Upgrading how your people think, sell & lead.

• September 2026

  People often ask us what the ingredients of a high performing team are.

  We all want the hack. The tried and tested recipe we can follow.

  We do have a trusted recipe for team development, but we adjust the quantities with every team we work with.

  Read the full post

  There is of course a difference between a team recipe and one for a cake. Eggs and flour behave the same way every time. People do not.

  How a team comes together depends on what each person believes about themselves, about their colleagues and about teamwork.

  That’s why, as part of the Toxicology team performance journey, at BAT, we started by exploring those beliefs. How beliefs drive performance and also how they can inhibit and hold back individual performance.

  One participant shared “there were aspects covered in this session that I had never thought about before”.

  So true, how many of us actually stop to think about our thinking?

  Our workshops provide that space and facilitation to do exactly that.

  And yes we did cover:

  •⁠ ⁠how to give and receive feedback

  •⁠ ⁠how to create psychological safety for each other

  •⁠ ⁠how to show up and hold accountability – all widely agreed as key ingredients of team performance

  The Inner Leader difference is that every person left the workshop knowing what will help them translate those skills into everyday behaviours.

  “The session really made me think about myself, how I behave and where I can improve. Now I have a list of behaviours I can immediately put in action.”

  Special thanks to Maryam Eshrati, PhD, Marc Gunn and Harry Carpenter for championing this day for your respective teams. Thanks also to Summer Hanna, Jennifer Margham, Chloe Winnington, Colin Davies & Lorna Reynolds for your videos of being human - sharing where you've been above or below the line.

• September 2026

  Big shout out to the Western Europe IDT (Information & Digital Technology) Leadership Team at BAT, who came together in London recently for another two-day offsite with Inner Leader.

  It was exactly one year since we first met for their 2-day workshop (Phase 1) of the programme.

  Read the full post

  Over the past year we have accelerated progress with each leadership team member receiving 1:1 coaching. (Phase 2)

  This latest 2-day offsite (Phase 3) started with everyone sharing the changes they have made in how they communicate, how they lead and how they motivate and manage their teams.

  Many of them credited the Everything DiSC: psychometric as one of the main insights that changed how they understand themselves and their team around them.

  They also shared how powerful it has been to lean into vulnerability... and how that opens up the space for more open, honest and challenging conversations in their teams.

  Phase 3 was built around the principles Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

  Through a series of activities and simulations the team explored:

  🔹 Creating win-win

  🔹 The emotional bank account

  🔹 Listening to understand

  🔹 Synergising, not to be confused with compromising

  The annual engagement survey results tell the rest of the story:

  - The team's engagement index has climbed from 82 to 88 in 12 months, now topping the regional tables.

  - NPS has risen across 4 consecutive surveys. And when their teams were asked to rate the leadership team's effectiveness, the score came back at 4.6 out of 5.

  The words their people used to describe them as leaders? Collaborative. Supportive. Approachable. Willing to listen.

  What do these leaders attribute these epic results to?

  Their commitment to people-centred leadership, fuelled by the Inner Leader programme.

  Special thanks to Magdalena Pekalska for continuing to invest in her leadership team evolution.

  Huge respect for the determination each leader has shown to lean into topics that aren't at first comfortable or obvious to them. It is clear to see that your shift to focus on people over deliverables has led to better results. 🙌

  Looking forward to seeing where year three takes this team...and the annual survey results of course! 😉

• September 2026

  Big shout out to the R&D team at Arbex, (previously Kimberly-Clark) who joined me on Tuesday for the third and final session of their 'Communicating with Impact' programme.

  We had 25 people on the call, dialling in from the UK, France, Hungary, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia. A 2-hour power session on building an authentic personal brand.

  Read the full post

  We started where we left off. BLOT, the 3 Whats, 20 words or fewer per sentence, and using purposeful pauses instead of an "umm".

  Then we got into the bit people rarely make time for - personal brand.

  Jeff Bezos said, "Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room". Right now there are rooms you are not in, and people are using words to describe you. That's your brand.

  I asked for a show of hands, how many had ever written anything down about their own personal brand? 5 went up.

  We looked at:

  🔹 What you stand for - your values, your beliefs, why you do what you do

  🔹 How you show up - your behaviour, your energy, your presence

  🔹 What value you create - the difference that happens because you're in the team

  When organisational change happens, it really helps to stand out and be seen for the excellent person you are. This is why defining your personal brand (and making yourself visible) is so important.

  Here's what a few of them wrote on the feedback forms:

  "Makes me stop and think at the whole picture, something I don't normally do"

  "People buy people first. I'd never really thought this way before, this will change how to approach stakeholder relationships going forward."

  "The experience of this programme has been transformational in my role. I'm becoming a more confident communicator."

  "10 out of 10 to Tim!" (We'll take that! 😊 )

  They scored the session 8.5/10 for value, and 8.7/10 for whether they'd recommend it to a colleague.

  Big thanks to Federico Pasquini and Guillaume Brunetfor making this programme available to the whole global team. 👏

  The feedback we get is consistently the same: the sessions are engaging, and the tools and techniques are practical enough to use immediately.

  If you are a leader and want to empower your global team with a virtual people-development programme, drop us a message and let's start a conversation...

Everything we do works on three areas: Grow Your Inner Game, Build Epic Relationships and Elevate Your Impact. Read about our approach.