Whether we are working with one leader, a team, a whole function or a whole company, we focus on the same three areas: Grow Your Inner Game, Build Epic Relationships and Elevate Your Impact. This is where we make the biggest difference to how people think, work together and perform.
We call this the Inner Leader OS™, short for operating system. It sits underneath every programme we run, whether that is leadership development, a team day, sales training or coaching for one person.
It comes from what we have seen again and again in our work with people. How people think drives how they behave. How they behave decides the quality of their relationships. And the quality of those relationships decides what a team can achieve together.
Every programme works on all three areas. The balance changes with the work: coaching for one leader leans towards the inner game, and a sales programme leans towards impact.
The work a person does on themselves.
Behaviour is driven by thinking. Before anyone changes how they show up, they need to notice what they do now and understand why they do it. This is where Everything DiSC, the personality profiling tool we use, starts: each person sees their own style, what matters to them and what causes them stress before they look at anyone else's.
People understand their own reactions and choose how they respond.
The work that happens between people.
Relationships determine performance. A team that can raise difficult issues openly and support each other gets more done than a group of talented people working alone. This area covers how people communicate, give feedback, handle conflict and build trust.
People raise difficult issues sooner, and their working relationships hold.
The difference a person makes to the people and results around them.
This is what the first two areas are for. It is the part a sponsor can see from the outside, because it shows up in decisions, sales, team performance and culture.
Leaders, teams and salespeople get better results and a stronger response from the people around them.
We call this the Inner Leader Development Cycle. Every programme is designed around it.
Change starts with information a person does not already have, often how they are experienced by the people around them.
Once someone sees the gap between what they meant and how it landed, the way they think about how they work starts to shift.
New thinking shows up as a different choice in a real moment, such as asking a question where you would normally have given the answer.
Other people respond to the new behaviour, and that response is where performance improves.
Looking back at what worked helps new habits hold under pressure. It is why our longer programmes are spaced across months, with practice between sessions.
The same cycle runs through our Leadership Impact 360, where the awareness at step one comes from confidential conversations with the people a leader works with most closely.
These are the things we believe about people. Each one shapes what we do in a session.
So we work on the thinking behind a behaviour as well as the behaviour itself.
Awareness comes first in every programme we run, and it often comes from the people around you.
Trust in a team grows through many small, everyday conversations.
Amy Edmondson's research at Harvard links psychological safety to how well teams learn and perform, so we create it early in every session.
Anders Ericsson's research showed that skills grow through focused practice with feedback, which is why our sessions are built around practice and feedback.
Most of a leader's impact comes from ordinary meetings, conversations and decisions, so that is where we focus the work.
Inner Leader have been a fantastic partner and catalyst to drive trust and high performance throughout my team. We were a brand-new team of 30 plus members, many of us had never worked together or even met before. What a transformation! We are now a motivated and high-performing team where we all know and support each other and have a culture of openness and trust.
Dr Sydney TavernHead of New Categories Consumable Technology
That team shows the three areas working together: self-awareness first, then trust and openness, then the performance the business noticed.
The Inner Leader OS™ is the operating model behind every Inner Leader programme. It has three areas: Grow Your Inner Game (self-awareness and mindset), Build Epic Relationships (trust, feedback and communication between people) and Elevate Your Impact (influence, decisions and results). Every programme works on all three, in different proportions.
No. The Inner Leader OS™ is the approach behind every Inner Leader programme, so you meet it in whichever programme you choose, from a team day to one-to-one coaching.
Inner Leader's approach starts from how people think, because thinking drives behaviour. Programmes draw on adult learning and behavioural psychology, including Everything DiSC for self-awareness, research on psychological safety and practice with feedback, so people try new behaviour in a supported setting and keep using it at work.
Yes. The same three areas apply whether Inner Leader is coaching one leader, developing a team or working across a whole function or company. One-to-one coaching usually leans towards the inner game, and team and sales programmes lean towards relationships and impact.
Tell us what is going on with your team, and we will tell you where we would start. We reply within one business day.
