What we do
Who is it for
How we do it
We teach leadership
There has never been a better time to lead
The designCEO work builds on the belief that leadership is the defining characteristic of every great organisation or team.
What we do
Who is it for
How we do it
Intention
Leaders who fully embrace the expectations of their role, welcome pressure as a privilege, a right they have earned, and are energised by the opportunities it provides.
We think of leadership as an 'inside-out' endeavour, focused on building leadership character to develop leadership capability.
It is a challenging path and always will be.
To see leadership in a different way.
To see leadership as a craft.
A craft for which they have the capabilities to leverage and build a leadership game that is a full expression of who they are.
What does the role expect of me?
designCEO proudly works from Eclat in East Hawthorn
The best workshop I have ever been to as a CEO.
I would highly recommend designCEO to any CEO, whether for the first time or later in a CEO career.
It’s an inspiring learning immersion with so many practical tools to apply and affirming experiences of others to learn from and apply.
Dawn O’Neill AM
CEO | LifeLine, Beyond Blue, eWater Systems and Member Board of Directors of LifeLine International
The best workshop I have ever been to as a CEO.
I would highly recommend designCEO to any CEO, whether for the first time or later in a CEO career.
It’s an inspiring learning immersion with so many practical tools to apply and affirming experiences of others to learn from and apply.
Dawn O’Neill AM
CEO | LifeLine, Beyond Blue, eWater Systems and Member Board of Directors of LifeLine International
Why we think like we do?
It’s all on you, but not about you.
As an AFL CEO, I was forever searching for learning and personal development experiences to match the expectations of the role.
It was a journey that would take me to some of the world’s best universities and most famous sporting clubs. I would also seek and receive mentoring from thoughtful, inspirational and sometimes provocative leaders from sport, business and public life.
Forever a searcher, there was always the bedside table full of books, a selection of which would accompany me wherever my adventures took me and whatever city our team played.
Against this background, in building designCEO, I set myself to create the CEO and leadership learning experiences I yearned for all those years. It was more than simply filling a void. It came from a deep sense of purpose and honour.
Leadership is hard.
The rationale behind our approach is to match theory to practice, your leadership philosophies aligned to your behaviours to model expectations.
In my experience, leaders need a system. A leadership roadmap and toolkit to build the skills, character skills, and technical skills to quickly rebuild confidence and belief when all seems lost.
A form of leadership resilience.
It is what we teach.
We are either moving towards or away from something
Creating the conditions
If nothing changes, nothing is going to change.
Question for leaders: “What does the role expect of me?”
Answer: “Create the conditions that enable this group to perform at its best”.
Leaders are not only required to create the conditions to achieve strong performance outcomes but also to establish high levels of emotional well-being and trust for those who have aligned their careers and lives with the culture the leaders build.
Therefore, developing leaders who can navigate complexity is now the strategic priority. Beyond building technical leadership capability, we must develop leaders with courage, humility and compassion.
We therefore offer deep and personal learning experiences for individuals, teams and organisations, ensuring that leaders find the means to lead with authenticity, the key to establishing high levels of trust as the basis for high performance.
Our leadership coaching and culture programs are an immersive and intense experience with immediately applicable learnings.
It is a game-changer for leaders.
Cameron has always been a person of integrity and personal charm.
I have known Cameron Schwab for all his adult life and his family even longer. Through his work, life experiences and commitment to learning, he has built up an impressive array of leadership, management and communication skills.
His natural ability to match wits, words and moods with people of all levels and backgrounds has moved to a higher level. I’ve enjoyed seeing Cameron mature, grow his skills and take on leadership positions in the challenging and changing environment of AFL administration.
Importantly, he has demonstrated that he can stay positive under pressure while retaining his character, dignity and sense of humour.
Ron Barassi AM
AFL Legend
Cameron has always been a person of integrity and personal charm.
I have known Cameron Schwab for all his adult life and his family even longer. Through his work, life experiences and commitment to learning, he has built up an impressive array of leadership, management and communication skills.
His natural ability to match wits, words and moods with people of all levels and backgrounds has moved to a higher level. I’ve enjoyed seeing Cameron mature, grow his skills and take on leadership positions in the challenging and changing environment of AFL administration.
Importantly, he has demonstrated that he can stay positive under pressure while retaining his character, dignity and sense of humour.
Ron Barassi AM
AFL Legend
What you will learn?
How will you seek to lead?
Developing your leadership philosophy.
At designCEO, we teach a system focused on high-performance leadership habits to enable leaders to establish their daily practice of leadership excellence, all capable of being executed in high-stakes and high-pressure environments.
Being patient with results but not behaviours. Setting expectations and delivering consistently, putting together great teams who raise the bar even higher, not shying away from ambition, ambiguity or conflict. They understand the difference between task conflict and relationship conflict.
Showing up, driving and modelling these expectations and standards, playing their roles with belief and confidence by making space for each other, and building conviction as they grow, often from the learnings that come their way, whether they are looking for them or not.
Being makers of sense, meaning and belonging, building trust in the face of complexity and ambiguity, the very reason we need leadership. They are the opportunity to learn and grow, often from the mistakes they make.
What do you bring to the team?
What will you do for the team?
Who is it for?
Leaders must drive their own learning. No one is going to do their learning for them.
designCEO is committed to coaching and entrenching a mindset of self-responsibility for leaders, whereby individuals take charge of their development in the context of the leadership and performance expectations of their role.
With this in mind, our work has been developed specifically for leaders, teams and organisations:
CEOs and leaders who find themselves in a place of overwhelm, who are seeking to discover their leadership voice to lead with courage, confidence and belief.
CEOs and leaders seeking to leverage their unique characteristics and skills to build personal leadership authenticity, belief and resilience.
CEOs and leaders not comfortable with the status quo and willing to challenge assumptions, disrupt default thinking by asking better and more compelling questions, and introduce original ways of thinking in relation to developing leaders.
Fast-tracking leadership development, either within their current role or leaders in transition preparing for greater responsibility.
Ambitious teams and organisations seeking a team-based approach to embed high-performance cultures, working with CEOs, senior leaders, and their teams.
Organisations and teams navigating change, complexity and ambiguity, and believe courageous, purposeful and confident leadership drives progress and achieves strategic outcomes, ensuring accountability for team-based outcomes.
Organisations committed to developing leaders who can inspire and institutionalise trust and are prepared to embrace expectations and personally model performance standards.
New teams forming, or established teams, looking for a lift in momentum, motivation and performance.
We repeat what we don’t repair
What we teach?
Leadership will be the difference-maker
While our work impacts leadership attitudes, most importantly, it transforms leadership behaviours.
The designCEO methodology builds on contemporary and sophisticated coaching and learning models and systems that focus on self-responsibility to maximise individual and group performance to build connection and alignment in high-stakes and team-focused environments.
It is a leadership system of operation focused on both the mechanics and dynamics of high-performance, building on the three frames of Leadership Mindset, Leadership Skillset and Leadership Identity to embed the High-Performance Behaviours to build a High-Performance Culture.
Leadership Mindset - Going Deep. The curiosity to learn and the courage to unlearn. Reflective thinking builds clarity around the expectations of the leader's role, both cultural and performance.
Leadership Skillset - Going Forward. The system and the work. Do the reps, mostly small and regular activities, to establish habits and build leadership capability to match leadership ambition.
Leadership Identity - Staying True. The stories you tell yourself. How to overcome self-doubt by developing a leadership identity that is a self-expression of the leader’s unique expertise, experience, and essence.
Upon completion of a designCEO program, leaders will have established personal and professional philosophies and principles they will seek to live and lead by, fundamental beliefs that underpin their actions, resulting in leadership behaviours that lead to excellence.
The rewards for getting it right will be so valuable because they are so difficult and challenging.
Leadership will be the difference maker; there has never been a better time to lead.
Have a system.
Do the work.
How we teach leadership?
Leadership is a craft. Learned and earned.
The designCEO methodology builds on contemporary and sophisticated coaching and learning models and systems that focus on self-responsibility to maximise individual and group performance in high-stakes and team-focused environments.
We focus on delivering unique, advanced, yet deliverable strategy and culture concepts and frameworks from the uncompromising world of professional sport in combination with leading-edge academic concepts from the Harvard and Melbourne Business Schools, ensuring commitment and accountability to a team-based ethos, that involve:
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There is a deliberate intensity about the designCEO learning process
We describe it as 'Desirable Difficulty', and is a precursor to "Productive Struggle".
Desirable difficulty is the hard work of doing hard work.
Setting ourselves up for things that cause a struggle, because we know that after the struggle, we’ll be at a new level.
In this process, leaders learn to question assumptions, recognise their own behaviour, and see perspectives they otherwise take for granted or are blind to.
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While the designCEO frameworks and systems are clear, accessible and intuitive, they are challenging and demand deeper thinking.
As leaders find their own clarity from this process, it provides a personal sense of achievement which is highly motivating, a process that is central to learning with already highly accomplished people.
The struggle enables the transformation.
In sporting terms, this is known as 'simple brilliance', and from a leadership perspective, it recognises the ambiguity and complexity of many of the decisions leaders face on a daily basis, and the dangers of default responses, getting lost in the 'busy', particularly when leaders are in a regular state of overwhelm.
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We take the learnings and immediately test leaders in relation to their expectations. This occurs in the context of the coaching, but also in the days, weeks and months immediately following the learning.
Above all else, we are seeking to build powerful leadership habits, small changes done regularly, all aligned to a high-performance leadership mindset.
The goal is mastery, which is a reflective competency.
This requires breaking down the elements, all related to the skill ambition, experimentation, and finding a system that works for you.
