Artistic illustration of a person standing on a modern urban walkway with tall glass skyscrapers in the background and green plants to the side.

Leadership Training

Executive Leadership
Development Program

The truth is — leadership is a learned practice.

It’s the art of driving purpose, empowering people, and shaping systems — in service of the outcomes that matter most.

And it starts with self-awareness, insight, and the willingness to grow.

Promoting someone doesn’t make them a leader.

(Yikes — you know it when that charismatic new director just… can’t lead.)

Because leadership isn’t about having a title. It’s about the human skills that drive business results —communication, emotional agility, integrity.

And those don’t come from authority or osmosis.

They come from insight. Self-awareness. Honest feedback. Practice, support, and time.

So ask yourself:

Are your leaders inspiring commitment?
Are your teams innovating?
How full is your leadership bench?

If you're ready to invest in the kind of leadership that drives your next level of success — we can help.

Let’s build something structured, strategic, and ready to scale with your business in Central Texas.

The Leadership System®: Structured, Scalable, and Strategic

The most successful organizations don’t just promote people into leadership roles and hope for the best.

They invest in leadership capacity at every level — because leadership effectiveness is directly tied to business performance.

We deliver The Leadership System® — a proven, structured, and fully customizable executive leadership development program.

This isn’t a one-time workshop or quick fix. It’s a dynamic, cohort-based 9 to 12 months experience designed to create measurable, lasting transformation.

Wondering if it’s worth it?

The Payoff — What Better Leadership Looks Like with the Leadership System:

  • Self-awareness and confidence

  • Peer accountability and collaboration

  • Systems thinking and strategic capacity

  • Resilience in the face of challenge

  • Courageous, clear communication

  • Stronger leadership pipelines

  • Deep relationship and trust-building

  • Ability to navigate tension

What Our Curriculum Integrates:

Let’s Build Your Next Generation of Leaders

If you're ready to bring a proven, research-based executive leadership development program to your organization, let’s talk.

Whether you're exploring C-suite executive training, CEO development, or cross-functional leadership initiatives, we’ll tailor a solution that fits.

We’ll help you design a customized solution that supports the growth of your people, your culture, and your results.

From managers to directors, VPs to CEOs —
our executive development program delivers real growth,
— not just hard-hitting PowerPoints

What We Accomplish

Our executive leadership development program puts the pieces together for small to mid-sized organizations in Austin and Central Texas — with a focus on:

‣ Strategic clarity

‣ Emotional agility

‣ Bold, clear communication

‣ Organizational foresight

Whether you’re launching a CEO leadership training program, building a C-suite development initiative, or elevating your leadership training curriculum, the Leadership System® adapts to your needs — scaling with your team, your structure, and your goals.

Where We Train

Our leadership development programs are most impactful when delivered in person. We partner with organizations across Austin and Central Texas, with hybrid models and travel contracts available when needed.

Curious how this plays out across real business scenarios?

Why Executive 360° Coaching?

Because we don’t just teach leadership — we’ve lived it.

Founder Ellen Lindsey, LCSW, brings decades of experience as an entrepreneur, executive leader, and human development expert. She’s led organizations through complexity and growth and brings unmatched warmth, insight, and clarity to every engagement:

  • VP development for rising senior talent

  • Cross-functional leadership growth

  • Founder and executive development, during rapid growth and change

The Real Reasons
Leadership Training Often Fails

You’ve probably seen it.

A team goes off to a leadership retreat. (And, offsites are fun, right?) They get pumped, take notes, even post a selfie with a flip chart.

And then… nothing changes.

That’s not because the workshop was bad. It’s because PowerPoints and slide decks don’t rewire behavior.

Real leadership change requires insight, feedback, and the guts to practice something new — especially when the pressure’s on. That’s what’s missing from most leadership training.

82% managers can't lead pictograph

Most Managers Were Never Trained to Lead

According to Gallup, 82% of people in managerial roles aren’t equipped with the leadership capabilities their teams need — largely because they never received formal development.

Source: Gallup, 2023

And let’s be honest:

Is your boss teaching insight, offering or asking for feedback, giving you the encouragement to practice something new?

Is your HR director modeling effective leadership?

Are your managers getting the kind of real-time leadership support that actually builds capacity?

Great leadership doesn’t start with strategy — it starts with self.

When leaders develop self-awareness and lead with integrity, they generate the clarity, trust, and alignment that move people and systems toward what really matters.

What Makes This Executive Leadership Development Program Different —

Real change. Not just cool concepts.

We measure the outcomes of this program in real business terms:

  • Leaders communicate with greater clarity and presence

  • Teams navigate conflict and decisions with more confidence

  • Organizations retain talent, strengthen culture, and move with more agility

The Leadership System

Want this kind of change for your leaders?

Participants leave the our Leadership System program with:

  • Greater resilience and emotional intelligence

  • Practical tools for communication, feedback, and alignment

  • A healthier, more confident relationship with uncertainty and pressure

But more than anything, they leave better equipped to inspire, empower and drive.

From Assessment to Impact: The Leadership System in Action

  • Illustration of three stylized people inside a circle, overlaid on a graph with an upward trend arrow, symbolizing teamwork and growth.

    Step One: Assess & Align

    Begin with a full-circle view of where your leaders and teams are today.

    We start with Leadership Circle Profile® (LCP) assessments for individuals and Collective Leadership Assessment® (CLA) for teams.

    These tools reveal key strengths, blind spots, and reactive tendencies that shape your organization’s leadership patterns.

    From there, we co-create personal and team development plans that guide the journey ahead.

    ▸ Define personal and organizational growth goals based on real feedback

    ▸ Establish a confidential peer cohort and coaching container

  • Illustration of three stylized figures interacting with gears, sliders, and an upward arrow, symbolizing teamwork, progress, and data management.

    Step Two: Activate Growth in Cohort Courses

    Engage in deep, applied learning with a cohort of peers.

    Participants meet in structured cohorts every 4–6 weeks for interactive sessions grounded in real-world leadership challenges. These sessions integrate personal development, peer coaching, and practical application — all supported by tailored leadership plans and expert facilitation.

    ▸ Participate in candid discussions and reflective dialogue

    ▸ Use Immunity to Change mapping to reveal hidden barriers to growth

    ▸ Practice new behaviors in real settings — reflect, refine, repeat

  • Illustration showing collaboration and teamwork with figures holding flags, meeting around a table, pushing a gear, and speaking at a podium.

    Step Three: Measure What Matters

    Track growth with data that tells the real story.

    We use PULSE™ Surveys at key milestones — baseline, midpoint, and close — to measure change in leadership effectiveness, engagement, and culture. These insights show how leaders are growing and how the investment is translating into business outcomes.

    ▸ Apply strategic and relational tools in live leadership contexts

    ▸ Shift limiting beliefs with ongoing support and accountability

    ▸ Benchmark progress with structured 360 feedback and pulse data

ready to build a leadership program that actually moves the needle? Let's talk.

Six Foundations for Leadership that Scales

Built for executive coaching, team collaboration, and long-term development

1: Creative Leadership

Leaders step beyond reaction to lead with vision, courage, and a commitment to possibilities — not just problems.

2: Deep Relationship

High-performing teams are built on trust, transparency, and the ability to engage in real, sometimes difficult, conversations.

3: Radical Humanity

Leadership requires showing up as a full, imperfect human — modeling authenticity, emotional intelligence and resilience.

4: Higher Purpose

Strong leadership aligns daily actions with the organization's deeper mission — helping people connect their work to something greater than themselves.

5: Systematized Development

Growth isn't left to chance. It’s built into the operating rhythm — making leadership development a constant, not a one-off.

6: Generative Tension

Disagreement and discomfort aren’t problems to avoid — they are raw material for innovation and insight, when skillfully navigated.

Leadership doesn’t scale by simply promoting more people into leadership roles.

It scales by creating a culture where leadership qualities are nurtured broadly — where more people are empowered to think strategically, act with intention, and influence outcomes as the organization grows.

True scalability isn’t just about skill-building. It requires a shift from individual success to collective capacity — and a commitment to embedding leadership development into the rhythm of how work gets done.

That’s why The Leadership System® is built around six core capacities that drive meaningful, sustainable growth. These foundations support scalable leadership training in Austin and beyond.

Strong leadership doesn’t just happen. It’s intentionally built.

Want to grow leaders who can grow your business?

Why Invest in Executive Leadership Development?

Today’s leaders are navigating nonstop change — evolving markets, hybrid teams, rapidly advancing technologies, and relentless performance demands. Add to that volatile economies and chaotic political climates. Most leaders haven’t been equipped to lead through this kind of complexity.

The skills needed to meet these challenges — self-awareness, communication, resilience, and strategic clarity — aren’t taught in business school. And your managers and directors are unlikely to facilitate the kind of deep, adult development today’s leadership demands.

That’s why executive coaching and leadership training are no longer luxuries reserved for high-level CEOs. They’re essential investments for any organization wanting to grow, adapt, and lead into the future.

What Great Leadership Training Actually Builds:

‣ Self-awareness to lead with clarity and intention

‣ Communication skill to hold hard conversations and inspire accountability

‣ Vision to align people around meaningful goals

Whether you're preparing a VP for the C-suite or strengthening cross-functional collaboration, real growth starts from the inside out.

Why investing in leadership isn’t optional anymore

Effective leadership development programs help:

‣ Retain and grow top talent

‣ Improve strategic decision-making

‣ Scale culture as the company grows

‣ Prepare high-potential leaders for next-level roles

Our curriculum supports leaders in Austin and Central Texas looking to rise above reactivity — and lead with vision, clarity and impact.

Experiential Learning Theory

The Learning Cycle That Drives Sustainable Leadership Growth

Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle diagram with four stages: Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization, and Active Experimentation. Arrows show the cyclical process of learning.

We aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel…we are making sure it turns.

At the core of The Leadership System is Experiential Learning Theory, based on David Kolb’s four-stage cycle:

  1. Concrete Experience
    Engaging directly with new challenges or situations

  2. Reflective Observation
    Taking time to examine and understand the experience

  3. Abstract Conceptualization
    Developing new insights, strategies, or mental models

  4. Active Experimentation
    Applying new approaches and testing them in the real world

The Leadership System® embeds this cycle into every component of the program, enabling leaders to:

  • Engage in real-world business challenges that are relevant and meaningful

  • Reflect collaboratively through peer coaching and guided discussion

  • Translate insights into actionable leadership strategies

  • Apply and iterate — testing new behaviors and receiving ongoing feedback

This approach turns theory into practice — and practice into transformation.

Removing Internal Barriers to Growth

Change doesn’t stick until we understand what resists it.

That’s why The Leadership System® integrates the “Immunity to Change” model (Kegan & Lahey) — a powerful framework for identifying the hidden commitments and subconscious mindsets that block real progress.

These internal “immunities” act as defense mechanisms, often protecting the status quo even when we consciously want to grow. Left unaddressed, they stall leadership development and keep old patterns in place.

Just like our Professional Development program, The Leadership System is designed to facilitate profound personal and professional transformation — by getting underneath resistance, not just working around it.

Through an immersive, cohort-based experience, participants:

  • Surface and explore the real reasons they resist change

  • Map personal and collective “immunity to change” patterns

  • Practice shifting those patterns in real time — supported by coaching and peer dialogue

This work enables leaders to move beyond insight into lasting transformation — grounded in experience, feedback, and self-awareness.

Want a development experience that

actually rewires leadership habits?

You don’t need another offsite.

You need a development strategy that actually grows leaders — and business capacity — over time.

Let’s design a solution that fits your goals, your people, and your organization’s future.