Masterclass in The Human Side of Work

Coaching isn’t optional. This panel reframes coaching as a critical practice for leaders of all ages and stages facing increasing complexity

Most organisations are still being run on leadership models designed for control, speed, and performance. They were built like machines; efficient, hierarchical, and measurable, while quietly expecting humans to absorb the emotional cost.

Leaders are carrying more pressure, complexity, and responsibility than ever before. Yet there are few spaces where they can slow down, reflect, or work with what they’re holding before it turns into burnout, disengagement, or fracture.

In this context, coaching is still too often introduced once something has gone wrong or to assist in achieving high performance goals.

This panel challenges that pattern.

Together, we’ll explore coaching as a proactive, human practice. Not for fixing failure, but for developing the inner capacity leaders (of all ages and stages) need to navigate complexity, discomfort, and change before systems and people break. A conversation about what it means to move from machine-style leadership toward more adaptive, connected ways of working sometimes described as a shift from pyramid to hive.

Drawing on perspectives across leadership, organisational development, behaviour, and human performance, the discussion will surface the hidden costs of the ‘always-on’ hero leader model and ask what leadership needs to become if organisations are to remain healthy, human, and fit for the future.

This is not a conversation about performance management or quick solutions. It’s about naming what many leaders already feel: that the old ways of leading aren’t enough and that coaching may be one of the few spaces where leaders can pause, think, and grow into what’s needed next.

This event is for you if…

• You sense that traditional, machine-style leadership control, speed, coping, is no longer working, but the alternative feels unclear.
• You’ve seen coaching used only after burnout, conflict, or disengagement appears, and are questioning whether waiting that long has become normalised.
• You’re tired of the ‘always-on’, all-knowing leader expectation, and want space to reflect on how leadership is actually affecting you.
• You believe leadership today requires more than technical skill, it requires emotional capacity, self-mastery, and the ability to sit with discomfort.
• You’re curious about how pain, pressure, and challenge can become catalysts for growth, rather than signals of failure.

We’ve deliberately brought together a panel with lived experience across leadership, organisational systems, behaviour, and human performance. Their combined perspectives allow us to break these ideas open in practical, grounded ways. You’ll leave with language, insights, and coaching-based tools you can apply immediately in how you lead, how you relate, and how you sustain yourself in complexity.