Leadership Formation Practice

Culture doesn't come from strategy. It comes from character.

The culture of an organisation reflects the character of the people who lead it.

Most attempts to change culture focus on the outside — strategies, structures, and behaviours. These matter. But they are only as strong as the character of the people who lead them.

And culture is rarely one person's doing. It lives in the space between leaders — in how a leadership team relates, decides, and leads together. When that collective character is formed well, culture changes from the inside out.

That is the work of leadership formation.

Book a Discovery Conversation What is Formation?

What is Leadership Formation?

Leadership development asks what you can do. Leadership formation asks who you are becoming.

Leadership Development

Focuses on what you can do. Builds skills, knowledge, and behaviours. Essential — but incomplete on its own.

Leadership Formation

Focuses on who you are becoming. Works on character, values, and the inner life of the leader. Grounds everything else.

Formation is an old word. Across centuries and traditions, it has described the slow, intentional shaping of a person's inner life — not just their knowledge or technique, but their character. The values they hold. The convictions they lead from. The kind of person they are becoming over time.

I use this word because I believe leadership is not simply a set of competencies to be acquired. It is a way of being — and that way of being is formed, gradually, through experience, reflection, challenge, and deliberate practice.

What formation makes possible

Culture becomes values-led rather than metrics-driven
Trust that holds under pressure, not just in the good seasons
Teams that reflect the collective integrity of the people at the front
Leaders who remain grounded in uncertainty rather than reactive under it
Better decisions and more honest engagement with conflict
Organisations that attract and retain people who share their values

Formation is by nature a long work. It cannot be rushed, and it is never quite finished. That is not a weakness — it is the point. The leaders and teams who invest in formation together become the people their organisations most need them to be: steady, trustworthy, and genuinely good.

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Services

All the work starts from the same conviction

That lasting performance begins with character. Whether working with an individual, a team, or a group, the question underneath everything is the same: who are you becoming — and what does that make possible?

1:1 — Executives & Senior Leaders

Leadership Formation Coaching

Individual coaching for C-suite and senior leaders. Deep work on the character, values, and inner convictions that shape how a leader leads — and what their organisation becomes.

For leaders who sense there is more to leadership than capability, and who are ready to do the deeper work.

Format 6 or 12-session programme

Clients C-suite, senior directors, executives

Outcome A leader who leads from character, not just capability

Team Programme — Flagship Offering

Team Formation Programme

A structured multi-month engagement with a leadership team or board. Builds the shared values, trust, and character that high performance is built on — not just strategy and alignment.

Particularly valuable for newly formed teams, teams navigating change, and M&A contexts.

Format Minimum 6-month engagement

Clients Executive teams, boards

Outcome A team unified by values, not just targets

Events — Workshops & Retreats

A Place to Begin

Two distinctive entry-point experiences.

The Formation Table — a small gathering of six leaders from different organisations, convened periodically throughout the year over dinner, around one shared question: who are you becoming as you lead? This is not a workshop or a networking event. It is a carefully held space for honest conversation among peers. Places are limited and by enquiry.

The Formation Invitation — a half or full day for a leadership team, held outside their normal environment, designed to open the questions that formation work asks.

Format Evening gathering (Table) or half/full day (Invitation)

Clients Individual leaders and leadership teams

Access Formation Table by enquiry — convened quarterly

Outcome A genuine encounter with formation work and a natural next step

Also Relevant — Mergers & Acquisitions

Two organisations. One leadership team.

Mergers and acquisitions are managed structurally — new org charts, new strategies, new processes. But the human and cultural dimension rarely gets the same attention. When two leadership teams are asked to become one, the absence of shared character and trust is the thing most likely to make the deal fail in practice.

Formation work in an M&A context creates the conditions for genuine integration — not just structural alignment. It builds the shared values, honest relationships, and mutual trust that allow two cultures to become one without either being dissolved.

"The deal can close. The culture takes longer — unless you work at it."

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Who this work has served

Over twenty years, this work has been taken up by leaders across financial services, professional services, healthcare, education, social enterprises and charities, family-owned businesses, and organisations navigating merger and acquisition. What they share is not a sector — it is a question.

"Jeremy has supported me in different circumstances to develop more cohesive teams — working through disruption, division, and distance. His process of one-to-one interviews, active listening, and workshop-based feedback creates a safe, trusted space where long-held negativity can be released. The outcome has always been a more effective, constructive and happier team. I highly recommend Jeremy — it is a testament to his style, care and commitment that reluctant sceptics go on a journey to become won over and welcome his support."

Chief People Officer — Higher Education

"Jeremy has been my coach in my CEO role since 2018 — an extremely positive and constructive relationship that has built my resilience and confidence. He is a great listener, but he also encourages me to think differently about problems and provides constructive challenge to break embedded (unhelpful) thought patterns. I also introduced Jeremy to our senior leadership team to develop our working relationships, and received very positive feedback from every member on the success of those sessions. I would thoroughly recommend him as a personal coach and hope to keep working with him for a long time."

Chief Executive Officer — Food Manufacturing

About

People sometimes ask me — who is the best leader you've ever worked with?

I always struggle to answer that question. Not because the leaders and teams I've worked with aren't good — many of them are exceptional. But because in twenty years of working alongside senior leaders and leadership teams, I've never met a perfect one.

What I've noticed is that the request is almost always the same: come in and fix us. Transform this situation. Help us perform better together.

And the honest answer — the one I've learned to give — is that no one can fix you. No one can make you function better together. The only person who can do that is you. The only team that can do that is yours.

That is the invitation of formation.

Because the question underneath every leadership challenge I've encountered isn't really about strategy or capability or even culture. It's this: are you willing to take the time and space required to do the inner work — the work that changes who you are on the outside?

My own formation didn't begin in a boardroom. It began through years as a minister in Northern Ireland — an environment that asked hard questions of anyone in a leadership role: about identity, about trust, about what holds people together when the ground is uncertain. That experience gave me a conviction that the inner life of a leader shapes everything they do on the outside.

I've seen what that looks like in practice. Early in my ministry, I led a group of volunteers to clean graffiti from a church that had been targeted during a period of real community tension. No strategy made it possible. What made it possible was character — a set of convictions, formed over time, about what it means to show up for people when it costs something.

That is why I built this practice.

This is a small, intentional practice. Every engagement — whether 1:1 coaching, a team programme, or a Formation Table gathering — is with me directly. There is no panel of associates, no handoff to a junior coach. That is a deliberate choice. Formation work asks for a quality of trust and consistency that cannot be subcontracted.

Credentials

Postgraduate Diploma in Coaching Psychology, University of East London. Professional Certificate in Team & Systemic Coaching, Henley Business School. Qualified Spiritual Director. Member of the Association for Coaching.

Spiritual direction is the ancient practice of attending carefully to a person's inner life — what is most alive in them, and what is most resistant. It is, in many respects, the original formation discipline. The qualification deepens the quality of presence and attention brought to every engagement.

You cannot have transformation without formation. The outer change that leaders and organisations are looking for is only ever the fruit of a deeper inner work. There are no shortcuts. There is only the work.