For leadership teams
Your leads and principals were promoted for their work, then asked to develop everyone else’s. Most were never given the toolkit. This is three hours that gives it to them — in person, eight people, two-thirds practice.
Best for: senior leadership teams — the group at the top who set the standards of communication, feedback and culture.
The hardest conversations are the ones that aren’t happening.
You already know which conversations aren’t happening.
It rarely looks like conflict. It looks like silence that everyone reads as kindness.
Someone has missed two internal deadlines.
The client work is fine. Nobody has mentioned it.
Your most capable lead keeps absorbing the work
instead of handing it back, because doing it themselves is faster. It is, once.
A review is the first time someone hears
they weren’t ready for the role they asked about six months ago.
None of this is a people problem. It’s a skills gap nobody was given a chance to close.
Three hours. Eight people. A lot of practice.
A working session, not a lecture. Roughly two-thirds of the room is your team doing the thing badly and getting told — which is the only part that changes behaviour.
- 3 hours, in person
- Up to 8 participants — the cap is deliberate, so everyone gets a real practice round
- Not recorded. People say different things when nothing is being filmed
- Printed workbooks for every participant, yours to keep
- Scenarios written for you — not generic case studies. Real situations from your organisation, anonymised
There is also a 90-minute version for individual contributors — the same four chairs, for people who need to influence without authority.
Four chairs and five questions.
Most training teaches manage-versus-coach, which is too coarse and leaves people trying to coach when they should be deciding, or worse – simply advice bombing their teams. This teaches four.
Direct
You hold the answer and the authority. For deadlines, safety, and information they don’t have.
Mentor
You hold experience they don’t. For the pattern you’ve seen before.
Coach
You hold the questions, not the answers. For when they have the capability and need the judgement.
Refer
You hold the limits of your role. The one nobody teaches, and the one people walk into believing they’re being supportive.
The skill isn’t knowing which chair you’re in. It’s saying it out loud, at the start, so the other person knows what kind of conversation they’re in.
They also leave with five questions they can hold in their head without notes, and one conversation they’ve committed to having that week — named, dated, and said in front of their colleagues.
The part most training skips.
Skills that aren’t revisited inside 60 days generally don’t stick. So the workshop isn’t the end of it.
Two group sessions follow, one a month, where people bring the conversation they actually had — or the one they avoided, which is usually more useful. We troubleshoot against your structure, not a textbook.
Included as standard. Not an upsell.
Real feedback.
“Alison’s workshop gave my cohort of senior product designers a practical way to stop jumping to solutions and lead with better questions. It was hands-on, focused and immediately useful. My members rated it an average of 4.8/5, and they were applying the techniques at work within days.”
Founder, Level Up Club · femke.design
Intimate, but scalable
Twenty years in design leadership, then an ICF-credentialed coach. Alison has crafted the foundations of this training to forge better relationships and communication across a team of leadership peers. Got a large group? I have amazing peers who co-facilitate alongside me to adapt to any scale. You will always know who is in the room before the day.
What you get.
- The three-hour workshop, in person, facilitated by Alison
- Printed workbooks for every participant
- Scenarios written from your real situations, anonymised
- Two group application sessions in the two months after
- A named, dated conversation commitment from every participant
Often added: monthly one-to-one coaching for the people doing the most of this work. Six months is the usual shape. We’ll talk about what makes sense for your people.
questions people ask
Can we have more than eight people?
Yes, with a materials cost per extra person up to 12 people. More than 12, I bring in a co-facilitator to scale the program at added cost.
Can you deliver it virtually?
The workshop is built for a room — people physically move between the four chairs, and the discomfort of a live silence is half the lesson. The follow-up sessions work fine virtually.
Is it recorded?
No, deliberately. People bring real situations and name real tensions. That stops the moment a camera is on.
Do you customise it?
Yes. The scenarios are written from a short prep call with whoever knows where the friction actually is. If we’re building a broader training experience, other modules like Feedback that Works, and Impact at Scale are great additions.
What if our managers aren’t called managers?
That’s most of the teams who book this. Leads, principals, guides, pod leaders, founders who still run projects. The less formal the authority, the more the conversation skill matters — because you can’t fall back on the org chart.
Start with a conversation.
Tell me what isn’t being said inside your team. If this is the right fit, I’ll say so. If it isn’t, I’ll tell you that too.
Form not loading? Email alison@designbydesign.co and we’ll pick it up there.