Map the hooked / away pattern
Choose one recent situation. Explore inner experience, the hook, struggle or avoidance, action, short-term payoff and longer-term cost.
Leadership Development · Advanced elective
Leader as Coach: ACT-Informed Coaching
Build psychological flexibility. Act on what matters.
Explore how getting hooked by thoughts or feelings can influence leadership behaviour. Rather than testing whether a thought is true, this lens asks what the response does in context and whether it moves the person towards or away from what matters.
Workplace applications
Work with recurring avoidance, reactive responses, difficult conversations, uncertainty or pressure where an internal experience is narrowing useful action. Keep practical barriers, skills gaps and organisational conditions in view.
From getting hooked to responding flexibly
Open Up
Practise noticing thoughts and making room for discomfort without having to remove it before acting.
Be Present
Bring attention back to what is happening here and now, including the person, the conversation and the workplace situation.
Do What Matters
Clarify values and direction, then choose a small towards move that the person can test at work.
Experiment
Agree what to practise, when and where, and what useful observations could show whether the response is workable.
Review and reformulate
Reflect on what happened, what the person did and learned, then adjust the map and the next experiment.
Capability outcomes
- Notice function in context
Explore what a response gives in the short term and what it costs over time, without assuming its function from appearance.
- Support psychological flexibility
Use Open Up · Be Present · Do What Matters to broaden options for values-guided action.
- Practise and learn
Test a small towards move and review workability rather than treating discomfort as failure.
Prerequisite capability and scope
For leaders with established coaching skills, including Applied Practice or equivalent experience. Discuss readiness in listening, collaborative inquiry, experiential practice and role boundaries before advanced entry.
These programs use coaching psychology principles within a leadership-development context. They are not therapy programs, diagnostic training or substitutes for clinical assessment or treatment.
The person can pause or decline an exercise. Stay within competence and agreed confidentiality boundaries; respond appropriately to significant distress, impairment or safety concerns. When the barrier is practical or systemic, use problem-solving, skills development or organisational action rather than an ACT-only response.
Program arrangements
Delivery format, duration and investment are agreed after discussing readiness and organisational priorities.
Sustain values-guided action
Use development coaching or leadership practice clinics to reflect on real workplace experiments, adjust towards moves and embed useful changes over time.
Explore an ACT-informed development pathway.
Discuss your organisation’s priorities, current capability and the appropriate next step.