Connect. Explore. Express.
Skills and strategies only go so far. The leaders who do well in complex organisations know themselves, and they can see the system they’re standing in. Most leadership development works on the first. We work on both, in every coaching engagement, facilitation day and programme we design.
Connect. Explore. Express.
We have partnered with leaders across New Zealand for fifteen years. From first-time managers to senior executives, small leadership teams to large cross-agency groups.
Who We Work With
NZ Government & Public Sector
Professional Services
Not-for-Profits & Community Organisations
Boards & Executive Teams
Corporate & Private Sector
Cross-Agency & Sector Collaborations
Trusted by organisations across New Zealand
A deep dive into our records over the last 10 years shows us that exactly 99.3% of our clients rebook or refer us. We knew it was pretty high but to be honest even we were pleasantly surprised by it! As for the 0.7% ....they're probably still thinking about it... right?
“We are more organised and cohesive now than we have ever been. I attribute that largely to the work we did with Adam and Penny. I have worked with a lot of consultants. This was different.”
GM, Central Agency
“Honestly, I have never seen facilitation like it. The room was totally with them the whole time. Weeks later people are still talking about what shifted for them.”
SLT Member, Private Sector
“So grateful to have time together. I always leave our sessions knowing what I need to do next, and more importantly, why.”
CEO, Not For Profit
What makes the difference
01
Deep work, plainly said
We engage with real complexity. Not frameworks that look good on a slide but don’t hold up in the room.
02
Rigour without rigidity
We bring structure and method. But we hold it lightly so we can respond to what the group actually needs.
03
Designed, not delivered
Each engagement is built around your context, so it is applicable and lands with you and your people.
What we have noticed, over ten years of working together, is that the most useful moments happen when we work to hold rigour and presence together rather than choosing one over the other.
We design to ensure a runsheet creates space rather than filling it, delivering work that meets your outcomes while remaining easeful and responsive.
Some problems don’t belong to a person.
A team keeps having the same argument. A role burns through three good people in four years. A restructure goes through, and within six months the old silos are back under new names. It’s tempting to look for the person getting it wrong. Usually there isn’t one.
When something belongs to the system, working on the individual can ease it for a while. Then it turns up again, through someone else. So we help leaders see the system they’re part of: where they stand in it, what can’t be seen from where they sit, what keeps coming back and why. From there the choices get better, and a lot less personal.
It’s also what the public service is now being asked for: to think beyond the agency, at the level of the whole. We’ve been doing this work with public sector leaders for years.
We are Adam and Penny
Creative Leadership is our practice. Between us: backgrounds in law, accounting, strategy, transformational change and banking, combined with accreditations that cover all different types of coaching and facilitation.
Our clients are typically leaders who take development seriously and are carrying more than most realise. They're not looking for inspirational quotes but someone who can actually help.
We do this work because we find the complexity of what leaders carry genuinely interesting, and that hasn't changed since we first started talking about it 20 years ago.
Leaning into AI is one of the biggest leadership moves we can make: not to replace our judgment, but to deepen it. Leaders who lean into AI aren't giving up their judgment they're expanding it.
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Stay connected to the work.
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- What we are seeing (because it’s nice to know you aren’t alone)
- What’s helped (because if it helped other leaders, it’s likely to help you too)
- What’s emerging (because it’s nice to get a heads up)
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