From Overload to Shared Leadership & Organizational Clarity
10 min read
Sonder Creative is a six-person brand and digital agency known for craftsmanship and creative excellence. But behind the great client work, the leadership team — Jeff Caron and Sophie Maisonneuve — faced the classic challenges of a growing creative studio.
The Situation
Sonder Creative, a six-person design and branding studio, had built a reputation for exceptional creative work. But behind the craft and momentum lay familiar challenges for founder-led studios: rising complexity, blurred roles, and leadership patterns that had not evolved with the business.
Meetings lacked structure. Leadership conversations happened in fragments. Critical decisions were delayed or revisited repeatedly. Emotional labor was invisible but draining. Roles were unclear. And the team relied heavily on Jeff, the founder, to maintain continuity, direction, and reassurance.
Sophie, originally hired as Creative Director and now a managing partner, described how unstructured “after-meeting” conversations consumed a “sneaky amount of time,” eroding the leadership team’s capacity to lead with intention.
At the same time, their senior developer, Eden, was stepping into a Team Lead role — but expectations, responsibilities, and growth paths were blurry, adding emotional tension for both leaders.
The deeper challenge was relational and identity-driven: Jeff and Sophie were still operating through the remnants of their original employer–employee dynamic, despite their shared leadership reality. Sonder needed a new operating system — one big enough to hold two leaders, grow emerging talent, and scale beyond instinct.
My Role
Sonder engaged in the BOS❤️™ Coaching Program to redesign its leadership system, strengthen its partnership structure, and build the foundations of a people-powered, adaptive organization.
My work focused on four layers of transformation:
Structural clarity — defining roles, time, and leadership responsibilities.
Relational clarity — supporting Jeff and Sophie’s evolution from founder/employee to co-leadership partners.
Cultural clarity — building shared language, rituals, and meaning-making practices.
Capability clarity — developing leadership skill within emerging leaders through facilitative models.
"Chris says what needs to be said and does so in a way that is respectful of each individual story. In addition to the tools he has built, he brings a lot of crucial experience to the conversation and shares where he sees opportunities. This has lead us to rethink a lot of our approach to leadership and partnership at Sonder."
This was not about adding process. It was about creating the conditions for distributed ownership, better decisions, and healthier leadership dynamics.
Taking Action
Making leadership visible
We began with the Time Check-in™, revealing where Jeff and Sophie’s time actually went — not where they assumed it went. The picture was clear: they were carrying an enormous amount of invisible labor, emotional load, and unstructured decision work.
This visibility became the catalyst for redistributing leadership responsibilities and redesigning how they led together.
Turning partnership into practice
Through facilitated conversations and leadership planning, Jeff and Sophie shifted out of their old patterns and into a true co-leadership model. They built new rituals and decision structures that supported a shared leadership identity visible across the studio.
"The most memorable moment was when he was describing the space a leader is supposed to fill. Both the concept and the visual are powerful. Leaders really are the space between — the filler that allows each individual role to exist as a whole object. I have been thinking about this daily and trying to let it shape when and where I get involved."
This allowed the team to see both partners as strategic leaders — a critical cultural shift.
Building an emerging leader
Eden’s transition into a Team Lead role became the proving ground for a healthier leadership culture. The Growth Planning System™ gave her a clear roadmap, expectations, and role clarity. Jeff shifted from directing to co-creating, approaching leadership as a facilitator rather than a problem-solver.
This strengthened psychological safety and signaled to the whole team that growth conversations would now be proactive, structured, and supportive.
Creating a shared rhythm
We introduced the Check-In Program™, providing the team with the structure, cadence, and space to align, address tension, reduce reactivity, and maintain clarity without adding more meetings.
These rhythms became the beginnings of Sonder’s leadership flywheel: awareness → alignment → action → adaptation → repeat.
Once this flywheel began turning, Jeff shared that “all the small pieces finally connected — the action happened, and it worked.”
Sophie’s Transition to Co-Managing Partner
One of the most important parts of this transformation was Sophie’s shift from Creative Director to co-managing partner — not just on paper, but in behavior, authority, presence, and relational dynamics.
This included renegotiating internal power dynamics, redesigning how decisions were made, and ensuring that leadership presence was shared between both partners. It also meant elevating Sophie’s voice in strategic conversations and building new leadership patterns that reflected her ownership and influence.
"Leadership is about helping shape the space around what others own. This really resonated with me and connected with my desire to make others feel supported but still in charge of their own work. I think making sure people have autonomy is incredibly important. This mindset feels like a breath of fresh air for how to approach leadership."
The result was a visible, grounded leadership partnership that the team could rely on.
Empowering the Team
As leadership responsibilities became clearer and conversations became more structured, the team experienced stronger psychological safety and a clearer sense of direction.
Eden stepped confidently into her role. Team members understood how decisions were made. Jeff and Sophie had a shared leadership presence. And the new rhythms created more space for autonomy and ownership.
Leadership was no longer a burden carried by one person. It became a shared practice.
Planning and Hiring with Intention
With the Team Accelerator™ in place, Sonder began making decisions with clarity: hiring, onboarding, prioritizing initiatives, and planning capacity with a future-oriented lens.
"BOS❤️™ has pulled us out of the loop we were stuck in and given us a path to advance and become a better company and be stronger leaders. We now have a set of tools and a way of thinking that has corrected some aimless process and a lot of guess work."
Jeff and Sophie no longer made decisions through instinct alone, but through shared understanding of what the business needed next and how leadership should grow.
The results
Sonder’s transformation was structural, relational, and cultural — with real momentum felt early.
"We felt a shift within the first month. Even before we had everything in practice, you could feel the change in our approach on an internal level."
Structural results
Clear leadership roles and responsibilities.
Defined decision rhythms and alignment rituals.
Strategic hiring and onboarding structures.
A leadership flywheel capable of sustaining momentum.
Relational results
Jeff and Sophie transitioned into a true co-leadership partnership.
Reduced reliance on Jeff as the default decision-maker.
Stronger trust loops within the leadership team.
Cultural results
A shared language for leadership and alignment.
Rituals that prevent reactivity and support proactive communication.
Visible leadership development pathways.
A more empowered and psychologically safe team.
Personal results
Jeff experienced reduced anxiety and more strategic focus.
Sophie stepped confidently into her leadership identity.
Eden grew into a capable and supported leader.
Organizational results
Faster decision-making.
Clearer priorities.
Less friction.
Greater confidence and alignment across the team.
Postscript
What Sonder built is more than a set of tools or better meetings. It is a leadership operating system grounded in shared ownership, clear language, aligned rituals, and facilitative practice.
The most meaningful transformation was relational: the evolution of a founder–employee dynamic into a co-managing partnership capable of holding more complexity, more clarity, and more capability.
And because the system is adaptive, the benefits will continue compounding long after the engagement — the true hallmark of successful leadership transformation.