The leadership program that actually works: I’m calling time on one-size-fits-all yawn-fest leadership training.
About a year ago, I was sitting at my desk in my teeny tiny triangular office at the Calgary WeWork, thinking about my clients. Or at least, thinking about what I imagined my clients would look like.
Teeny tiny triangular WeWork office, first home of Blazing Pine.
This was the early days of Blazing Pine, and I was only working with a handful of people at the time (most of whom are still with me, and I still love working with them).
But I was thinking about who I could be most useful to as I grew the business. Where my experience and skills could be pointed towards familiar problems and situations, and where I could collaborate with someone on making plans and rewriting stories.
And at least a certain portion of that identity fits in some kind of loosely-defined “young leader” demographic. Talented, smart people, who want more than just a job, want progression and growth and agency (and age is irrelevant).
So they are ambitious.
What else? Well I thought about myself when I was in a corporate role. I also didn’t want to wait forever for that progression and growth to come along, and I figure my clients won’t want to either.
So they are impatient, too.
And the defining characteristic was that they have a particular set of abilities that, in aggregate, looked like leadership skills. Either because they are already in leadership, and want to refine their skills further, or because they want more of it.
So they are ready for leadership.
Ambitious.
Impatient.
Ready For Leadership.
Well, I thought, if I create an Online program dedicated to that group of people, I could call it airflo.
Ambitious.
Impatient.
Ready For Leadership.
Online.
(Then just go lower case because that’s what everyone’s doing right now, and I have got my finger right on the pulse).
So really the name came to me before anything else.
But the need for something like this had been sitting with me for years.
Because after 20 years in leadership positions in the public and private sectors, I had never experienced a leadership development program that had had any real, lasting impact on anyone who had participated in it.
Lots of theory, lots of models, lots of concepts. Nothing that came out of the real world, nothing that connected with any individual development needs or blindspots (yes, you have them too).
Just a lot of one-size-fit-all rehashing of other people’s ideas, packaged and delivered by people who had never been in a real leadership position themselves.
So I thought - what would the alternative look like?
First, the basics. It should not take up days and days of everyone’s time. Bloated, time-consuming training programs are not it in 2026.
So two hours, once a month, for eight months.
Then, as I thought through designing the program, I landed on three essential ingredients:
It would be personal. Traditional thinking seems to hold that you can’t run a program that is personal to its participants, but also run in a group format. I didn’t agree (and after a year of running the program, coming up on its third iteration, I still don’t). Growth is personal. Strengths and weaknesses are personal. So development programs should be too.
It would focus on the participant, not the facilitator. Nobody wants to listen to me (or anyone else) speak for two hours. I don’t even want to listen to me speak for two hours. Instead, the group leads the discussion. Every month there’s a dedicated session for one person to bring one real situation and ask the group to respond. It’s called the Hot Seat (although I may change that, it’s so damn 90s). But, apart from the name, it’s magic. And consistently the thing participants point to when I ask for feedback on the program.
It would be affordable. If you have company training budget to get you in the group, great. But I also wanted this to be available to people who are self-funding. So far, of the dozen or so people who have been through the program, around a third have paid their own fare. And I’m also flexible on payment. If you don’t have company budget, and you don’t have $2800 available, then pay me monthly. Making a pile of cash is not my goal with this program.
As for the content, it’s driven by a logical sequence of self-awareness first, then applying more structured content to that self-awareness in a way that actually has lasting impact, then a closing phase where we bring everything together.
The structured content focuses exclusively on things that people actually care about and benefit from learning as leaders: leadership styles, values, and vision; conflict, disagreement, and tension in corporate environments; mental health as leaders; and - I’ll say it again - self-awareness, and the improved emotional regulation that comes from that.
I won’t go into more detail than that on the content (but if you want it, you can find it here) - partly because I don’t set it in stone as some non-negotiable syllabus (one-size-fits-none…). Instead, the group defines the content as we go.
airflo merch. What more could you ask?
What else can I say about it?
Groups are capped at six participants. That’s just the number that seems to work best.
I have only one rule, which is not to have two people from the same company in one group, or otherwise, everyone is from the same company. I want a level playing field, a space where people can open up a bit.
The next group starts in early March. There are still a couple of spots available. The one after that will be in early June, and four spots are still available.
One group has just finished. One group is ongoing. Some feedback from the first group is here - but I can summarise it by saying everyone gave it five stars, 100% would recommend, it had a 94% satisfaction score, one participant called it “the best thing they’d ever done”, and another said “everyone should do this”.
But to me, the most important piece of feedback is this:
All of the group participants have signed up for the (top secret) alumni program which follows it.
I’m incredibly proud of that.
Honestly, it’s a brilliant program. That’s not me tooting my own horn. All I do is open the Zoom call.
The group is what makes it great. And that could be you.
Oh, and one final thing.
It also comes with merch. And who doesn’t love merch?
Just get in touch if you have any questions. I’m here to answer them.