StoneX set itself one of the more audacious targets: to grow fivefold in five years. There was a clear strategy behind the goal and the next step was to strengthen the leadership layer so they’re better prepared to hold the business together as the company scales. 

393 managers. 13 cities. Bangalore to Buenos Aires, Singapore to São Paulo. All of them are technically strong. A shared leadership language was all they needed to align better. 

This was also one of the most ambitious global leadership development journeys TransforMe has delivered. It has since been recognised with the Brandon Hall Group Gold Award for Excellence in Leadership Development. What earned that recognition was the rigour with which the problem was understood before a session was designed.

The problem beneath the problem

StoneX had grown significantly through mergers and acquisitions. Talented people had come together from different organisations, cultures, and business environments. But talent without a shared leadership standard does not automatically produce aligned performance.

A diagnostic phase — focus group discussions with managers and senior leaders across regions — surfaced two patterns that kept appearing regardless of geography. Managers were confident technically but hesitant when it came to influencing senior stakeholders, holding structured performance conversations, or leading their teams through change. And relationships between functions began to feel transactional.

Training was not the answer to their challenge. This needed a tailored leadership development programme built around StoneX’s actual challenges — one that could hold a consistent standard across 13 cities while remaining grounded in the cultural and operational reality of each one.

Built for the business, not borrowed from a shelf

Before the first workshop was designed, every participant completed a behavioural leadership assessment — establishing a baseline across four success capabilities. 

44.8% were at foundational level.
53.7% at intermediate.
1.4% at an advanced level. 

That data shaped everything that followed.

The Global Manager Development Programme was built around three capability pillars that emerged directly from the diagnostic: Communicating with Impact, Driving Performance Excellence, and Inclusive, Collaborative and Change Leadership Team Development. Generic competency frameworks played no part in the design.

Delivery required a network of global facilitators who understood the cultural dynamics of the regions where they worked. In South America, sessions ran in Spanish and Portuguese while following the same global curriculum. The result was a programme that felt locally relevant without losing global coherence — a balance Australian organisations operating across geographies will recognise as exactly the right problem to solve.

What made it stick

A workshop, however well designed, is only as valuable as the behaviour change it sustains. TransforMe built the reinforcement architecture in from the start rather than attaching it afterwards.

Every participant left each session with a 30–60–90 day action plan co-created with their line manager. Four to five weeks later, cohorts reconvened virtually — revisiting commitments, sharing early wins, peer coaching each other through challenges. Over 12 weeks, personalised learning nudges arrived through an AI-enabled platform: short, interactive, calibrated to individual capability gaps.

Leadership effectiveness is demonstrated through behaviour, not attendance. The architecture was designed with that principle as its foundation.

What the data showed

Against an industry benchmark of 10–15% upward capability movement, the programme achieved 14.8% progression — placing it in the high-impact range.

The behavioural shifts across 393 participants were significant. 

77% demonstrated stronger active listening and empathy-driven communication. 86% reported greater confidence in cross-functional collaboration.
71% showed enhanced customer orientation beyond their immediate teams.
62% demonstrated greater proactive ownership of new initiatives within their functions.

Beyond the numbers, five qualitative shifts emerged consistently across all 18 cohorts: a move from informing to questioning, stronger confidence in difficult conversations, practical adoption of feedback frameworks, peer learning at scale, and a desire to lead from the inside out.

Something less tangible but equally significant also took hold. Managers across StoneX — from Warsaw to São Paulo, from Bangalore to New York — began to see themselves as part of a single global leadership community. A shared identity, a shared language, a shared standard. That is the foundation of any genuine leadership transformation.

What this could mean for your organisation

StoneX’s journey is not unique in its ambition. It is unusual in its approach.

Most organisations invest in leadership development after the gaps become visible — when decisions are slowing, when teams are misaligned, when the business has outgrown the leadership layer holding it together. StoneX invested before that point, and invested with diagnostic rigour rather than good intentions.

For organisations navigating growth, post-merger integration, or the challenge of building leadership capability across distributed teams, the same principle applies. The question is not whether your leaders are capable today. It is whether they have been deliberately prepared for what the business is about to demand of them.

Organisational performance improves when companies invest in developing their leaders at the same pace as the business — through structured leadership development programmes, rigorous leadership assessment, and the kind of sustained executive coaching that turns programme insight into daily leadership behaviour.

That is what TransforMe builds. Get in touch to start a conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

StoneX needed to build a shared leadership standard across 393 managers in 13 cities.

TransforMe used diagnostics, behavioural assessments and a tailored leadership development programme based on StoneX’s specific needs.

The programme used a consistent global curriculum with local facilitators and delivery in regional languages where needed.

The programme achieved 14.8% capability progression, with improvements in active listening, collaboration, customer orientation and proactive ownership.

Participants used 30–60–90-day action plans, follow-up sessions, peer coaching and AI-enabled learning nudges to reinforce new behaviours.

12 months ago, she was one of the best managers in the business. Her team delivered consistently. Her instincts were sharp. Things kept moving.

Then the company doubled in size.

She now leads four teams through three other managers, sits in rooms where decisions carry significantly more weight, and is expected to influence functions she has never worked in. The skills that made her exceptional are still there. But the role has changed faster than anyone prepared her for.

As the company expanded, it created a leadership capability gap. This is one of the most common and least examined costs of rapid growth. The leadership gap shows up later in decisions that take weeks instead of days, in senior leaders who become bottlenecks, in managers working hard but that effort doesn’t reflect in the results.

Why rapid growth creates leadership gaps

Growth changes what leaders need to do — and it changes faster than most organisations anticipate.

A manager responsible for a small team may suddenly be leading multiple teams through other managers. Decisions that were once made through informal conversations now involve competing priorities, cross-functional accountability, and greater complexity. The leadership development approach that worked at thirty people requires a different approach and can rarely scale to three hundred without deliberate adjustment.

Australia is losing 500 experienced managers per day to retirement, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). At the same time, only 4% of the workforce currently have leadership aspirations. The pipeline is thinning at precisely the moment organisations need it to widen.

The transition required is a shift from solving problems personally to creating the conditions for others to solve them — from doing to enabling, from directing to influencing. Meaningful leadership capability is demonstrated through what leaders can do in practice, not whether they have completed development activities. Having enough managers is not the same as having enough capable leaders. An organisation can add management layers and still struggle with organisational growth decision-making and alignment if the capability underneath those titles has not been built deliberately.

The warning signs of leadership gap in your organisation

Leadership gaps appear first as operational symptoms — decisions slowing, senior leaders pulled into conversations they should not need to be in, managers firefighting rather than leading, teams receiving inconsistent messages about what matters most.

Over time, teams become dependent on individual leaders rather than shared leadership effectiveness across the function. Strategic priorities fail to translate consistently into team actions. Employee engagement declines steadily but gets noticed only in hindsight.

Why promoting high performers is not always enough

Promoting a strong individual contributor into leadership is often the most natural next step. They know the business, they have delivered results, and people trust their expertise.

A new manager may be technically brilliant but high performance in an individual role does not automatically transfer into leadership development readiness. A leadership role often requires coaching others through difficulty, managing performance with fairness, making decisions that carry team-wide consequences, and influencing people who do not report to them.

Leadership assessment helps organisations make this transition deliberately. It identifies where a leader is already strong, where the demands of a new role exceed current capability, and where development would make the greatest difference soonest. Organisations cannot assume that promotion itself creates leadership capability.

Building leadership capability before the gap becomes a problem

82% of new managers have never been trained or coached to lead, according to the Chartered Management Institute. That figure sits alongside another from AHRI’s own benchmarking survey: 96% of experienced leaders are actively seeking targeted, experience-appropriate development. The investment gap and the demand gap exist simultaneously — which is why leadership effectiveness problems are so often misread as operational ones.

The most expensive time to invest in leadership development is after the gaps are already visible. By then the organisation is already paying the price in the form of slower decisions, disengaged teams, and senior leaders stretched across problems they should not need to personally solve.

A stronger approach treats leadership development as part of the growth strategy. TransforMe’s work with growing organisations begins with diagnosis — understanding where trust breaks down, where communication distorts, and where accountability diffuses before designing anything. A leadership development programme is then built around real situations leaders are already navigating, not theoretical frameworks.

For senior leaders, executive coaching in Australia reinforces the behavioural shifts that programmes surface — the leader who holds a decision differently, communicates with greater clarity, or delegates in a team that has been waiting for direction. Coaching is not a supplement to development. It is how development becomes durable.

Growth requires leadership to grow with it

The organisations that scale successfully treat leadership capability as a strategic investment. They assess where leaders are, build deliberately towards where the business is going, and sustain that development through coaching and reinforcement rather than one-off interventions. Organisational performance and leadership effectiveness improve together — or they do not improve at all.

TransforMe helps organisations assess, develop, and strengthen leadership capability through structured leadership development programmes and executive coaching designed around their specific growth context. Because growth is only sustainable when leadership grows with it.

Frequently Asked Questions

A leadership gap occurs when an organisation does not have enough leaders with the skills and capabilities required to manage its current or future business needs.

Rapid growth increases team size, complexity, decision-making demands and leadership responsibilities, often faster than leaders can develop the capabilities needed to manage them.

Leadership assessments, capability reviews, employee feedback and performance insights can help organisations identify current strengths and development gaps.

High performance in an individual role does not automatically translate into effective people leadership. New managers often need structured development in communication, delegation, coaching and strategic thinking.

Executive coaching helps leaders build self-awareness, improve decision-making, manage complexity and strengthen their effectiveness as their responsibilities grow.

TransforMe can help organisations assess leadership capability and develop leaders through structured leadership development programmes, coaching and practical development approaches.

Chances are, you have experienced this.

The strategy session goes well. Decisions are made. Heads nod around the table. Everyone leaves believing they are aligned. Yet within weeks, priorities begin to drift. Different business units move in different directions and progress slows down. Why?

Because different teams are acting based on their own interpretation of the conversation. This hints at missing common culture and shared language which is often a result of a gap in leadership team alignment.

Gatik Chaujer, co-founder of TransforMe and a Sydney-based storytelling coach with 25 + years of experience observes that, “a leader’s ability to inspire and influence can fill this gap. For strategies to work, teams must leave meetings informed but also inspired.”

Why leadership teams agree but still fail to execute

Agreement and leadership team alignment are not the same thing.

Leaders can nod, genuinely believe they are on the same page, and return to their team with an entirely different set of priorities. Not because they were not listening — but because interpretation fills the gaps that clarity leaves behind. Ownership gets assumed rather than assigned. Conflict gets avoided to preserve artificial harmony in the room. And the communication that follows stays siloed within functions rather than flowing across them.

Gartner research shows that 70% of change initiatives fail not because the strategy is wrong, but because of people and execution failures. Executive team alignment requires every leader to leave with the same understanding of what was decided, why it matters, who owns it, and how success will be measured. In organisations navigating hybrid work, distributed teams, and faster cycles of business change, that precision has never mattered more.

What real executive team alignment looks like

High-performing leadership teams do not rely on assumptions. They leave every significant conversation with answers to the four most important questions:

  1. What exactly was decided?
  2. Why is it the priority?
  3. Who owns each outcome?
  4. How will we measure success?

When every leader answers those questions consistently, decision-making accelerates because leaders stop revisiting previous discussions. Cross-functional collaboration improves because departments are working on the same problems rather than protecting separate agendas.

For organisations facing productivity pressure, talent shortages, and increasingly distributed workforces, these are practical differences between a strategy that gets executed and one that gets discussed.

How a leadership development programme improves follow-through

Processes alone cannot create alignment. People do.

TransforMe worked with Cleartrip’s newly assembled CXO team following its acquisition by Flipkart — a group of experienced senior leaders who were learning to adapt to each other’s working styles. Artificial harmony and lack of trust slowed down decisions.

The intervention was not a strategy workshop. It was a structured diagnostic-led process: team assessment, a two-day immersive lab, individual coaching, and five months of sustained follow-through to embed what had shifted.

As a result, trust scores improved significantly. Healthy conflict — the kind that leads to better decisions — increased. Commitment and collective accountability strengthened. As CFO Aditya Agarwal reflected: “As a company we’ve really grown almost 3x since that first SS Lab. I think it wouldn’t have happened if we had not established that level of working relationship.”

This is what a well-designed leadership development programme produces — not familiarity with leadership concepts, but practical shifts in how leaders communicate, make decisions, give feedback, and hold each other accountable after the meeting ends. Leadership team alignment is built through better leadership behaviour.

Where executive coaching in Australia supports senior leaders

As leaders become more senior, the challenges become less technical and far more behavioural. Senior executives are expected to influence peers, navigate competing priorities, make difficult decisions under pressure, and hold one another accountable — all while maintaining trust across the executive team.

Executive coaching in Australia gives leaders the space to examine how they communicate, influence, and make decisions when the stakes are real. Small behavioural shifts at the senior level create disproportionate improvements in organisational performance — because how a senior leader shows up in a difficult conversation sets the tone for every level below them.

For CEOs, founders, and executive teams leading growth or transformation, coaching closes the gap between what gets agreed in the room and what actually gets executed. When combined with strong executive team alignment, it strengthens the specific behaviours organisations need most: clarity, accountability, trust, and the kind of constructive challenge that leads to better decisions.

Execution improves when leadership alignment becomes a behaviour

More meetings don’t automatically translate to faster execution.

Execution improves when there’s clarity, clear ownership, mutual accountability, and consistent communication among leaders and among teams. That is the difference between agreement and genuine leadership team alignment.

If you’re leading an organisation that is navigating growth, transformation, or increasing complexity, a practical leadership development programme supported by executive coaching can help close the gap between strategy and execution.

TransforMe works with leadership teams across Australia to build that capability — practically, sustainably, and in the conditions your leaders are already working in. Get in touch to start a conversation.

You’ve invested in leadership development. Engaged with expert facilitators, and collected post-session feedback. However, six months later, team dynamics haven’t changed, managers still struggle to communicate effectively, and the potential leader who was going to be promoted just handed in their resignation.

And then you ask yourself: what was the ROI of leadership development?

It’s a natural question when the investment does not translate to visible leadership behaviour change. But the truth is, the answer almost always lies in the programme’s design.

Are you tracking the right metrics?

Completion rates. Satisfaction scores. Session attendance. These are the most commonly reported ROI of leadership training metrics and yet they’re often not enough to give you the full picture.

Australian HR Institute’s (AHRI) research identified leadership development as one of the most effective strategies to reduce Australia’s 16% annual employee turnover rate. But you arrive at that conclusion only when leadership development outcomes are visible. What programmes need to track is how managers actually lead their teams, hold performance conversations, and retain people in their teams.

Gartner found that 76% of organisations have increased spending on leadership development. However, 71% of HR leaders still report they are not effectively developing their leaders.

When L&D budgets are growing but programmes are failing to facilitate lasting change, something isn’t right.

What separates programmes that change behaviour from those that don’t

In a 12-month leadership development programme TransforMe delivered to 21 high-potential women leaders across legal, finance, HR, procurement, and operations at a large industrial organisation:

  • 86% credited the programme as a key driver of their leadership growth over the year
  • 78% reported feeling significantly prepared to take on senior or strategic roles
  • 100% reported stronger resilience

What made the programme design exceptional was the fact that learning was never separated from application. Virtual sessions, group coaching, simulations, and pre- and post-work were built as a single sustained system across 12 months. Behaviour change was the goal from day one.

This is the ROI of leadership development that CHROs can actually defend in a board conversation: leaders who lead differently in the situations that matter, in ways their organisations can observe.

The ROI of business storytelling

Need for programmes that understand your organisation’s context

A leadership development programme in Australia that understands the organisation’s context, the culture and the unwritten rules will always deliver great results.

According to the numbers reported by ABS, up to 500 managers retire every single day. And only 4% of the broader workforce currently aspires to reach management roles. The pipeline is narrowing at the very intersection organisations need it to widen. Hybrid work has complicated how leaders build trust and accountability across distributed teams. And Gartner’s research shows that 75% of HR leaders report their managers are overwhelmed — with as much as 51% of a middle manager’s time now consumed by individual contributor work rather than leadership.

This is the everyday environment in which your leaders are operating and trying to grow. An impactful programme, that is crafted with these realities in mind produces leadership development outcomes that live long after the workshop or the training ends.

What TransforMe builds

Most leadership programmes are designed to inform. TransforMe’s are designed to change behaviour — which requires a fundamentally different architecture.

The diagnostic comes first. Understanding how a leadership team or cohort actually functions — where trust breaks down, where communication distorts, where accountability diffuses — shapes everything that follows. Without that, even well-facilitated sessions address the wrong problems.

From there, a tailored leadership development programme is built around real situations:

  • The performance conversation a manager is avoiding
  • The team alignment that collapsed after an acquisition or a leadership restructure
  • The senior leader whose communication style doesn’t influence or inspire her team

Coaching, peer learning, and structured application are some mechanisms through which insight becomes habit.

When Cleartrip brought TransforMe in to work with their newly assembled CXO team post-acquisition — a group of experienced, senior leaders — the outcome was not just improved team dynamics. As CFO Aditya Agarwal reflected: “As a company we’ve really grown almost 3x since that first SS Lab. I think it wouldn’t have happened if we had not established that level of working relationship.”

That is what the ROI of leadership training looks like when the programme is designed to reach it.

The right leadership training partner changes what’s measurable

Leadership ROI comes from running the right programme, designed for your leaders, measured against tangible organisational outcomes.

One-off training events do not build capability. They build familiarity with concepts. A structured leadership development programme — sustained over time, grounded in diagnostic insight, and built around real behaviour change — is what produces results that survive long after the programme.

The cost of a programme that does not work is not just the fee. It is another year of the same gaps.

TransforMe offers leadership development programmes in Australia built for that reality. For leaders your organisation actually has, in the conditions they are already working in.

Speak to TransforMe about designing a programme that delivers ROI your board can see.

Before you read any further, take a moment to imagine a CEO. Now imagine a CFO or just any other C-suite level leader. Was any of them a woman? 

If your answer is no, there’s data that tells you why that’s the case. 

HiBob’s 2026 Women in the Workplace study found that only 14% of women received a promotion last year. That’s down from 25%, while the number of men that were promoted nearly doubled.  

The conversation around empowering women leaders often circles back to representation. We’ve collectively accepted that representation matters but have stopped short of asking the harder question: does our current approach actually build women into leaders, or does it just give them a seat at the table?

Representation is rising but is it enough? 

Hiring more women is not the same as building women leaders.

Most organisations have made real progress at the entry level. Campus cohorts are more balanced than ever and diversity dashboards reflect intent. But somewhere between joining and getting to the corner office, women often begin to disappear into a system dominated by men. The drop-off accelerates long before the conversation for a C-suite role begins. 

McKinsey and LeanIn.org call this the ‘broken rung’. For every 100 men promoted from entry-level to manager, only 87 women are on the same trajectory. That first rung compounds across an entire career and explains far more of the senior-leadership gap than the glass ceiling itself.

Then there’s the sponsorship problem. As Herminia Ibarra wrote in her now-classic Harvard Business Review study, Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women: Women are over-mentored and under-sponsored.

Women receive plenty of advice on how to navigate the system. They receive far less active advocacy in rooms where roles are assigned and successors are named. Mentors talk to you. Sponsors talk about you.

Add subtler frictions like bias in performance reviews, the ‘she’s not quite ready’ feedback, and the assumption that motherhood signals a career slowdown are some invisible challenges. 

An impactful women’s leadership training programme that takes into account these realities can be useful in empowering women leaders. 

Look at women’s leadership as a business multiplier

McKinsey’s Diversity Wins report tracked more than 1,000 companies across 15 countries and found that those in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to outperform on profitability. 

This is why empowering women leaders strengthens gender equity and enterprise performance simultaneously. It naturally leads to better decisions, stronger stakeholder alignment, higher innovation scores, and a culture that retains talent in a market where retention is harder than hiring.

Viewed this way, empowering women leaders through leadership training can hit three birds with a stone. Your organisation invests in capability development, succession planning, and organisational resilience building at once. 

4 ways women’s leadership training drives measurable business impact 

  1. Stronger leadership bench 

Structured women’s leadership training creates future-ready leaders. Most senior women in corporates have risen despite functioning in a system that was never designed for them in the first place. A well-designed programme navigates the broken system so reaching and thriving on top doesn’t depend on luck or grit alone.

  1. Improved decision-making

Diverse leadership sharpens strategic judgement. BCG’s research on innovation found that companies with above-average diversity at the management level generated 45% of their revenue from new products and services — versus 26% for less-diverse peers.

  1. Cultural transformation from the top

Empowering women leaders improves psychological safety and engagement across teams. A widely cited Harvard Business Review analysis by Zenger and Folkman found that women were rated higher than men on 17 of 19 leadership competencies including resilience, developing others, and driving for results.

  1. Market and customer alignment

Women leaders better represent the consumer base your business is actually selling to and the workforce you’re actually trying to retain. In sectors like BFSI, retail, healthcare and digital, where a considerable number of women are executors and decision-makers, your leadership composition is a commercial signal.

Ignoring women’s leadership training is risky

If the women you’ve recruited can’t see a credible path to the top, they will also leave like any other employee. If your succession bench is shallow on one side, your business continuity sits on one leg. If your leadership cohort doesn’t look like your market, your strategic instincts could have a negative impact on consumer behaviour. 

And if your competitors are building real leadership equity while you are running symbolic campaigns, the gap widens sooner than you realise. 

From intention to institutional strategy

Real change doesn’t come from a single programme. It comes from how leadership decisions are made, measured, and held to account.

A useful starting point is to audit your own pipeline honestly. 

  • Where do women drop out — at which level, in which functions, and why?
  • Who is being sponsored into stretch roles, and who is being mentored without ever being recommended? 
  • How are leadership behaviours defined and assessed? 
  • Are promotion decisions consistent with the values you publish externally?

Once you have the answers, invest in structured development that is tied to business outcomes. Align leadership KPIs to diversity outcomes like pipeline health, sponsorship activity, promotion equity. Engage senior leaders as named, accountable sponsors, not occasional patrons.

The strategic move

Women’s leadership is an underutilised strategic lever.

If your organisation is ready to move beyond symbolic diversity and build measurable leadership capability, it’s time to rethink how you approach women’s leadership.

At TransforMe, we’ve partnered with leading organisations to design women’s leadership development programmes that produce clear, measurable outcomes. Our flagship women’s leadership programme, Evolve, is built for organisations focused on gender diversity and strengthening their leadership pipeline. 

In a recent cohort, 78% of participants said they were able to tackle gender bias at work after the programme, and 43% reported a meaningful lift in their visibility and ability to influence within their organisations.

You can explore the programme details here.
https://transforme.com.au/leadership-training/women-leadership-programme

Want to invest in women’s leadership training programmes but have questions? Fill out this form and someone from our team will get in touch soon.

In 2006, Hans Rosling stood on the TED stage and presented data about child mortality rates, income distribution and how life expectancy varies across 200 countries. The data offered nothing that most development economists weren’t already aware of. Rosling showcased data in a way that no one had ever seen and experienced before. He animated the numbers, invoked different characters, built tension, and told several stories with a beginning, a middle, and a genuinely surprising end. 

He caught everyone’s attention and breathed life into a subject that may not have interested everyone otherwise. 

Today, organisations around the world, including Australia, have access to more data, more dashboards, and more strategy documents than ever before. When you learn to turn information into a story that people can feel and remember, they can inspire, influence and drive action. 

This is where storytelling training for leaders comes in. 

Why leadership messages don’t land

There are three reasons a message fails to move people. 

The first is overload. Most employees are operating in high-information environments. So, when leaders communicate through data, slides, and bullet points, the message becomes just another item competing for attention. 

A Carnegie Mellon study found that facts activate only the language centres of the brain, while stories activate up to seven regions — including those responsible for emotion, memory, and sensory experience. People don’t just hear a story, they experience it.

The second is unclear stakes. Teams are often told what is changing, but not what happens if nothing changes. Without understanding the risk, urgency, or opportunity, people default to working the way they always have.

The third is no clear ask. Many meetings end without a decision or a next step because the message was informative but not directional. People leave the room informed, but unsure of what they are supposed to do differently.

Communication must offer clarity on the situation and the action that must follow. 

What changes when leaders learn to use story

We have moved from the age of information to the age of influence. Leaders are no longer expected to just inform. They are expected to inspire, engage, and influence decisions, alignment and action.

At TransforMe, we believe that a leader who influences knows how to do two things—tell the right story, and tell the story right.

That’s what you learn at the end of a good leadership storytelling training. The impact of telling the right story and telling the story right is visible sooner than you realise. Alignment happens faster. Decisions become easier to make. Buy-in becomes genuine rather than performative. Execution improves because teams are working towards an outcome they actually understand.

Great storytelling requires more preparation than you think

One of the most persistent myths about storytelling is that it is spontaneous—that great communicators are just naturally compelling. In reality, what looks effortless in the room is almost always the result of deliberate structure applied before it.

In TransforMe’s leadership storytelling training, you work with a repeatable framework built for business situations which looks like this:

Hook → Context → Stakes → Path → Ask

You learn how to get people’s attention with a hook and then set the context for them. Once the context is clear, you tell them what’s at stake and what are the different ways in which the risk can be minimised. This clarity makes the message actionable.

When Ryan Morrell from Daisee completed The Art of Storytelling programme, he described it as learning “how powerful a story can be in inspiring others — whether they be your customers or your team.” His cohort built three compelling narratives and implemented them across the organisation over four months. 

Jessica Duarte from Google noted the facilitator’s ability to “extract the science of storytelling and empower teams to not only tell better stories themselves, but help others do the same.” Audience engagement scores at the flagship event rose by 30%.

These outcomes are the result of a repeatable framework, applied consistently.

What you learn: structure, sequencing, and presence

Storytelling training for leaders is about clarity, sequencing and confident delivery in situations where the outcome of the conversation matters.

You learn to carefully craft a message so the logic and the stakes are clear. You also learn to sequence information in a way that explains the rationale behind a decision. And finally, you learn how to deliver the message in a compelling way. Most leaders get to practise the ask and so, they leave The Art of Storytelling programme knowing how to move forward in a certain situation. 

The methodology is deliberately hands-on: practice loops, video recording, personalised feedback from expert facilitators, and NLP-informed approaches to help leaders embed new habits under pressure even after the workshop ends. 

Where to apply it immediately

The real test of any leadership storytelling training is what leaders take back to their teams, their customers, and their high-stakes conversations.

During one of the cohorts, a sales consultant who was technically brilliant and had thorough knowledge of the product was someone who was always unsure of himself. In a role-playing session, where he could literally practice the ask, he stopped performing and started connecting— let his guard down and brought his whole self into the conversation.

“I think he’s going to take that (experience) back with his customers and I think he will do extremely well”, observed a key stakeholder of the business. That is what storytelling training for leaders unlocks.

Shift mindsets, then shift actions

People act when they see the context, feel the stakes, and know what is expected of them. When organisations want to humanise data and translate the impact of the numbers storytelling training for leaders becomes an important catalyst. How does a low EBITDA margin affect your team? What happens if Q1 targets are met? What’s the rationale behind those targets? 

When you’re able to answer questions like these in a comprehensive way, you’ve mastered the art of storytelling. 

TransforMe’s Art of Storytelling programme has helped leaders at Google, ANZ Bank, McKinsey, EY, Accenture, KPMG, and Flight Centre build this capability. It is hands-on, evidence-based, and built around the real conversations Australian leaders should have.

If your organisation needs faster alignment and stronger buy-in, this is where it starts. Get in touch to explore how The Art of Storytelling can build the communication capability your leadership team needs.

Why transparency in leadership is important for gaining employees’ trust

Nearly 45% of Australians say they lack trusted relationships at work, according to the TELUS Mental Health Index. 

Almost four in ten employees say they are unsure whether workplace issues like conflict or harassment are addressed fairly. 

These numbers tell an unfortunate tale of workplaces where trust is far more fragile than what leaders typically assume.

You’d think they point to dramatic leadership failure but it’s often everyday moments that gradually erode employees’ trust. A situation where action is expected but information is incomplete. A restructure is announced without any clear details. A change in strategy shared without context. 

People expect transparency in leadership but when they do not have clarity on why decisions are being made or what they mean for them, they tend to lose trust in leadership.  

The most effective way to minimise this trust deficiency is to offer transparency in leadership. 

We’ll talk more about how to improve transparency but let’s first find out if your organisation has a trust deficit. 

What trust deficit looks like inside organisations

The trust deficit builds gradually when leadership or internal communication leaves gaps that employees may fill themselves. It often makes room for rumours and speculation to quickly fill the vacuum which leads to subtle disengagement.

The warning signs often appear in behaviour before they appear in metrics:

  • Rumour cycles replace official communication, especially after vague announcements
  • Managers begin translating leadership messages because the original explanation lacked clarity
  • Passive resistance or artificial harmony grows, where employees comply but question decisions privately
  • Discretionary effort declines, as employees stop investing energy beyond what is required

Nokia’s then CEO Stephen Elop’s popular memo about the ‘burning platform’ is one of the greatest examples of tackling  trust deficit by ensuring transparency in leadership. 

Back in 2011, he was assigned the challenging task of communicating to the employees that the company was in troubled waters and their jobs might be at risk. “We too are standing on a burning platform and we must decide how we’re going to change our behaviour”, Stephen wrote in the memo. 

He understood that employees can handle difficult news but what could potentially break their trust is vague, confusing communication. 

Why more Australian employees expect transparency in leadership

“There are challenges like inflation, housing affordability, and job loss risks that are clear stressors, especially at the start of a person’s career when there is typically less financial stability,” Paula Allen, Global Leader, Research & Client Insights, TELUS Health, said in a statement. It should be no surprise then that TELUS Mental Health Index also found that employees under the age of 40 are more likely to report lack of trust in workplaces.

According to Mercer’s Global Talent Trends report, employee trust in organisations dropped from 82% to 72% between 2022 and 2024. This decline can be attributed to three major factors: 

  1. Change fatigue
    Organisational restructures, economic volatility and technological disruption mean employees are adjusting to new priorities more frequently than before.
  2. Hybrid work
    Hybrid environments have reduced informal conversations that were possible in common workspaces. This makes formal leadership communication even more important to understand the big picture
  3. Uncertainty about the future
    Market changes, AI adoption, and evolving business models mean organisations themselves are still figuring out their direction. Employees recognise this and expect honesty about what leaders know, what they do not know, and how decisions will be made moving forward

Transparency in leadership is not oversharing
Many leaders hesitate to practise transparency in leadership  because they assume it means sharing everything. But the truth is employees do not expect every internal detail. They simply want to understand how decisions are being made and what would be the implications of those decisions on them.

Without this context, organisations often fall into the opposite extreme: information dumps. Leaders share large volumes of data without explaining what it means, or the core message changes as it is passed on through the hierarchy. 

The Transparency Playbook — 5 practices leaders can implement

Building workplace transparency requires consistent behaviour shifts. Here are five simple but effective leadership practices that will help minimise trust deficit. 

  1. Explain decision logic
    Walk employees through the context behind a decision: the options considered, the trade-offs involved, and the final choice
  2. Create a predictable communication cadence
    Regular updates reduce speculation. When employees know when information will be shared, rumour cycles shrink
  3. Close the loop on feedback
    Explain what leaders heard, what changed as a result, and what did not
  4. Equip managers with clear talking points
    Managers often become translators of leadership communication. Providing FAQs and consistent messaging ensures teams hear the same explanation
  5. Be clear about uncertainty
    Sharing what is known, what is still being assessed, and when the next decision will be made helps reduce anxiety.

Even with the best intentions, leadership teams may find it challenging to communicate with clarity and develop transparency in leadership. Here’s something that can help strengthen their capabilities and build trust in the workplace.

How to rebuild transparency in leadership like a repeatable system

The O.C. Tanner Global Culture Report 2026, based on nearly 38,000 employees and leaders across 23+ countries, found that only about half of employees believe their organisations are truly transparent. 

So, no matter how powerful your town hall and meeting room speeches are, trust doesn’t grow through words but through patterns employees observe over time. Consistency, fairness, follow-through and clear communication under pressure restore credibility.

But how can leaders ensure that they remain calm and maintain credibility when the risks are real and the stakes are high? We’ve trained leaders across the globe to navigate these complexities and improve transparency in leadership through our Breakthrough Leadership Programme. 

Transparency is a leadership capability, not PR

The conversation about trust often begins with communication, but it ultimately ends with leadership behaviour. Transparency in leadership is not about sharing more information but about helping people understand decisions, trade-offs and direction.

At TransforMe, we work with organisations to help leaders practise effective communication and behaviour shifts through experiential learning, coaching, and real workplace scenarios. 

If strengthening transparency and rebuilding employee trust is a priority for your organisation but you don’t know where to start, schedule a discovery call today. Let’s together evaluate how strong your current leadership communication is or are there any gaps that require immediate attention.

Infographic: Top 5 leadership challenges for women

Effective storytelling can set your business apart.

Jeff Bezos once said, “You can have the best technology, you can have the best business model, but if the storytelling isn’t amazing, it won’t matter.” Amazon’s CEO knew the power of strategically sequencing facts and emotions. 

Your business could be based in Australia or you could be leading a diverse team that operates from different parts of the world. Irrespective of geography, storytelling training is important because it can quickly become your differentiator.  We live in a world where information and numbers are easily accessible so imagine how effectively, clearly and credibly your leaders could  navigate high-stake conversations, if they just knew how.

At TransforMe, we believe in the power of storytelling: it all comes down to telling the right story vs telling the story right. As you read further, you’ll discover why every business needs storytelling training today. 

What is storytelling training and why does it matter?

Storytelling training exists because humans don’t make sense of the world through bullet points and slides. Carnegie Mellon conducted a study that found  facts activate only the language centres of the brain, while stories activate up to seven regions, including those responsible for emotion, memory, and sensory experience 

In other words, people don’t just hear a story, they experience it.

Storytelling training for business matters because it teaches leaders how to work with this reality. It helps them choose the right story for the context, structure it deliberately, and anchor it in real experience rather than abstraction. 

A quick search about the ‘Burning Platform’ by Stephen Elop, reveals the memo Nokia’s then CEO Stephen Elop sent its global employees in 2011. He had to tell them that the organisation was in troubled waters and people were going to lose their jobs. 

Stephen sent out a memo telling them that they were on a burning platform where they could either choose to jump to save themselves or slowly burn with it. It’s one of the most memorable examples of business storytelling that still lives on the internet. 

How storytelling can help your business 

When storytelling coach Gatik Chaujer was working with Vanessa, she was preparing to speak at a conference for technical managers. Her subject was the tension between customer privacy and personalisation which made her content rigorous, data-rich and heavy. So she opened with an incident we often share in our storytelling training sessions.

When her daughter was six, she loved to personalise everything: backpacks, stationery, books with stickers of her name on them. By the age of 13, she wanted absolute privacy. “I decide what I want to share,” her daughter announced. 

Vanessa went on to add, “Customers grow too. Their expectations evolve. If we keep treating them like they’re still six because we like the convenience of personalisation we’ll lose more than trust.”

Her story caught everyone’s attention because it was familiar and that’s something most businesses miss. Kevin Cashman, author of the book Leadership on the Inside says, “Numbers are numbing to most people while stories speak to the whole person, both head and heart.” 

If you want to enable your leaders to tell a story like Vanesssa, invest in an effective storytelling training programme that will help:  

  • Sharpen how your brand is understood
    Stories help people remember what you stand for.
  • Simplify complex decisions and processes
    By helping people interpret data and organise information in a way they can understand it best. 
  • Increase persuasion without increasing pressure
    When people recognise themselves in the narrative, they’re less likely to resist leading to quicker decision-making.
  • Replace compliance with internal alignment
    Teams align to company values better when they understand why a choice was made and what it protects

 People respond to stories not numbers

Today, you can find data, analysis and frameworks by simply tapping a few buttons on your phone or laptop.  But how often do you stop scrolling just to pause and process all that information? 

Think about the pandemic when deaths were reduced to mere numbers. What’s etched better in your memory, fluctuating numbers on screens or a friend recounting their recovery journey? Stories cut through saturation because they give people context. They help audiences understand why something matters now, not just what is happening.

Every business is made of people who connect to moments that reflect real choices and consequences. In competitive environments, that clarity becomes a differentiator especially when we’re dealing with shorter attention spans. 

Storytelling training helps you humanise information by making it familiar and relatable. 

3 secrets of powerful storytelling

Anyone who tells you that storytelling is about waiting for inspiration is probably lying. The truth is it’s all about preparation. What often looks spontaneous is usually the result of deliberate thinking done in advance.

In our storytelling training, we often share these tips with the participants: 

  • Tactfully insert “key words” or “emotions” you want to invoke
    Strong stories don’t leave interpretation to chance. Tell your audience exactly how you felt, “I was thrilled the project finally came to an end” or “My energy was at an all-time high.” will help you establish strong emotional appeal
  • Build up to your JDM (Jaw Dropping Moment)
    When you’re telling a story, you know what’s that one moment that will instantly grab everyone’s attention. Scripting your story will help you sequence the build-up
  • Make it visual
    If they can imagine it, they can experience it. Something as simple as “I was about to board a flight when my phone rang…” can help them visualise the details

Getting started: Storytelling Training for Your Business

If you’re looking to invest in storytelling training for your business, choose one where the emphasis is on engaging, influencing, and capturing attention in everyday work scenarios using hands-on practice. 

Remember that storytelling cannot be treated as a one-size-fits-all skill. A finance leader, a founder, and a people leader don’t tell stories the same way and need a tailored storytelling strategy to adapt narrative structures to their goals and audience. 

The Art of Storytelling, TransForMe’s flagship storytelling training programme combines experiential workshops, proven narrative frameworks, and personalised feedback to help leaders apply storytelling where it matters most. We’ve helped 200+ clients across Australia and around the world master the art of storytelling.

See programme details here. 

Trust in managers has dropped from 46% in 2022 to just 29% in 2024, as per the survey conducted by DDI Global Leadership Forecast 2025. This isn’t just a statistic but a wake-up call. High-performing teams are raising the bar on what they expect from their leaders, and organisations that fail to respond risk losing their best people.

The Australian leadership development market is projected to grow from USD 1.46 billion in 2025 to USD 3.22 billion by 2035, driven by one undeniable reality: teams won’t settle for outdated leadership models. They’re demanding leaders who can navigate hybrid work, leverage AI responsibly, communicate with emotional intelligence, and create psychologically safe environments where people can do their best work.

The shift in what teams actually need

Gone are the days when leadership development focused primarily on technical competencies. Research shows that 77% of organisations lack sufficient leadership depth across levels, which means many companies are promoting technically strong individual contributors into leadership roles without equipping them for the human side of leadership. The result? Managers who excel at individual tasks but struggle to inspire teams, address conflict, or create alignment.

Today, if you want to build a high-performing team in Australia, invest in developing people skills in your leadership.Your teams want leaders who demonstrate empathy whilst maintaining accountability. They expect transparency in decision-making, not top-down directives. They need leaders who can hold difficult conversations without avoiding conflict, and who build trust through consistent behaviour rather than grand gestures.

What high-performing teams expect from leadership training in Australia

 

1. Hybrid leadership capabilities

Hybrid work isn’t going anywhere. Yet many leadership programmes still treat it as an afterthought, if they address it at all.

Teams working across home and office don’t need leaders who micromanage Zoom calendars. They need leaders who build trust without constant visibility, give feedback that lands over video calls, and keep teams aligned when face-to-face time is scarce. These aren’t soft skills. They’re essential capabilities that determine whether hybrid teams perform or fall apart.

2. Emotional intelligence, not just strategic thinking

90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence. Teams led by leaders with such quality experience significantly lower turnover and higher engagement.

Yet many leadership development programmes in Australia still treat emotional intelligence as a soft skill rather than a core competency. High-performing teams know better. They want leaders who understand how emotions drive behaviour, who can read the room, and who respond to stress with composure rather than reactivity.

Emotional intelligence is teachable but it requires experiential learning, not PowerPoint slides. The best leadership training Australia offers incorporates real-world scenarios, reflective practice, and individual coaching to help leaders develop self-awareness and empathy in measurable ways.

3. AI literacy without losing the human touch

AI is reshaping how work gets done, and teams expect leaders who can navigate this shift confidently. But AI literacy doesn’t mean becoming a technical expert. It means understanding how AI can enhance decision-making, streamline processes, and free teams to focus on higher-value work while recognising the ethical implications and limitations.

McKinsey found that companies in the top quintile for digital and AI maturity deliver 2–6 times higher shareholder returns than their peers. Leaders who can leverage technology without losing sight of the human element will drive performance. Those who resist or over-rely on automation will struggle.

4. Psychologically safe environments

Picture this: A project manager realises three weeks before launch that the timeline her team committed to is impossible. She knows this because her developers have been working late every night, stress is climbing, and quality is slipping. But in the weekly status meeting, when the director asks “Are we on track?”, she says “Yes, all good.”

Now picture a different scenario: Same situation, but this time she says “We’re behind. I misjudged the complexity, and I need your help reprioritising features to deliver what matters most.” The director doesn’t punish her honesty—he thanks her for flagging it early and works with her to adjust scope.

That’s psychological safety. And it’s not built by being nice. It’s built when leaders respond to bad news without blame, when they admit their own mistakes openly, and when they address underperformance without humiliation.

Creating this culture requires more than intention. It demands practice, feedback, and often an external voice to call out the blind spots leaders can’t see themselves.

 

5. Continuous learning, not one-off workshops

Let’s be honest: one-day workshops rarely stick. High-performing teams expect leadership development that’s woven into daily practice and not treated as a checkbox exercise.

Effective programmes combine workshops with individual coaching, peer accountability, and structured follow-up. They align leadership behaviours with business priorities and measure outcomes beyond participant satisfaction. They recognise that behaviour change takes time and reinforcement, not motivation alone.

The cost of getting leadership development wrong

Delaying or underinvesting in leadership development can reduce profits by as much as 7%. But the real cost shows up in ways that are harder to quantify: disengaged teams, preventable turnover, missed innovation, and leaders who burn out trying to do it all themselves.

Australian organisations can’t afford to treat leadership development as a nice-to-have. Not when 52% of organisations report that scalability and sustainment of leadership programmes are their top challenge. Not when the best talent increasingly chooses employers based on leadership quality and development opportunities.

Building leadership that high-performing teams deserve

The organisations that win in 2025 and beyond won’t have the flashiest programmes, they’ll have leadership development that’s tailored, experiential, and delivers measurable results.

At TransforMe, we’ve partnered with leading Australian organisations to build leaders who navigate complexity, communicate with clarity, and inspire high performance. Whether you’re developing first-time managers or senior executives, the principle is the same: leadership is a behaviour, not a title. And behaviours are shaped through practice, feedback, and accountability, not workshops alone.

High-performing teams are raising the bar. Are your leadership programmes keeping pace?

If you’re ready to explore leadership development that drives real results, TransforMe’s programmes are designed for organisations committed to building leaders who inspire, influence, and perform.

 

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