TRANSFORMING ORGANIZATIONS THROUGH LEADERSHIP TRANSFORMATION
● Private and confidential
● We start where you are
● Personalized twelve-month program using The DESIGN Methodology grounded in evidence-based practice and a whole person perspective
● One-on-one coaching
● Minimum six-month engagement at a time (organizations only)
● Meet by video or phone call
● Bi-weekly session cadence (60 minutes each)
● You'll be empowered through self-awareness, insight, action toward accomplishing goals, accountability, and provided with feedback on your progress
● Structure, tools, and curated resources
● Between sessions work consists of reflection, practice, and application
● Email and text support available between sessions
INVEST IN YOUR LEADERSHIP FUTURE
Get the same comprehensive executive leadership development that organizations invest $50,000+ to provide their top talent—designed for professionals investing in themselves.
The same as what's bulleted in Corporate Leadership Development Coaching using The DESIGN Methodology except:
● Minimum three-month commitment instead of six-month engagement
Common situations that bring professionals to coaching:
● Preparing for significant promotion or leadership transition
● Navigating complex organizational dynamics and politics
● Building influence without formal authority
● Leading during organizational change or uncertainty
● Building entrepreneurial leadership capabilities
● Feeling stuck despite strong technical performance
● Wanting world-class leadership development without corporate sponsorship
"I was giving everything to work—and showing up depleted everywhere else. My team got the best of me while my family and health got the leftovers. I knew something had to change, but I didn't know how to lead well without burning out.
The breakthrough was realizing I didn't need to do more, but that I needed to lead differently. I learned to set clearer expectations upfront, delegate with confidence, and actually coach my team instead of doing their work for them. Most critically, I gave myself permission to set boundaries and create a true end to my workday.
Now I lead from a place of sustainability, not depletion. I'm more effective at work because I'm no longer running on empty. And I finally have energy left for what matters most outside of work."
—J.W., Seattle, WA
The DESIGN Methodology is Dr. Jacqueline Ashley's proprietary comprehensive leadership development approach that helps leaders unlearn limiting patterns and create lasting transformation—for themselves, their teams, and their organizations. It's a unique integration of three powerful frameworks: Emotional Intelligence, Red Team Thinking, and CliftonStrengths 34 in a comprehensive 12-month executive leadership development program that transforms how you lead, decide, and create impact.
The DESIGN Methodology's Six Phases stand for:
● D - Disrupt Your Autopilot
● E - Expand What's Possible
● S - Stress-Test Your Strategy
● I - Implement with Intentionality
● G - Generate Psychological Safety
● N - Navigate Influence
The ability to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions and to recognize, understand and influence others’ emotions.
12 competencies across four domains:
● Self-awareness (Emotional Self-awareness)
● Self-management (Emotional Self-control, Adaptability, Achievement Orientation, and Positive Outlook)
● Social Awareness (Empathy and Organizational Awareness)
● Relationship Management (Influence, Coach and Mentor, Conflict Management, Teamwork, and Inspirational Leadership)
An approach originally developed by military and intelligence agencies to help individuals and organizations better understand and navigate the risks and opportunities inherent in today's complex and rapidly changing world. It helps decisions get made better and faster and to identify feasible alternatives that are resilient and adaptable for strategic planning.
RTT develops "The Three Cs"—Clarity, Capability, and Culture to engage clients in applied critical thinking, distributed decision-making, encourage diversity of thought, and identify and understand threats and opportunities.
Take a look at The Red Team Handbook: The Army's Guide to Making Better Decisions.
Gallup's full assessment of 34 talents that generates personalized results in ranking order across four domains:
● Executing—Focuses on making things happen and turning ideas into action
● Influencing—Helps teams be heard by a broader audience and take charge
● Relationship building—Focuses on creating a strong, cohesive team by building bonds and making others feel included
● Strategic thinking—Centers on ideas, innovation, and planning, and helps the team think through complex issues
Action: Intentionally break automatic patterns rather than continuing to lead on autopilot, playing it safe, or leading everyone based on your own preferences for being led.
Outcome: You disrupt autopilot and begin leading consciously—more fully aware of your patterns.
Action: Break free from limiting beliefs about what's possible for you and your organization to move from surviving to thriving.
Outcome: You have a clear vision that breaks free from limiting assumptions. What may have seemed impossible now feels achievable.
Action: Create rigorous, resilient strategies that account for complexity, challenge assumptions, and prepare you for multiple scenarios instead of comfortable plans that fall apart under pressure.
Outcome: You have robust strategies that are resilient to disruption and uniquely suited to your talents. When conditions shift, your plans adapt.
Action: Execute deliberately by breaking old patterns and embedding new ones through sustained, purposeful practice—not just good intentions, but acting with discipline.
Outcome: New patterns become automatic. You lead adaptively across situations and execute with your unique strengths—even under pressure.
Action: Create environments where people feel safe to challenge assumptions, bring diverse perspectives, and grow—combining kindness with high expectations to create conditions for excellence, not by lowering standards.
Outcome: You create cultures where people feel safe to challenge assumptions and grow—leading to innovation and high performance through psychological safety.
Action: Build strategic coalitions and drive transformation that continues beyond individual leaders by creating sustainable change through developing others.
Outcome: You build deep relationships that amplify your impact. You create sustainable transformation and establish a legacy that continues through the people and culture you've nurtured.
DESIGN serves leaders at every level of your organization—from frontline managers building foundational capabilities to C-suite executives navigating enterprise-wide transformation. DESIGN's comprehensive framework is adaptable to each level's distinct challenges based on scope of influence and strategic responsibilities.
By leadership level:
● Executive Leaders (C-suite) who set organizational strategy, shape culture, and drive enterprise-wide transformation
● Senior Leaders/Vice Presidents who lead major functions, drive strategic initiatives, and translate executive vision into operational reality across multiple teams
● Mid-level Leaders/Directors/Senior Managers who manage multiple teams, oversee complex initiatives, and serve as the critical connection between strategy and execution
● Frontline Leaders/Managers/Team Leads/Emerging Leaders who directly lead individual contributors and are building foundational leadership capabilities for career advancement
Ideal for professionals who:
● Are in or preparing for leadership roles (e.g., manager to VP level)
● Want executive leadership development, not just skills training
● Are willing to invest in themselves when their organizations won't
● Value both emotional intelligence, strategic rigor, AND strengths
● Want to unlearn limiting patterns, not just add new skills
● Are serious about transformation, not just surface-level change
● See themselves as high-potential, regardless of current title
Most leadership programs teach you one approach and hope you figure out the rest. DESIGN is different because it systematically integrates three frameworks by addressing what each lacks:
● Emotional Intelligence alone? You understand emotions but lack strategic rigor to generate and stress-test alternatives, and leverage your strengths.
● Red Team Thinking alone? You think critically but miss key emotional dynamics and natural talent application.
● CliftonStrengths alone? You know your talents but apply them on autopilot without rigorously challenging assumptions or questioning pitfalls.
DESIGN integrates all three from day one—so you develop emotional intelligence AND strategic thinking AND intentional strengths application simultaneously, not sequentially.
Most leadership development programs:
● Tell you what to add to your leadership toolkit
● Focus on strengths without addressing limitations
● Provide comfortable strategies that don't survive real pressure
● Leave you to figure out how to integrate what you've learned
DESIGN is different because it:
● Helps you unlearn limiting patterns before adding new capabilities
● Integrates three powerful frameworks (EI, RTT, CliftonStrengths) throughout
● Stress-tests strategies to ensure they work under real pressure
● Builds automaticity so new patterns stick even in challenging situations
● Creates sustainable transformation through distributed capability
● Establishes a lasting legacy through the leaders and systems you create
Resilience helps you cope and bounce back from adversity, but transilience provides you with the capacity to endure, flexibly adapt, and positively transform.
Do more than just survive. Let yourself thrive. Surviving is a reactive way of being whereas thriving is proactive. Resilience is primarily about survival. Transilience takes you further—beyond resilience.
Increase your capacity to embrace change in the forms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and hyperconnectivity (VUCAH). How might a serendipity mindset help you see opportunity in the unexpected or bisociative thinking help you connect seemingly unrelated facts or events? For you and your organization, consider how you might challenge assumptions, stress-test ideas, and strategize to discover feasible alternatives to be ready for whatever the future could hold.
Develop your ability to be antifragile—when exposure to chaos and uncertainty, stressors, or risk results in making something better and stronger than before. How might embracing discomfort help you develop your antifragility?
Hustle culture and 996 aren't ambition, but exploitation dressed up as virtue. High work demands, inadequate resources, and unrealistic expectations don't just create long hours, but a grinding spiral from overwork into burnout. When unhealthy workplaces reward people for overworking, that implies they treat people as resources to be consumed rather than humans to be developed. Burnout isn't a personal failing. Instead, it's an organizational design flaw. The best workplaces prove this daily: high standards, real accountability, and genuine compassion aren't competing values, but rather the foundation of cultures where both people and performance thrive.
Sustainable excellence beats burnout brilliance. As a leader, how can you work effectively, protect your personal life, and cultivate well-being in ways that enhance both your performance and your team's approach to work?
Maximize utility to prevent burnout. Work should nurture the other parts of your life, not diminish them. What matters to you beyond work? What good is an "A" at work if you get an "F" in life?
You can "have it all" over the course of a lifetime, but it's unrealistic to have it all at once and be able to keep it up. Recognize the seasons of your life and what matters most to you for each point in time.
Imposter syndrome is a systemic scam that exacerbates normal feelings of self-doubt and fails to recognize the impact of systemic bias and exclusion on women in workplaces. It's more pronounced for marginalized identities—the more intersectional, the more compounded the marginalization will be. If you're working for an organization that hasn't yet addressed imposter syndrome, you can still improve your ability to navigate it at work.
Recognize that you don't need to be fixed because there's nothing wrong with you. Question the role of workplace culture in imposter syndrome and challenge the assumption that it's an individual problem (because it's not). Your level of confidence and outcomes aren't commensurate with your competence as a professional. You may not believe it yet, but you are more than good enough.
Develop genuine confidence for your own well-being and avoid fake confidence and overconfidence. "Fake it 'til you make it" is bad advice. Instead, face it 'til you ace it. Self-confidence results from not betraying yourself, consistently honoring your own needs, and keeping commitments to yourself.
Be willing to take calculated risks and practice self-compassion to support yourself whether you succeed, fail, or something in between. Help others in your organization by validating their experiences, reinforcing their capabilities, and helping them to adjust inaccuracies in how they see themselves.
Effective leadership requires innovative thinking and doing. Most of us tend to default to one or more of the following:
1) An ingrained way of doing things (like being on autopilot),
2) A tendency to stick to what's comfortable and familiar (like playing it safe), or
3) Leading everyone based on our own preferences for being led (as if everyone were like us).
To challenge ourselves to level up our leadership, we can choose to lead by design by adapting different styles of leading to best suit the situation and stakeholders involved.
Find new or unusual ways to leverage your strengths effectively. You can't get the most out of your strengths and reach your potential if you just stick to using them the way you always have.
Discover your typical leadership markers first. Then challenge yourself to move out of your comfort zone to choose different combinations of leadership markers for certain situations that allow for authenticity, adaptability, and help strengthen how you want to be perceived.
Strategically analyze your stakeholder network to engineer how you can build your influence by considering stakeholders' levels of influence and where they fall on the spectrum between support and opposition relative to you.
Triple-Certified Integration
Your leaders receive one-on-one certified coaching in Emotional Intelligence development, Red Team Thinking, AND CliftonStrengths—systematically integrated to address what each framework lacks when used alone.
Emotional Intelligence + Strategic Rigor + Strengths
Most programs develop either emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, or strengths. DESIGN develops all three—enabling leaders to navigate organizational complexity, generate alternatives, stress-test decisions, and leverage strengths with equal skill.
Doctoral-Level Expertise in Executive Leadership
DESIGN is grounded in doctoral-level research on social change and innovation, specifically focused on executive leadership and organizational transformation. This isn't generic coaching—it's a systematically developed methodology designed for lasting impact.
Proven Methodology, Professional Standards
Our six-month minimum engagement and structured approach match executive coaching industry standards, ensuring sufficient time for sustainable behavioral change and measurable return on investment.
ORGANIZATIONAL RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Leaders who complete DESIGN typically deliver:
Strategic Impact
● Significantly improved decision-making under pressure and uncertainty
● Enhanced ability to generate alternatives and stress-test strategic options
● More rigorous approach to challenging assumptions and identifying blind spots
Organizational Impact
● Measurable improvements in team psychological safety and engagement
● Sustainable culture transformation in their sphere of influence
● Development of other leaders through modeling and coaching
● Systems and structures that continue transformation beyond the program
Leadership Effectiveness
● Greater influence and impact across the organization
● Stronger, more strategic relationships with key stakeholders
● Enhanced ability to navigate complex organizational dynamics
● Increased capacity to develop and retain high-performing teams
You're Not Just Getting Coaching—You're Getting a Methodology
You receive one-on-one certified coaching in Emotional Intelligence, Red Team Thinking, AND CliftonStrengths—not just exposure to these frameworks, but professional development in all three, systematically integrated for exponential impact.
Premium Credentials, Accessible Investment
Organizations pay $40,000+ for this level of comprehensive, certified executive leadership development. You're accessing the same triple-certified expertise for a more affordable price point than what corporations pay.
Quarterly Commitment, No Long-Term Lock-In
Start with just three months. Every quarter, you decide whether to continue based on the value you're receiving. No pressure to commit to the full 12 months upfront—though most clients complete the full program once they see the transformation.
Build Emotional Intelligence + Strategic Thinking + Leverage Strengths
Most programs develop either emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, or strengths. DESIGN develops and integrates all three—enabling leaders to navigate organizational complexity, generate alternatives, stress-test decisions, and leverage strengths with equal skill.
WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE
Professionals who complete DESIGN typically achieve:
Strategic Leadership Capability
● Ability to generate alternatives and stress-test decisions like senior leaders
● Skills to challenge assumptions and identify blind spots systematically
● Confidence in high-stakes decision-making under pressure
Career Advancement
● Promotion to next leadership level or expanded responsibilities
● Successful transitions to new roles or organizations
● Increased compensation reflecting enhanced leadership capabilities
● Stronger professional brand and executive presence
Influence & Impact
● Greater influence with stakeholders and decision-makers
● Enhanced ability to navigate organizational politics effectively
● Ability to create change even without formal authority
Personal Transformation
● Deep self-awareness and understanding of leadership patterns
● Ability to unlearn limiting beliefs and behaviors
● Integration of your natural strengths with strategic capabilities
● Sustainable leadership practices that continue beyond the program
"I used to avoid difficult conversations at all costs. When I couldn't, I'd spend days anxious beforehand, get flustered in the moment, then replay every word afterward convinced I'd failed.
Now I can walk into conflict with confidence. I learned to manage my own emotional reactions first, which gave me the capacity to genuinely hear what others were experiencing. Instead of bracing for confrontation, I approach these moments as opportunities for understanding.
The shift wasn't about becoming tougher or more assertive. It was about building emotional intelligence by staying grounded in my own emotions while showing up with real empathy for others. Hard conversations are still hard, but I no longer dread them or doubt my ability to navigate them well."
—A.B., New York, NY