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One thing we have observed in the last 20 years is that skills and strategies only go so far. The leaders working the best are navigating complexity because they know themselves well enough to lead others honestly. That is the work we love and it's what every coaching engagement, facilitation day, and programme we design is built around.
Who we work with
For more than a decade we have partnered with leaders across New Zealand from first-time managers to senior executives, small leadership teams to large cross-agency groups.
NZ Government & Public Sector
Not-for-Profits & Community Organisations
Corporate & Private Sector
Professional Services
Boards & Executive Teams
Cross-Agency & Sector Collaborations
Trusted by organisations across New Zealand
Three ways to work with us
Whether you need one-on-one support, a structured programme for your team,
or practical tools to use independently we can help.
One-to-one work at the moments that matter. New roles. Sustained pressure. A season where something needs to shift. We've done it all and how we are here to support you through it. We work with who you actually are, not a template someone else filled out.
If you want to work with us, be prepared for us to want to design a session that moves something months of meetings haven't. Or a multi-session programme built around your organisation's actual moment where we safely stretch your leaders into new territories.
We don't arrive with a kit. We design for you.
Leadership Tools
A decade of frameworks and thinking available to download and use. We decided we had too much sitting on our laptops and wanted to give you access. Mostly free. Some you can buy. Built for real conditions, not a course curriculum. A great way to support and test out how we work before engaging with us.
What makes the difference
What we have noticed, over ten years of working together, is that the most useful moments happen when rigour and presence are both in the room, when evidence and wisdom are informing each other rather than competing, when structure creates space rather than filling it.
Most practices choose one side or the other. We never quite managed that separation, and our clients seem glad we haven't.
Depth without pretension
We engage with real complexity. It's not about frameworks that oversimplify or language that excludes.
Rigour without rigidity
We bring structure and method. But we hold it lightly so we can respond to what the group actually needs.
Designed, not delivered
Each engagement is built around your context so its appliable and lands with you and your people.
We have all seen the first wave. The cute pictures of ourselves as cartoon characters and the ease of finding information in seconds.
Then we were soon hit with a second wave: the privacy concerns, the ethics debates, the questions about sustainability and misuse.
And now we are all living in the third. The explosion of AI experts. The same-same social media posts that you can spot from the first sentence, the em dash is having it's moment. Then add on the fear about what it will do to our brains, our jobs, our organisations. That our the wonderful individual creative nuance that makes us human will slowly and quietly flatten out. Somewhere in all of that, we kept asking a different question though what happens to the human using it.
That curiosity is what drew us to offer "The Authoring". Here we are working with leaders in three areas: how to build genuine AI fluency. how to keep the humanity behind the output (so your leaders stay distinctly themselves whilst adding an AI capability) and how to bring AI into the rooms where your people lead and work together, in ways that are safe, ethical, and worth trusting. It's not about replacing humans in all their wonderful individuality, its about giving them a tool that enables them instead.
That is The Authoring: the ability to stay the originator of your own thinking and not not just be the user of a tool. The purpose of our sessions is to ensure our clients work deeply with AI and still trace their own reasoning, they can make decisions that are genuinely theirs and they can show up in a room as themselves, with their own voice, their own judgment, their own direction intact.
We can't avoid AI, but we can't afford to be swept up in it. We need to author our use of it. Choosing it deliberately.
We are diving deep into the humanity of AI
We are Adam and Penny.
Creative Leadership 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. Since we started, we've spent a lot of time in rooms where the stakes were real.
Our clients are typically leaders who are good at what they do, take development seriously, and are carrying more than most people around them realise. They're not looking for iinspirational quotes but rather someone who can actually help.
We do this work because we find it genuinely interesting, the complexity of what leaders carry, the gap between how they present and what they are actually navigating, the moment something shifts and thankfully that hasn't changed since we first started talking about it 20 years ago.
GM Central Agency
"We are more organised and cohesive now than we have ever been, its now no longer adhoc sessions but a full integrated learning package for our leaders, the return on investment has been well worth it"
SLT Member Private Sector
'Honestly, I have never seen facilitation like it, it was a master class to watch and we will definitely be booking for our next year retreat"
CEO Not For Profit
"So grateful to have time together, the care and emotion behind each session and the meaning behind what you do is so evident. I felt so supported by your mana and knowledge in this space"
Stay connected
More than 2,000 leaders across New Zealand read this monthly. What we're noticing in the room, what's making a difference, what's emerging at the edge of our thinking.
If you've worked with us before welcome back. If you're new here, this is a good place to start.
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