For newly-formed teams
Promoted, hired, or restructured into a leadership team that hasn't yet decided how to operate together. The Canvas is the deliberate kick-off most teams skip and later wish they hadn't.
For leadership teams who need to come together
The Leadership Canvas.
One hour. One conversation. A shared canvas for how your leadership team will lead together.
Who works with us?
For teams who've been together a while
New people have joined, old habits have set in, and the way you lead together looks different from how you'd describe it on paper. The Canvas surfaces what's drifted and re-aligns it.
For teams walking into something hard
A restructure. A funding round. A culture shift. A senior departure. Before you walk into the next hard thing, get on the same page about how you'll lead through it together.
Sound familiar?
- 01
Different managers, different rules
One manager runs performance reviews one way. Another does it differently. One holds people to a high bar; another lets things slide. Employees start comparing notes, then start resenting the inconsistency. The leadership team doesn't see it because each person thinks their way is the right way.
- 02
Decisions get made twice
A decision is made in one room. Then re-litigated in another. Then quietly reversed by whoever felt left out. By the time it lands, half the team is already moving in a different direction and nobody's sure who's in charge of what. It looks like a process problem. It's actually a leadership-team problem.
- 03
The unspoken expectations build up
Everyone assumes everyone else knows what "good" looks like here. Nobody actually agreed it. So when someone falls short, it feels personal instead of structural. Konik Leadership puts it well: unspoken expectations are pre-planned resentments.
Why one hour is enough.
Most team alignment workshops fail because they try to do too much. Vision, values, behaviours, OKRs, communication frameworks, conflict styles, all crammed into a day. People leave with a folder of frameworks and no sense of what to actually do differently on Monday.
The Leadership Canvas does one specific thing well: it gets your leadership team to agree, out loud and on the record, how you'll operate together. That's it. No personality profiles. No values poster. Just the operating decisions every leadership team needs to make and most never deliberately make.
Because we've narrowed the scope to the highest-leverage conversation, an hour is enough. And because everyone's in the room making real commitments to each other, the agreements stick.
What you walk away with.
Your Leadership Canvas
A 1-2 page document of the operating agreements your team made together. Specific behaviours, named commitments, decision-making norms.
Shared language
The team leaves with the same vocabulary for how they lead, which makes every meeting after this one easier.
Personal commitments
Each leader walks out having said, in front of their peers, what they'll do differently. That's harder to backslide on than a private intention.
Immediate shifts
The conversation itself tends to change things. You'll often see it in the room before the hour is up.
Is the Canvas right for your team?
This is for you if…
- You lead a leadership team of around 4 to 15 people.
- You're willing to put the whole team in the room (no skipping a key person).
- You want operating agreements you'll actually use, not values on a wall.
- You're okay with surfacing the unspoken stuff. The Canvas only works if people can be honest.
- You'd like the Canvas to be a starting point for a wider piece of leadership work, or you're happy for it to stand alone.
This might not work for you if…
- Your team is 12+ people. We can scope a longer or split-cohort version, but it's a different format.
- A key leader can't attend. The Canvas needs the whole leadership team in the room to hold.
- You want a personality-profile workshop or a values exercise. We don't do those, and you've probably done them already.
- You're looking for a quick team-building afternoon. The Canvas is short, but it asks for real engagement. There are easier ways to spend an hour.
Leadership Canvas FAQs
- For this specific job: yes. We've narrowed the scope deliberately. The Canvas isn't trying to fix every leadership challenge - it's designed to get your team to agree on the highest-leverage operating decisions. One hour, properly facilitated, with everyone in the room making commitments to each other, is enough to do that. If you need more, the Rehearsal Room is where deeper work happens.
Bring your leadership team.
Walk out aligned.
One hour, one conversation, one Canvas your team will actually use. Book a free discovery call and we'll talk through what your Canvas needs to do.
Book a free discovery callNo pitch deck. No "let's circle back." Promise.