One of the most common mistakes organisations make is believing that culture issues can be fixed with training. A team is not collaborating, so they get communication skills. A department is avoiding accountability, so they get a workshop on ownership. Leaders are not inspiring confidence, so they attend a leadership programme. People feel busy. L&D feels useful. Leaders feel like they have taken action. And nothing changes. Because culture is not created in classrooms. It is

It was great to work with you during your team session, albeit in challenging circumstances. I really appreciated your welcome and openness to me supporting you as you talked through the challenges of the current situation. We explored personality programmes, and I promised to send a follow-up video to help you recap on the distinctions. You can watch it below. We also touched briefly on Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. You can watch more below. One of the thin

When we ask CEOs what keeps them awake at night, succession is always in the top five. Not because they do not have talented senior managers, but because too many potential successors reach the brink of executive level without being properly prepared for it. The challenge is that if you want a strong, confident, aligned Executive Team in 12 to 18 months, you need to start developing your Execs of tomorrow today. Here are the four pillars that you must focus on to get your lea

In my experience over the past 30 years, I still observe many L&D teams spending far too much time trying to fix problems that were never really learning problems in the first place. Leaders ask for communication training, resilience workshops, or accountability sessions, and L&D responds with energy and good intent. Yet the issues they are trying to solve are almost always deeper than the request suggests. The real cause is rarely the skill the workshop was designed to addre

It was fantastic to work with you last week. Thank you for your openness and energy. Here is a reminder of the four simple commitments that you made and signed up to on the day. Here are the other flipcharts from the session. Your commitment to 'modelling the way' really will be the biggest factor in the success or otherwise of the new framework and approach to governance. I look forward to hearing more about your successes and where you've had to course correct in the months

“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” W. Edwards Deming Your organisation might say it wants empowered people. But are you creating the conditions where your people can  be empowered? Here are three practical ways to shift the system so people think for themselves, make smart decisions and take genuine ownership. 1. Make coaching 'the way you do things around here ' If you want empowered people, start with coaching. Not as a development initiative for middle mana

One of the biggest misconceptions in Learning and Development is that information leads to transformation. It does not. If it did, every organisation would be performing at a world class level because everyone has access to more information than at any other point in history. People are drowning in content. They can search, scroll, click, and consume endlessly. The problem is not a lack of knowledge. The problem is converting knowledge into action, confidence, and capability.

Does this sound familiar? Two strong teams. Talented people. Clear roles. Good leaders. Individually, they perform. But when they come together, something feels off. Decisions slow down. Conversations get defensive. Priorities clash. Problems bounce between teams instead of getting solved. Everyone is working hard. But the organisation isn’t moving at the speed and with the confidence it should. If that sounds familiar, the issue isn’t capability. It’s misalignment. And it is

When I started in Learning and Development more than thirty years ago, the focus was simple. If you delivered great content and people enjoyed the workshop, you were doing a good job. Back then, L&D was measured by the quality of the materials, the smoothness of delivery, and the number of sessions you could run in a month. Those days are gone. The organisations we support today need something very different. They need L&D teams who can diagnose real performance issues, partn

It was fantastic to work with you at Bryn Tanat Hall. Thank you for your energy, openness and insight. Here are the flipcharts from the session. Here is the full video of Patrick Lencioni speaking about his five dysfunctions of a team. It really was a pleasure to work with you. If you have any questions about anything that we covered, please don't hesitate to email me at richard@twentyoneleadership.com or call or message me on 07932725113. I hope we have the opportunity to w

It was brilliant to work with you during the Post Grad session recently. Here are the flipcharts from the session. I enjoyed exploring the wide-ranging challenges and opportunities of effective leadership with you. If you want to find out more about the topics we focused on during the day, here are three great books to read. The Leadership Challenge - Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner The Solutions Focus - Mark McKergow and Paul Z. Jackson Start With Why - Simon Sinek As always, i

You’ve probably spent a lot of time crafting your strategy. It looks good on paper, it’s been signed off by the board, and you might even have a neat one-page version for presentations. That is excellent progress. But how do you know that it will actually help your business succeed? Will it stand up to pressure when things get messy, fast, or uncertain? A strategy that only holds good in calm conditions can damage reputations, teams and businesses. I would love to help you t

Early in my career, I thought great L&D was about delivering great courses. If people enjoyed the session, learned something new, and gave me good feedback at the end, I considered that a win. Over time, I realised something important. You can deliver world-class learning, but if it isn’t connected to the organisation’s purpose and culture, it won’t stick. The impact fades, the energy drops, and people drift back to old habits. That’s when L&D becomes seen as a service provid

Hello, My name is Matt Williams and I'll be your faciliator for our upcoming Tesco IMS Capability Learning Team workshop on Wednesday 3rd December 2025. What the L&D Academy is all about The TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy is our signature development pathway for learning and development professionals. It brings together the tools, models and coaching approaches that we’ve developed through decades of working with L&D teams across leading organisations, from housing and heal

In an excellent recent article, Founder & former CEO of Ipsos Karian and Box, Ghassan Karian, nailed what many leaders miss about authenticity. “Authenticity at work isn’t about baring your soul; it’s about aligning your story, your decisions, and your follow-through so people actually believe you.” Karian's point is simple but powerful. Authentic leadership isn't a vibe or a personality trait; it's a pattern of behaviour that earns trust over time. His research with Ipsos Ka

I am really looking forward to working with you all during your team day on 20th November. The purpose of this page is to answer any questions you might have about the session I am leading and to help you prepare for it. The outcomes As a result of applying the learning and insights from the workshop, you will: Feel even more aligned as a team - strategically and culturally Understand each other even more than you already do, and feel even more ready to exploit each others' s

I’ve spent three decades in Learning and Development, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: the best learning experiences aren’t about content, slides, or clever models. They’re about connection. Some of the most powerful sessions I’ve ever run didn’t rely on a single model. They worked because people felt seen, heard, and understood. That’s empathy in action, and it changes everything. At TwentyOne Leadership, we see this every day through the L&D Academy, where