One day, two dozen leaders, a roomful of full attention — EPIC x IMPROV at Maersk

Why this day existed

The EPIC Leadership framework gives senior leaders a shared language for what great leadership feels like on the receiving end: Empathy, Purpose, Inspiration, Connection. A framework on a slide changes nothing on a Monday morning, though — which is where the partnership comes in. Amazon introduces EPIC; IMPROV turns it into lived behaviour. The deep-dive is the day where that happens.

This edition brought together 24 leaders from organisations across energy, shipping, finance, healthcare and international development — most of them strangers to each other at 9 a.m. That mix is deliberate. Practising new behaviour with people who have no fixed expectations of you is easier than practising with your own team, and the lessons travel home all the same.

What we delivered

A full day of doing, hosted at Maersk in Copenhagen. Stefan Pagels Christensen of IMPROV Communication and Andreas E. Wagner of Amazon co-facilitated, weaving the EPIC framework together with the 5 Guiding Principles of IMPROV: Yes, And · Do Not Judge Yourself · Do Not Judge Others · Embrace Failure · Make Each Other Look Good.

Participants spent the day in exercises that demand full attention, honest reaction and quick recovery — the conditions under which people actually notice their own patterns. Each person closed the day with a WISDOM commitment (What I Shall Do On Monday): one specific behaviour to change, named before leaving the room. Those who opted in then received our 30-day programme — a short prompt every Monday and a reflection every Friday, built from the group's own words.

What the participants told us

The value score landed at 6.6 out of 7 and every respondent would recommend the day. The more interesting story sits in the open answers.

Which principles resonated most. Asked which of the five spoke to them most, the room chose the one that changes conversations first.

Principle named as most resonant	Mentions
Yes, And	5
Do Not Judge Yourself	3
Do Not Judge Others	3
Make Each Other Look Good	2
Embrace Failure	1

Yes, And leading makes sense for this audience. Senior leaders are paid to evaluate, decide and fix — and the responses showed people recognising what that reflex costs. One participant committed to "listen more consciously without jumping to respond and fix." Another, asked what they noticed about themselves, answered in two words: "Yes but."

A third of the room found the same hidden habit. Nobody was asked about multitasking. Yet four of the fourteen respondents independently named it as the thing they noticed about themselves — "too little yes and, too much multitasking," as one put it. Exercises that demand complete attention have a way of revealing how rarely we give it.

The commitments reached for the calendar. The biggest WISDOM theme was check-ins and better meeting habits, followed by listening before responding and protecting time for reflection and focus. Senior leaders committing to changes inside the levers they directly control — their calendars, their meetings, their questions — is exactly the pattern that predicts follow-through.

In their own words

Listen more consciously without jumping to respond and fix. — Anonymous respondent, on what they'll do differently

More effective meetings with agenda and focus time, and creating safe space to ensure psychological safety to get more out of the meetings. — Anonymous respondent

I thought I had high EQ and I'm happy I've still good things to learn. — Anonymous respondent, on what they noticed about themselves

I need to build more psychological safety. — Anonymous respondent

Pair people up to encourage connections and conversations that would not happen otherwise. — Anonymous respondent

What happened after the room emptied

Eleven of the fourteen respondents — 79% — opted into the 30-day programme: eight short emails over four weeks, each built from the group's own survey language. Week one asks people to notice their multitasking. Week two turns the check-in commitments into one properly held conversation. Week three practises Yes, And — listening without fixing. Week four asks each person to choose one habit and give it a home in their calendar.

Every participant also received the full post-training report — the same document we normally prepare for the leadership team that commissions a training, showing which behaviours to reinforce and which commitments to ask about. For this cross-organisational group, the report went to all 24, so each leader could see how training data becomes management insight.

Bring this to your organisation

The EPIC x IMPROV deep-dive works wherever leaders need more than a framework on a slide: as a cross-organisational experience like this one, or inside a single leadership team, where the data and the 30-day follow-up land with the managers who can reinforce the change. If your organisation has met the EPIC framework through Amazon — or wants to — we deliver the day that turns it into behaviour, and the follow-up that makes it last.

Source: anonymous post-training survey, June 2026. 14 of 24 participants responded.