and effective ways of working.
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You walk away with a living digital manual and a framework with practical tools for everyday use in 1:1s, onboarding, planning and leadership.
Designed for real teams in fast‑changing organisations
Most tools oversimplify people and that’s why they fail to create lasting behavioural change.
Working With Me™ helps your team understand themselves - and each other -in ways that reflect how they actually work, day to day. If we don’t talk about the things that throw us off - like missing a morning run or hitting a low-energy patch, we leave too much room for unnecessary friction.
This approach makes space for that honesty, and it’s that kind of real understanding that drives collaboration, trust, and high performance.
Whether your team has worked together for years or is just forming, this approach creates the space to uncover:
What helps each person thrive
What gets in the way
What others need to know
From there, your team builds practical, shared agreements they actually use. High performance is a shared practice, and this approach is how you keep practising together.
Inclusive by design fostering trust and collaboration
At the heart of this approach is a marriage of person-centred insight and universal design, making space for both individual needs and collective rhythms, laying the foundation for building an inclusive team culture.
Working With Me™ is built to support different communication styles, cultural backgrounds, and accessibility needs, effectively providing neurodiverse and remote team support. That means every voice is heard, whether your team includes neurodivergent thinkers, remote contributors, or people with diverse lived experiences.
Inclusivity is embedded in how we design, facilitate, and follow through.
This approach is ideal for:
Growing teams in startups or scale-ups
Public sector and third-sector teams seeking an inclusive team culture
Organisations looking to improve team collaboration and performance
Remote, hybrid or neurodiverse teams that need practical working agreements
Outcomes: team collaboration, understanding and high performance.
Working With Me gives your team a structure they create themselves and one they can actually use, day to day.
Building your team’s unique operating model together
For each person:
A personal working manual
A space to reflect and share what they need to do their best work
For your team:
A shared digital team charter and working agreements, providing clear expectations that the team can revisit and refine
Tools and team habits that support communication, development and follow-through
For your leaders:
A reliable operating system to support team performance
Language and structure for better one-to-ones and reviews
Fewer misunderstandings, more focus on momentum
This becomes part of how you work; it’s something you build on and optimise.
Trusted by UK Organisations.
The Working With Me™ Approach has been used by teams across businesses, the Scottish Parliament, UK Parliament, public and third-sector organisations.
What our clients say about the Working With Me™ approach and team transformation.
“It gave us a shared language that we’re still using months later. It’s genuinely changed how we work.”
“I was absolutely wowed by this approach and the fresh perspective on building high-performance teams through becoming more inclusive. We have so much food for thought to take back to our office. I can’t wait to fully implement this into our personal development structure."
As a manager, it gave me insight I didn’t even know I was missing. I’ve adjusted how I lead, and it’s already making a difference”
Frequently asked questions.
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The approach works best for teams of 4 to 20 people. For smaller teams or larger groups, we can adjust the format and pricing to suit your needs.
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The main session is a half-day in person. Team members complete a short pre-work exercise beforehand. Team leads will also join a 30-minute discovery call and a follow-up check-in.
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You’ll receive an engaging team handbook that can be updated digitally as and when your team changes, personal manuals for each team member, a toolkit to support next steps, and a check-in three months later to review progress.
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In-person delivery is recommended, but a remote version is in development. Get in touch if you'd like to explore a virtual option.
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Yes, yes, yes! The approach is grounded in universal design. It supports a wide range of working styles and reduces the burden of 'explaining' often placed on neurodivergent colleagues.
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We prioritise creating an inclusive environment by tailoring our sessions to meet various accessibility needs. This includes accommodating different communication styles, providing materials in accessible formats, and ensuring our facilitators are trained in inclusive practices.
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Team building usually focuses on fun, one-off activities. Team development, like the Working With Me™ approach, focuses on building habits, shared expectations and sustainable collaboration.
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Yes – Working With Me™ supports neurodiverse and remote team members by creating accessible, clear working rhythms that everyone can engage with.
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Absolutely. This approach helps improve team collaboration and creates clarity during periods of change. It’s ideal for fast-moving organisations and founder-led businesses.
Created in ‘purpose’
“I’ve led big teams, fast teams, political teams and what I’ve learned is that high performance isn’t just about setting the bar high. It’s about creating the right conditions for people to actually reach it. That means understanding how each person in your team ticks - what motivates them, what throws them off, and how they fit into the wider operating system.
As someone with a neurodiverse brain - and someone who’s led neurodiverse teams - I know how important it is to create environments where people don’t have to constantly explain themselves to be included, and how often, even with the best intentions, misunderstanding happens.
I also know we can’t create something perfect, but we can create a contract with each other to figure it out together - imperfectly but brilliantly.
High performance and inclusion aren’t opposites; they go hand in hand.
This approach is about building better workplaces for people and better businesses for the leaders who run them.”
— Jill McAlpine, Creator of Working With Me™