Most leadership development asks you to step away from your work to get better at it. A course, an offsite, a programme of modules. You learn something useful, go back to your desk, and by the following week the pressure of the job has mostly won.
We start from the other end. The situations that test you as a leader are already in your diary: the Monday meeting that drifts, the decision you keep putting off, the conversation with a peer that always goes the same way. Those are where you need to be different. So that is where the practice happens.
Your work is the practice.
What that means in a normal week
A leader on one of our programmes works on one narrow topic: one situation they meet most weeks, and one change they want to make in it. Their practice is built around that situation.
In a normal week, that looks like:
- A few short moments on real work. Typically 15 to 30 minutes, three or four times a week, inside work you are already doing: trying one small move in the meeting, the one-to-one or the decision itself.
- A few minutes for the body on some mornings. Under pressure, the body reacts before we have thought anything through. A short morning practice is meant to help you notice that reaction later in the day.
- A few lines of writing. At the end of each practice day, a short note on what you tried and what you noticed.
Each practice runs for two weeks, lighter in the first week and deeper in the second. Then you look back at what changed, and the next practice takes you a step further in the same situation.
Why practise on the real thing
We build it this way for four reasons:
There is nothing to transfer. Skills learned in a classroom have to make the trip back to the job. Practice on the job starts where it needs to be.
It fits the diary. Nobody has to find two days. The time comes from moments that were going to happen anyway.
Progress is visible. When the practice is in a meeting your team attends, they are there to notice if something is different.
It is honest. A case study can always be solved in theory. Your own Monday meeting can’t. That is exactly what makes it worth practising on.
Not on your own
Practising on real work doesn’t mean doing it alone. Every practice is reviewed by a certified coach before you receive it, so it fits your situation, your time and how much you have on this fortnight. In each two-week practice you can email your coach twice, and at the end of each one you are assessed against the objectives you agreed at the start.
That is the line under our name: your work is the practice, and a certified coach reviews every one.
We are a new business and have no client results to share yet. When our founding members finish, we plan to publish their combined, anonymous results, including what didn’t work.
Where to start
If you would like to try the idea before anything else, pick one situation you meet most weeks. Write down what usually happens, and what you would like to happen instead. Then try one small change, a few times, over the next two weeks, and write a line each time.
If you would like help shaping it, book a 20-minute conversation, or join our free webinar, Steadier under pressure: building resilient leaders on real decisions, on Thursday 2026-11-05 at 05:30 PM Irish/UK time: save your place.