The Leadership
Designs
If you’ve ever worked in a corporate environment, or any sort of collaborative environment, then you’ve probably heard of the Meyers-Briggs personality test, or DISC, or the Enneagram, or [insert any personality/leadership assessment here].
These are widely used tools that give reason and meaning to why you, the individual taking the assessment, behave and communicate the way that you do. All of these tests and assessments reveal bits and pieces of ourselves that allow others to better understand us. They provide insight into how a team can cohesively work together by understanding each individual on a deeper level.
But what my wife Sara and I found, was that a lot of these assessments left out a lot of humanity.
With my 10+ years of experience in business, and my wife Sara’s Masters in Leadership, we decided that we wanted to create a new kind of assessment—one that, yes, looked at leadership, but really brought in the humanity of entrepreneurship beyond a result from a quiz.
We saw tracks back to childhood trauma in how those responses develop parts of the Leadership Design profile. We also saw there were gaps in the current research that didn’t make sense for who our clients were in their whole humanness and how we were helping them elevate their message in the online business space.
Honoring the whole human is what leadership is about.
…at least what our definition of leadership is.
It’s not transactional, it’s transformational—the leader’s ability to see and honor the lived experience of others, seeing the value each individual brings, acknowledge privilege, meeting others in their unique process, and allowing humanness to exist.
So, we created The Leadership Designs—to help entrepreneurs better understand…
- How they work
- How they sell
- How they write & create
- How they manage their energy
- How they work with & lead others with integrity
- How they exist in their business
Everything I do in my business is built around The Leadership Designs. It’s the foundation for how I coach my 1:1 clients, the folks inside Good Business, and any other pop-up offers I introduce throughout the year. It’s how I better understand myself in how I work in my own business, too. Same goes for Sara.
What we love most—is that the LD don't just look at your role in your business. Because at their core, they're researched based in lived experience.
They extend into how you hold yourself and all your relationships.
The Four Leadership Designs
Everyone has a primary and a secondary leadership design. It’s important to note that not every characteristic of your design profile may be true for you, because there are also things like lived experience, trauma, and privilege that play a role in our whole human self.
Traditional business practices were created through the Analyst lens. Meaning, you enjoy planning each quarter ahead of time. You like to plan your content week by week, post by post, and have as much knowledge as possible in order to coach, educate, and mentor folks to the best of your ability. You prefer writing educational-based content to provide “value” to your audience.
Qualities of The Analyst:
- Low risk-taker
- You take your time when making decisions
- You leave more room for logic than emotion in business
- Structure & order make you feel safe
- You may have perfectionist tendencies
It’s important for the Analyst to remember that while they need all the information and steps to process, not all of your clients will. So, it’s important to understand the needs and characteristics of your client’s leadership designs, so you can ensure you’re creating things for THEM, rather than for yourself.
The Conductor is the get-shit-done, take ‘messy action’ entrepreneur. You often take up the space you are given and/or create the space for your voice to be heard. You speak with conviction, are highly assertive, value your autonomy (so group programs aren’t the best fit for you), and seek to be in a position of authority. You enjoy your space and don’t love to be needed by your clients.
Qualities of The Conductor:
- High risk-taker
- Quick decision-maker
- Task-oriented & highly motivated to achieve
- Not super detail-oriented; more focused on the end result
- You take a clear & direct approach to communicating
Conductors may come off as assholes, but they aren’t! They sound cold and curt for their assertiveness, but can be some of the most compassionate people you’ll ever meet based on their lived experiences and healing work they’ve done.
The Nurturer is gentle, warm, and compassionate. Your need for security manifests as a need for emotional safety. People enjoy being around you because you hold space for them to exist as they are, free of judgment. You might self-identify as the caretaker, or the “mom” of your friend group or family, offering support and checking in as often as you can.
Qualities of The Nurturer:
- Low risk-taker
- You take your time when making decisions
- Beautiful storytellers
- Typically folks who are ‘helpers’ (coaches, teachers, mentors)
- You like a plan rather than winging it
Nurturers often find themselves taking on other people’s emotions, and conflict feels scary and threatening to them. If you have Nurturer in your design profile, know that you aren’t responsible for other people’s emotions, you don’t have to make fast decisions (even though the business asks you to do so), and you can be successful in your business while honoring your gentle nature.
Visionaries are the wildcard of the business space. The “rules” that you see being promoted in the business space don’t apply to you—not in the way that you’re the exception to the rule, but rather because what has been normalized doesn’t work with you and your process.
Qualities of The Visionary:
- High risk-taker
- Quick decision-maker
- Don’t like to be told what to do
- You work in energetic high highs & low lows
- You make it a priority to leave space for fun & playfulness, big ideas, & big feelings
You may have been told, or feel like you’re doing business wrong, because you work, move, and exist so much differently than the traditional business space tells us to work. This does not mean you are lazy, or doing business wrong. You can be successful without changing who you are.
There’s lots of nuance to how each design interacts with each other, too.
Because humans are so nuanced, we all have a primary and secondary leadership design. Your primary is typically the one you default to the majority of the time, and your secondary can be flexed in your coping skills, when you feel reactive, in moments when you feel out of control, or in moments of emotional processing and critical thinking.
The Leadership Designs are incredibly insightful to understand how you work, and how your clients work, but this is not something you can facilitate on your own without undergoing our certification process.
We have an extensive certification to utilize the designs for your work with your clients, as the work to facilitate needs to be done under guidance and mentorship.
Here’s what that looks like...
Become certified in The Leadership Designs!
The Leadership Design certification was created to teach entrepreneurs like you how to properly facilitate the leadership designs within your business and to support your clients through a human first lens.
This certification is only held twice a year, with space for 5–8 folks per cohort. Our intention to keep this group intimate and purposeful. Much of this work is built upon vulnerable, authentic leadership working together, and we knew this would best be built starting small.
Here’s what the certification process looks like:
- Four months
- 2x 2-hour sessions per month
- 1:1 access to Sara & I
- Call replays sent after each session
Cost: $5,000 - sliding scale payment plan available!
There is a brief application process to let us learn more about you and what you hope to use the certification for, to make sure this is the best fit for your intentions and needs.
Join the waitlist to be notified when applications reopen for the next cohort!
"Becoming certified in The Leadership Designs is the most valuable investment I’ve made in how I show up for my clients (and I say that as a certified transformational coach, with foundational family therapy training).
The Leadership Designs are trauma-informed and flexible - they’re not a set of rules, they’re a deeply personal way of meeting people where they are. I use them to help my clients notice how they show up at their most grounded, so we can craft their offers and grow their visibility in ways that support them to blaze their own trail.
And the Leadership Designs have been a game-changer for me, too (I’m a nurturer / visionary if you’re curious)! Before I discovered my leadership design, it’s like I couldn’t get comfy in my business, or in the business space. Now I understand that the way that I hold space is a gift so I weave it through everything I do in my business. My whole presence has shifted."
Natalie K - Visibility coach for change-maker leaders, healers and guides