It was great to work with you and explore how you continue to develop from being a very good team to being an elite team. Here are the flipcharts from the session, including the combined picture of your combined personality programme preferences. I also promised to share a video reviewing each of the personality programmes. Here it is. Here is the brilliant overview of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team from Patrick Lencioni Here are three final challenges from me following work

Thank you for your support for the upcoming Business Unit Leadership Programme. As a participant's line manager, you have a significant impact on the programme's success. Please watch this short video, which highlights how you can support your people and maximise the impact the programme has. I am really looking forward to working with you during this programme. I have worked closely with the senior leadership community in the UK to design a programme that has real impact for

I am really looking forward to working with you during this programme. I have worked closely with the senior leadership community in the UK to design a programme that has real impact for leaders like you in your role and region. This page is designed to give you a flavour of what to expect from the experience and to help you get the most out of it. What to expect from the experience How to prepare to get the most from the programme Having spent time with leaders at all level

The Comfort of the Happy Sheet For years, L&D has relied on a simple signal of success. The feedback form at the end of a session. Did they enjoy it?Was it engaging?Would they recommend it? The scores come back strong. The comments are positive. The session is labelled a success. And yet, nothing really changes. The same performance issues show up again. The same conversations happen between managers and teams. The same gaps remain, just dressed in slightly better language. T

Matt and I are looking forward to meeting you on the 9th at the final stage of your partner selection process. The short video below will set up our conversation and the practical session we'll run with you. It includes a brief piece of preparation, which will help us make the most of the time we have together. We look forward to seeing you on the 9th.

There’s an odd phenomenon in culture change. People know certain things don’t work, but do them anyway because everyone else does them too. You’ve probably experienced it. The leadership team decides the culture needs to change. Energy builds and a programme gets launched. Twelve months later, not much has shifted. The intention was genuine. The approach was wrong. Here are three things that consistently knock culture change off track. It isn’t connected to the strategy Cultu

After more than thirty years working with Learning and Development teams, I’ve come to a conclusion that sometimes surprises people. Most L&D professionals don’t lack knowledge. They don’t lack experience. They don’t lack access to good models, frameworks, or ideas. What they lack are the habits that allow them to operate strategically when the pressure is on. I meet very few teams who don’t understand what good looks like. They know about performance consulting. They talk ab

Hi Team, it was great to work with you during your event in Broken Arrow. I am grateful for the welcome you gave me and for your continued commitment to the process. I appreciate that some moments during my time with you were challenging, but I strongly believe that the work we did and the time you spent together after I left have laid the foundation for a successful year and beyond. I promised some additional resources. Firstly, here are the flipcharts containing the values

Your leadership team gets on well. People are respectful, meetings run smoothly, decisions get made. By most measures, it's working. So why does something still feel slightly off? Because harmony is not the same as honesty. A team that looks aligned on the surface can be quietly, persistently pulling in different directions underneath it. Not because people are difficult, but because they've learned it's easier not to say certain things. The meeting ends. The unsaid stays uns

Every L&D professional recognises the moment. An email arrives asking for a course. A manager requests a workshop. A senior leader asks for a programme to fix a performance issue. The expectation is usually clear: design something, deliver it, and move quickly. In many organisations, that request triggers a familiar process. Learning objectives are drafted, content is designed, and dates are booked in the diary. The work moves forward efficiently and professionally. But the m

There's a pattern in almost every organisation I work with. Teams throughout the business behave like the executive team. Not a perfect copy - but recognisably similar. Close enough to matter. If the exec team collaborates well, collaboration tends to show up further down the organisation. If they operate in silos, those silos multiply. If they avoid difficult conversations, that avoidance spreads - floor by floor, team by team - until it's just "how things work around here."

Busy Does Not Always Mean Influential Not all L&D teams have the same impact. Some stay busy all year designing programmes, delivering workshops, and responding to requests from the business. Their calendars are full. Their course catalogues are impressive. Yet when major decisions are being made about performance, culture, or strategy, they often find themselves on the edge of the conversation rather than at the centre of it. Other L&D teams operate differently. They still d

Many organisations launch change programmes to improve performance. Far fewer consider the commercial cost of leading change badly. In the organisations I work with, many change initiatives are driven by the need to save money, restructure teams or introduce new systems. But when change is poorly led, the opposite of what was intended often happens. Productivity drops. Decision making slows. Good people disengage. The organisation becomes more cautious just when it needs to m

This week I facilitated a follow-up session with a in-house L&D team in a national financial services organisation. Not a launch session. Not a content-heavy workshop. A consolidation conversation. Earlier in the year, we worked together on shifting their identity from “training team” to Capability Consultants. The initial session created energy and clarity. There was strong engagement and a genuine appetite to operate more strategically. But enthusiasm in the room is never t

I am really looking forward to working with you during the upcoming Executive Team Leadership Programme. The purpose of this page is to give you a flavour of what to expect and to help you get the most from each session. While I want you to have a great experience, it is even more important to me that the programme adds value to you as a leader, to the Executive Team as a whole and to the business. Programme Outcomes As a result of applying your learning and insights, you wil

Trust is not built in town halls. It’s not built in strategy decks. At Executive level, trust is built by consistent behaviour. Quietly. Repeatedly. Especially under pressure. The Executive leaders who earn the deepest trust do three things consistently. 1. They make their trade-offs visible Every executive decision is a trade-off. Short term versus long term. Cost versus capability. Speed versus rigour. Trust grows when people understand the logic behind those trade-offs. No

I’m excited to be working with you in Broken Arrow on 9th and 10th March as part of your strategy event. Here is a short video to give you a flavour of what to expect and to help you to prepare to get the most from it. What Else? Whenever I facilitate events like this, some people arrive energised and ready to dive in. Others are less comfortable in this kind of setting. Both are completely normal. In my experience here's how you get the most from the two days: Come with an o

What Real Shift Looks Like, And Why It Matters When I launched the TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy in 2025, it wasn’t to add more content into an already crowded learning landscape. It was to change how L&D teams see themselves, and how they are seen by the business. Over the past few months, I’ve been working with an in-house L&D team who were ready to make that shift. They didn’t lack skill. They didn’t lack commitment. What they wanted was greater credibility, stronger in

In my experience, leaders rarely lose credibility in one dramatic moment. It erodes. Quietly, incrementally, unintentionally, and almost always through inconsistency. Here are three sure-fire ways for a leader to undermine their credibility. 1. Saying One Thing. Demonstrating Another. “We’re all in this together.” “People are our greatest asset.” “We care about wellbeing.” Then, 2000 redundancies are announced via email. Or bonuses are protected at the top while everyone else