Six commitments, and one of them costs us work
This is the method, written down so you can hold us to it. The sixth is the one that occasionally loses us the next engagement.
01Diagnose before designing
Interviews, an observed meeting and a validated baseline. In fourteen of the last twenty executive engagements the diagnostic contradicted the brief we were given, and that is the point of doing it.
02Contract with the manager
For any cohort programme, the participant’s line manager attends the first and last session and agrees two support commitments. This is the part clients most often ask to cut and the part we hold.
03Use evidence that has held up
Deliberate practice, feedback specificity, measured psychological safety. No MBTI, no colour-based typologies, and a plain explanation of why when you ask for them.
04Practise between sessions
A fortnightly practice pair, with two observable commitments each cycle. Behaviour changes between the sessions or it does not change at all.
05Measure on the same instrument
Baseline and repeat, at ninety days and twelve months, on the identical measure. Changing the instrument between measurements is how development work manufactures good news.
06Report what did not work
Every closing report names what did not move. On the NHS cohorts, two of 62 participants declined on the 360 and both are in the report.
Why the instrument must not change between measurements
The most common way development work manufactures good news is to baseline on one measure and report on another. An engagement survey at the start, a bespoke end-of-programme questionnaire at the finish, and a chart showing improvement that compares nothing to nothing.
We baseline and repeat on the identical instrument, at ninety days and again at twelve months where the client will fund it. Where the second measurement is not funded we say in the closing report that the result is unmeasured, rather than implying it.
For voice and safety we use a validated scale rather than an engagement survey, because engagement measures how people feel about working somewhere and tells you very little about whether they will raise a problem. Those two come apart in the specific direction that gets boards surprised.
What we use, and what we will not
- Deliberate practice with an observer, not one-off skills teaching
- Feedback specificity: behaviour, situation, effect
- Psychological safety measured on a validated scale
- Five-factor traits reported as percentiles with confidence bands
- 360 feedback on the same instrument at start and finish
- Not MBTI, and not colour-based typologies
Start with the diagnostic, not the programme
Six weeks of interviews and a baseline measure, and a written finding — including the finding that the problem is structural and a development programme will not touch it. We have delivered that one twice.