Sustainable leadership

Leadership that works

Purposeful. Intentional. Adaptable.

Leadership and the development of future and existing leaders are priorities for any organisation. But enduring myths about what makes for good leadership, combined with a lot of poor practice in leadership development, leave the space muddied and full of myths and misunderstandings.

‘Sustainable leadership’ is our campaign to bust those myths, bring the science of psychology back into the discussion, and provide organisations with leadership development solutions that actually have a positive impact.

What does it mean for leaders to be sustainable?

Firstly, it’s important to clarify that this isn’t another new model of leadership or silver bullet for your leadership challenges. We propose this instead as an overarching ethos of leadership, which should be interpreted and applied with your organisational context in mind.

When we refer to sustainable leadership, we explore what leaders think, feel and do, all through the lens of sustainability. The impact their have on their own wellbeing, the wellbeing and performance of those around them, their impact on the effectiveness of the organisation, and the impact of their decisions on society more broadly.

Learn more at our webinars

Upcoming webinars

Starting in May 2025, we’re offering a series of free webinars to expand on the themes of Sustainable Leadership. Our goal is to explain why these facets of leadership and leadership development are so crucial when it comes to individual and organisational effectiveness.

Our team will explore the relevance of various skills and qualities, explain how to create and run impactful leadership development interventions, bust myths about leadership and of course, answer all your questions about leadership. We’ll leave you with actionable insights and signpost additional digital resources, so you can make the most of the scientific evidence when developing your own leaders.

Register here

📆 Webinar schedule for 2025

Why leadership development matters

We expect a lot of our leaders! Strategic thinking, effective role-modelling, taking tough decisions, setting and reaching stretching goals, and turning a mission into tactical action each day. That’s just scratching the surface!

So if we’re going to place such a diverse set of demands on their to-do lists, let’s ensure we provide them with the resources they need to do a great job. This is where high quality leadership development comes in. Rather than swooping in with support once leaders have hit the buffers and need professional help, we advocate preventative support to ensure they avoid burnout and can leverage their skills to best effect.

Leadership development can act as an innoculation against the pressures of the job, the impact of change, and the extra-organisational context that can disrupt even the best-laid plans. Well designed and implemented leadership development can support new leaders as they step into role, and existing leaders as they pick up more responsibility. Leadership development that’s designed with the organisational context in mind means it addresses the skills, knowledge and personal attributes you require. Not what the latest fad suggests you need.

Well-crafted leadership development addresses both strengths and development needs, includes intra-personal as well as inter-personal skills and abilities, and ensures that a sustainable style of decision-making and behaviour is reinforced at every turn.

Our approach to leadership development

We design our leadership development solutions with the client’s context and strategy in mind. We don’t do ‘off the shelf’ training, nor do we recycle truisms from the distant past of leadership theory. As scientists, we emphasise putting the scientific evidence to work, creating solutions and interventions that actually have a positive impact. Regardless of the context, we ensure our leadership development solutions are built around three key pillars – each of which makes a unique contribution to leadership impact and success:

Intra-personal skills

These include the key components of self-awareness and self-knowledge. Values, personality, motivators, and yes, fears, worries and self-doubt. But also how to overcome limiting beliefs and focus on what matters. How to overcome discomfort and cultivate a better relationship with their own mind.

Inter-personal skills

This is all about helping leaders to interact with those around them in a way that supports positive relationships, collaboration, psychological safety and high performance. With a constant theme of the sustainability and impact of how they communicate with and lead others.

Contextual awareness

This gives aspiring and existing leaders an awareness of the central importance of context when it comes to decision-making and interacting with others. Whether that’s the present moment or the wider economic landscape, they’ll understand the importance of systemic thinking.

Sustainable leadership blog posts

How we can help

Leadership coaching

Coaching represents a core component of tailored leadership development support. Working with an effective coach gives aspiring and existing leaders an opportunity to discuss their needs, concerns, plans and reflections in confidence. As we often say to clients, your coach is the last person you should be trying to impress! Leaders can be their most open and honest, working on the intra-personal skills that remove inner obstacles and unleash their potential.

Coaching also compliments group-level leadership development initiatives, giving delegates space and time to address development needs not covered by the core curriculum and support as they apply their learning from the wider programme.

Our leadership coaches are experienced, accredited and expertly qualified to support leaders on their development journey. We’ve coached CEOs, leadership teams, high potential leadership candidates and the leaders of the future in graduate cohorts. We bring an effective combination of support, accountability, psychological science and coaching skills to maximise impact and equip leaders with the skills they need to navigate their environments successfully.

Click here to find out more about our approach to coaching.

Development Programmes

We can work with you to design and deploy a bespoke leadership development programme. Aligned against your strategy and values, built upon your leadership competencies, and meeting the development needs of your aspiring or existing leadership community.

We have created and run leadership programmes worldwide and we’re very familiar with the need to flex content and interactions to meet the needs of a diverse audience. We’ve worked with leaders in organisational contexts as differing as creative studios, investment banks, telecoms businesses and internet start-ups.

We can host programmes on our own learning platform, giving your delegates a one-stop-shop for digital resources, a calendar of events, interactive chat and regular updates from our team. Programmes are designed to allow for learning of new concepts and skills, experimentation with their application, reflection on their impact and incorporation into delegates’ leadership toolkits.

Programmes can be run face-to-face, remotely, or a combination of the two. We can build in one-to-one coaching sessions, ‘Office Hours’ sessions for questions and clarification, and applied projects that will have a measurable impact on your business.

Training workshops

Whether you have an existing leadership development initiative, or you’re starting from scratch, we can create and run a series of leadership skills workshops. They cover the core themes of contextual awareness, intra-personal skills and inter-personal skills. They include learning how to effectively deal with self doubt, cultivating a culture of psychological safety, how to cope with pressure and stress, how to navigate challenging relationships and how to overcome procrastination and boost productivity.

Our workshops focus on providing context, new skills and an opportunity to reflect and apply new learning. Of course, all are based on sound science, avoiding fads and fashions, and led by experienced workplace psychologists who are adept at translating science into interactive, challenging and enthusing learning experiences.

Strategic support and advice

Whether you have an existing leadership development programme or you’re just dipping your toes into the area, we’d love to support you. We can help you evaluate your existing leadership development activities, identify gaps in your programme, clarify development needs and signpost impactful, evidence-based learning solutions.

We can help you clarify your requirements, build solutions to meet development needs, introduce development interventions and support you with employee communications.

Our leadership development team

Dr. Richard A. MacKinnon

Chartered Psychologist & Coach

Find out more about Richard.

Dr. Wayne Mullen

Organisational Psychologist & Coach

Find out more about Wayne.

Dr. Rachael Skews

Chartered Psychologist & Coach

Find out more about Rachael.

Ross McIntosh

Business Psychologist & Coach

Find out more about Ross.

Get in touch!

We’d love to see you at one of our upcoming online events. But we’d also be happy to answer your questions offline and meet in person to find out more about your requirements and how we might be able to take your leadership development to the next level.

Get in touch today!