Most leadership courses hand you a binder and a motivational quote. Ours puts you in a room with twelve peers, a real strategic challenge, and seventy-two hours to solve it. The skills stick because the stakes feel real.
Reserve your cohort seat
We follow a four-phase structure. Each phase has a clear deliverable, so you leave with work product, not just notes.
Before the cohort meets, every participant completes a 40-minute structured interview with one of our facilitators. We map your decision-making defaults, your team's feedback patterns, and the strategic question you are wrestling with right now. This is not a personality quiz. It produces a six-page briefing document that your cohort peers will read before day one.
Twelve leaders, one facilitator, a single complex problem drawn from a real organisation (anonymised, with permission). You rotate through roles: sponsor, challenger, analyst, decision-maker. By hour 48, your group has produced a strategic recommendation. By hour 72, you have pressure-tested it against two outside panels. Sleep is optional but meals are very good.
Back in your own organisation, you apply the frameworks from the sprint to the strategic question identified in your diagnostic. Fortnightly one-hour calls with a peer pair keep you accountable. Your facilitator reviews written progress memos at the four-week and eight-week marks, providing written feedback within 48 hours each time.
A half-day session, either in person or on video, where each participant presents outcomes. What worked, what didn't, what surprised you. The cohort then becomes a permanent peer network with quarterly optional meetups. We have cohorts from 2015 that still meet.
Three formats, each built around the same immersion methodology. Pick the one that fits your seniority level and schedule.
For directors, VPs and functional heads who want cross-industry peer exposure. Cohorts run four times a year at our Wales residential centre. Twelve participants per cohort, drawn from different sectors. Fee includes accommodation, meals, all materials and three months of follow-up coaching calls.
Designed for an intact leadership team or board. We run the immersion on-site at your offices or at a venue of your choice. The case study is built from your own strategic challenges (with appropriate confidentiality safeguards). Ideal when a new CEO joins or after a major restructure.
For senior managers identified as future board members. Same rigour as the open cohort, but with an added 360-feedback module and a mentoring pairing with an alumnus from a previous cohort. Participants must be nominated by their organisation's CHRO or CEO.
We track our own outcomes, but independent studies back the approach too.
Improvement in strategic decision quality among leaders who completed cohort-based immersion programmes, measured six months post-training.
McKinsey Quarterly, "Developing leaders who can lead," 2022Return on investment reported by organisations that pair leadership training with structured on-the-job application (versus classroom-only formats).
Bersin by Deloitte, "High-Impact Leadership," 2021Of our own alumni rated the programme "directly applicable to a live business challenge" in the 2024 annual survey (n = 312 respondents).
Exec Lead Mastery internal survey, March 2024The open cohort is designed for people who carry strategic accountability: directors, VPs, general managers, and functional heads. Job title matters less than the scope of your decisions. If you regularly make choices that affect more than 50 people or more than £2m in revenue, you will find peers operating at a similar level.
Open cohorts run at a converted farmhouse near Brecon in Wales. Single-occupancy rooms, a working kitchen, and enough whiteboard space to wallpaper a house. Private board programmes can run at your own offices or a venue you choose; we handle the logistics either way.
We cap it at two from the same company. The value of the cohort depends on diverse perspectives, and loading it with colleagues from one firm dilutes that. If you want to train a larger group together, the private board programme is the better fit.
Cancel more than 30 days before the sprint and we refund everything except a £500 diagnostic fee (because by that point we have already conducted your interview and produced your briefing). Inside 30 days, you can transfer your place to the next cohort once at no extra cost. No-shows forfeit the full fee.
No. We tested a virtual format in 2020 and the outcomes were measurably weaker. The residential sprint depends on uninterrupted time together: shared meals, late-night whiteboard sessions, the kind of candour that only happens when you are physically in the same room. The follow-up coaching calls are on video, but the sprint itself stays in person.
Fill in the form and we will reply within two working days with available cohort dates and a short pre-qualification call invitation. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Phone: 0800 993 5728
Email: [email protected]
Post: 387 Orchard Road, Gulgowski-over-Anderson-Bruen, Wales, PD91 9LV, United Kingdom