Most leaders are capable. Most plans are sound. Yet every leader at every layer runs a different playbook. You tolerate that variance. That variance is what’s costing you the performance you need.
Intent is not the issue. Nobody sets out to miss. Leadership in most organisations was never engineered, so each leader built their own version of it, and the business learned to live with the difference.
One leader closes the meeting with named owners and dates. The next closes the same meeting with good discussion and no decision. A third defers the hard issue to next week. Same layer, same business, same problem, three different outcomes.
With no shared method, every leader invents one. It holds together until it has to scale. Ten leaders running ten differing playbooks produce a workforce whose answer to “how does this work here?” is “it depends”.
Everyone can name the leaders who declare well and deliver poorly. Very few organisations do anything about it. That silence is read correctly by every layer below, and the standard slips again.
Sets a vague standard for the three senior leaders reporting to them.
Create ambiguity for the ten junior leaders underneath them.
Run ten playbooks, and the standard is now whatever each of them decided it was.
Variance does not stay contained. It compounds. You cannot monitor, improve or scale fifty-five versions of leadership.
Answer a structured set of questions on how leadership operates across your organisation today. You get a written diagnostic back: where effectiveness varies, which layer it starts in, and which of the seven enablers are weakest. No cost, no pitch, and nothing shared with anyone.
Your full report, analysis and insight will be sent to you via email.
Three years of research and 130 structured interviews with leaders who deliver consistently. Charisma, talent and personality did not separate them. The same disciplines did, every time.
How the leader governs themselves. Accountable, self-aware, disciplined.
How the leader builds and moves others. Aligned, united, enabled.
How the leader converts effort into results. Candid, courageous, delivered.
Leaders who know exactly how they show up, and who measure themselves by impact rather than intent.
Every layer pulling in the same direction, against one definition of what success looks like.
Expectations stated explicitly. Feedback given candidly. Nobody left guessing what was asked of them.
The hard call made, then followed through with conviction when the resistance arrives.
Tools, skills and support in place first. A leader who is the answer to everything is the bottleneck.
Patterns spotted early across the numbers, and a team that solves rather than explains.
Successors developed and culture protected, because short-term leadership builds long-term fragility.
Installed at every level. Predictable, scalable and consistent, whoever happens to be in the room.
The foundations and enablers are not a competency framework on a wall. Once installed, they become your “non-negotiables” that drive reviews, performance, governance and the effectiveness of leaders at every level.
One set of powerful ‘enablers’. Consistent at every layer. Installed by 2 days of theory and 100 days of applying. The theory is the entry ticket. The 100 days is when the real learning is tested.
Fifty days of support and accountability for every single day of theory. It’s this ratio that determines if leadership development is ‘theatre’ or reality.
95% of leadership development is theory delivered and then abandoned. The provider leaves on day two and every leader applies it their own way, which widens variance rather than closing it. The theory was never the hard part.
Under accountability architecture, every leader walks out of day two with a written execution plan carrying dated, specific commitments. Then I remain available to support, assist and enable progress, with formal reviews at day 30, 60 and 100 against real commitments and RAG status reported to the sponsoring executive. Blockers surface in week three rather than arriving as explanations at quarter end.
At close, the executive gets evidence of what leaders actually delivered. Not satisfaction scores.
Where delivery is stalling, which layer it starts in, and which enablers are weakest.
Three foundations and seven enablers, worked through on live business situations. Every leader leaves with a written plan.
100 days of access to full support and coaching, to ensure delegates sustain progress.
Formal reviews against real commitments. RAG status, blockers surfaced, coaching on demand.
Review of what was actually delivered against the plan, not what was intended.
Individual and cohort evidence reported to the sponsoring executive.
The brochure provides a detailed summary of the full programme, testimonials, and what the sponsoring organisation can expect. Cohorts typically make up 8 to 10 delegates, and programmes have been delivered in the UK and internationally. Full details are in the brochure below, or book a call to chat by clicking below.
PDF. No form, no gate.
A mid-market manufacturer, mid-way through a sale transaction. Six experienced sales leaders, all capable. Follow-through was inconsistent, forecasts were optimistic rather than credible, and the gap between what the team committed to and what it delivered was eroding deal value.
It was the absence of a shared operating standard, and of any mechanism to hold six senior people to it.
Two-day foundation, a written execution plan per leader, then 100 days of checkpoints at 30, 60 and 100 with RAG tracking.
Progress tracked from commitment to delivery. Blockers surfaced in week three rather than arriving as excuses at quarter end.
That is what the buyer paid for.
Client anonymised at request. Figures as reported by the client.
“A transformative thinker whose unique model offers a fresh approach to success for leaders of any level. The only programme I’ve ever seen where leaders are held to account after the classroom. There’s no hiding place with Steve!”
“Steve’s work completely reset our perspective and thinking on how we should approach the leadership of the people we lead. Be warned, he does not hold back in making delegates completely rethink leadership. The response has been significant.”
“A powerful and inspiring leadership practitioner who adds emotional context to bring his compelling framework and unique success themes to life. Even more important in such challenging times for leaders at all levels.”
I am Steve McNicholas and for 3 decades, I successfully led teams and businesses from early leadership roles through to boardroom and executive roles. I have worked in a number of sectors and spent my last decade of leadership in several private equity backed organisations.
I have failed at times as a leader as well as experienced plenty of successes. I have built great teams and scaled businesses, but my passion today is to help leaders at all levels to succeed and achieve consistently.
To develop my own hypothesis and theory on how leaders can close the ‘gap’ between intent and result, I spent a few years interviewing 130 highly successful and effective leaders across several sectors and geographies. The patterns emerged. It was not charisma, talent or personality. It was the adoption of several core disciplines, mindsets and strategies, applied across self, team and performance, that unlocked success. Those patterns and methods evolved into Leadership SUCCESS Engineering™.
One final point. I do not believe that I “train leadership”. Training fills classrooms but often changes little. Instead, I want to help leaders install the core enablers that “produce leadership”, and stay close by to help them turn the theory into action, progress and positive impact. Our time in the classroom understanding the theory is important, but it’s the weeks and months that follow, working together, when the magic really happens.
I hope I will always remain a practitioner in leadership and never ever consider myself a ‘guru’. Having been there, felt the pressure and pain but also experienced the highs and successes of leadership, that is the credibility I claim and the only one I will ever own. I hope we get to spend time together on your leadership journey. Keep winning!
Co-authored with New York Times best-selling author Jack Canfield, alongside leading entrepreneurs and professionals from around the world.
The seven-step process to succeed in life and work. Sold across the UK and the US, and the origin of the seven enablers.
The third book, on the gap itself. Why it opens, why it is tolerated, and what it takes to close it across a whole organisation rather than one leader at a time.
Drop me a few details below and add a few lines of context. What are you seeing across the organisation in how leaders are behaving, performing and delivering? Hit the ‘send’ button and I’ll try and share some thoughts back with you in a few working days.