A 5-year partnership delivering measurable behaviour change for 125 of the company's highest-potential leaders.

Bunnings invests heavily in developing the next generation of senior leaders. Each year, the Business Leadership Program (BLP) selects 25 of the company’s highest-potential leaders for an intensive nine-month development experience designed to prepare them for more senior roles.

The challenge any organisation faces with this kind of program is the same: how do you develop leaders in a way that produces real, lasting behaviour change, rather than a great experience that fades within months?

This is the question I’ve been working on with Bunnings for the past five years.

Within the BLP, I deliver a 12-session leadership development program focused on the practical capabilities and underlying mindsets that next-generation senior leaders need to lead effectively under pressure.

The program is built around a few specific principles.

Practical and applied. Each session focuses on tools leaders can apply to the real situations they’re facing in their roles: the conversations they’ve been avoiding, the decisions they keep deferring, the team dynamics that aren’t working, and the cross-functional influence they need to build at this level. Nothing stays theoretical.

Designed for time-poor leaders. Concepts are taught offline through video-based content, freeing live sessions to focus on application and discussion. This minimises calendar load while maximising the value of live time together.

Built to embed. Each fortnightly group coaching session ends with a clear action task, supported by peer learning pods that build accountability across the cohort. The LeadOS companion app supports daily application of what’s being taught between sessions.

Working at both layers. Practical leadership tools matter, but so do the mindsets and patterns running underneath. Drawing on my background as a clinical psychologist, the program addresses both: the external capabilities leaders need to develop, and the internal patterns that determine whether new behaviours actually take hold under pressure.

The program runs over six months, structured across three connected blocks. Each block builds on the previous one, with measurement woven throughout.

Most leadership programs do one of two things well. Some deliver inspiring content that participants enjoy but rarely apply. Others deliver practical skills that participants struggle to embed once they’re back in the pressure of their roles.

This program is built to do both.

The combination of practical, applied tools with the deeper psychological work makes the difference. Leaders learn what to do, and they work on what’s getting in the way of doing it. The embedding system (action tasks, peer pods, LeadOS) means the work continues between sessions, not just inside them. The blended delivery format respects how senior leaders actually learn under time pressure.

The result is a program that produces measurable behaviour change at the individual level, while building leadership capability that compounds across the organisation over time.

Every organisation’s leadership development needs are different. The work I did with Bunnings was designed specifically for their context, their leaders, and the outcomes they were looking to drive.

What this case study shows is what’s possible when a leadership program is built around behaviour change as the actual goal, supported by the systems that make change stick, and grounded in the deeper psychological work that determines whether new behaviours hold under pressure.

If this is the kind of work you’re looking to invest in, the discovery call is the best place to start.