Charities Aid Foundation Case Study
Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) - Awareness, Empathy, Behavioural Change
The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has spent over a century working to make charitable giving go further; accelerating progress in society towards a fair and sustainable future for all.
Underpinning that external mission is a need for internal cohesion: a team that communicates well, understands one another, and collaborates effectively across different working styles. When a newly formed team came together at CAF, they were looking for support with building the kind of trust that allows people to do their best work together. CAF partnered with Performance Catalyst to accelerate that process — What followed was a bespoke Team Dynamics session rooted in Insights Discovery profiling, designed to help CAF’s people not just understand themselves, but genuinely see, and adapt to, one another.
The Results Speak For Themselves
4.64/5
Average session satisfaction rating4.93/5
Facilitator effectiveness rating100%
Agree they better understand their own, and their colleagues’ preferences
93%
Feel equipped to communicate more effectively & intend to apply learning daily
- 100% of participants agreed they had gained meaningful awareness of their own and their colleagues’ working preferences.
- 93% intend to actively apply what they learned in their day-to-day interactions, and feel equipped to do so.
- Multiple participants reported initiating conversations with colleagues where friction had previously existed within days of the session.
- Team members began explicitly asking colleagues “what do you need from me?” — a concrete, measurable shift in relational behaviour.
- Strong team-wide appetite to embed the learning operationally, including through the MS Teams Insights App and agreed team rituals.
The need: Accelerating Connection in a New Team
Forming a new team is one of the most critical, and most underestimated, moments in an organisation’s life. People arrive with different backgrounds, different communication styles, and different instincts about how to work. Without a shared framework, that diversity can create friction before it creates strength.
For CAF, the priority was clear: help people get to know each other quickly and meaningfully, surface their different preferences early, and build the kind of mutual understanding that normally takes months of trial and error to develop organically. They needed something that would compress that learning curve and make it stick.
Alongside the new team dynamic, CAF also recognised a deeper challenge: that differences in communication style were being misread. Without a shared language, it was easy to mistake preference for personality, or to attribute friction to character rather than context. Performance Catalyst and the Insights Discovery framework offered both a way in for a new team, and a foundation for lasting communication maturity.
Working with Insights Discovery
Performance Catalyst’s facilitator Lindi delivered a bespoke Team Dynamics session at CAF’s office, built around Insights Discovery profiling. Each team member completed their profile in advance, and the session was structured to move from individual self-awareness outward to collective understanding, exploring where colleagues connect, where they could potentially clash, and how to turn frustration into fascination.
For newer members of the team in particular, the session did something that normal onboarding rarely achieves: it created an immediate, genuine sense of knowing and being known by colleagues.
In Their Own Words
"Today's event was not only interesting but inspiring. Lindi was engaging and informative. My perception was everyone learnt something about themselves and we all learnt about each other, which is truly helpful with us being a new team. Would definitely recommend this to anyone forming a new team or looking to inspire their team."
"Lindi came in to our office and it was a great session. Being new to CAF and the team for me, it really sped up the 'getting to know' each other and our own preferences. Thank you Lindi."
Evidence of real, immediate change
What distinguished this corporate team training was how quickly behaviour changed. The feedback analysis recorded concrete examples: team members initiating conversations where there had been early friction, asking explicitly what colleagues needed from them, and noticing improved interactions within days of completing the colours profile session.
For a new team, this speed of connection matters enormously. The personality test framework gave people permission to be curious about one another — and the shared language to act on that curiosity straight away.
From the analysis: “These examples demonstrate early return on investment“, with behaviour change visible immediately following the team training.
CAF’s experience is a compelling case for investing in corporate team training at the moment of formation — not after problems have had time to take root. The Insights Discovery colours profile personality test gave their people an accelerated route to genuine understanding: of themselves, of their colleagues, and of how to work together with intention.
As Clare Samuells put it, this is an approach she would “definitely recommend to anyone forming a new team or looking to inspire their team.” That recommendation, grounded in lived experience, is the clearest measure of impact.