Leading With Impact

Why teams run this

How much of the team’s work still runs through one person? For a lot of experienced managers the honest answer is most of it. The inbox is full at eight in the evening, the awkward client is handled personally, and output quality dips whenever that manager takes leave. They were promoted because they were good at the work, and nobody ever sat them down and explained that the work had changed.

The second symptom shows up in what does not happen. The underperformer who has been quietly carried for a year. The team member who heard about a reorganisation from someone in another department. The project handed over with so many caveats attached that it lands back on the manager’s desk within a fortnight. These are not character flaws, they are missing habits. Experienced managers usually recognise good leadership when they see it. What they have rarely had is two days to practise it while someone watches closely enough to tell them what actually landed.

What happens in the room

Most of the time is spent practising rather than listening. Participants complete a DISC behavioural profile before the workshop, and the opening session is spent making sense of it: how your style reads to other people, and what it hardens into when you are under pressure. From there the group works on situations participants have brought with them. Everyone arrives with two real cases from their own team, one about setting direction and one about a conversation they have been putting off.

Difficult conversations take up a large part of the second day. Participants run the conversation in a small group with an observer and with Louisa, stop at the point where it goes wrong, then run it again differently. It is uncomfortable the first time and genuinely useful by the third. Nothing is filmed and nothing is scored. Feedback is given straight away, in the room, and is specific about what was said and how it was received.

• A DISC profile completed beforehand, debriefed one to one during the first day
• Practice rounds on the participants’ own cases, with live feedback after each round
• A delegation exercise that separates the task from the decisions that go with it
• Input blocks of ten to fifteen minutes, never longer, always followed by application
• A structured planning slot at the close of each day

What people leave with

Everyone leaves with a written plan rather than a folder of notes they will never reopen. The plan names three specific shifts, states who in the team will notice each one, and identifies what the manager will stop doing to make room for them. Louisa reviews every plan before the group closes, so nobody leaves with three vague intentions.

• A 90-day leadership plan, written in the room and shareable with their own manager
• Their DISC profile plus a one-page read of how that style shows up in their team
• The conversation preparation template used during the practice rounds
• Agreed team working rules, where a full management team attends together

Making it stick

Two days of practice fades if nothing follows it, which is why the programme does not end when the room empties. Participants can book optional one-to-one coaching sessions with Louisa in the weeks afterwards, used mostly for the conversation they are about to have rather than for general reflection. Groups can add a 60-day check-in, and this one runs as half a day rather than the ninety minutes used on the shorter programmes, because two days of practice leaves more to review: which shifts held, which slipped, and what has arrived since. Where a whole layer of management is being trained, Louisa briefs their directors beforehand on what is being asked of them, so the expectations are shared rather than a surprise. Most training is forgotten because nobody ever asks about it again. This is built to be asked about.