Where Leadership Meets Innovation

At Sequel Professional Development, we believe that innovation is key to effective leadership. That's why we integrate design thinking into our coaching, offering a contemporary approach to complement traditional coaching methods. Design thinking empowers visionary and mission-minded leaders to be more creative, adaptable, and user-focused, ensuring they can navigate complex challenges and drive meaningful change.

The Design Thinking Process

  • 1. Empathize

    This initial stage focuses on understanding the leaders "users"; employees, customers, board members, the public and their needs through observation and engagement. By putting yourself in the users' shoes, you gain deep insights into their experiences, challenges, and motivations. Techniques such as 360 feedback, interviews, surveys, and empathy mapping are commonly used to gather this valuable information.

  • 2. Define

    In the Define stage, the insights gathered during the Empathize stage are synthesized to identify your goals, outcomes and solutions that would create higher impact leadership. This involves framing the problem in a clear and concise problem statement or point of view (POV) that guides the leadership design process. 

  • 3. Ideate

    The Ideate stage is all about generating creative ideas and potential ways of meeting your goals and the leadership needs of your audience. Here, a diverse range of brainstorming techniques are employed to encourage thinking outside the box. The goal is to explore as many ideas as possible, without immediately evaluating or judging them, to foster innovation and uncover unique solutions

  • 4. Prototype

    During the Prototype stage, the most promising ideas are turned into tangible, low-fidelity prototypes. Whether it is you providing refined leadership encounters with others or developing an innovating employee experience, these can be simple new service processes that allow for hands-on experimentation. Prototyping leadership delivery is used to test and refine ideas, providing a practical way to explore different aspects of the solutions.

  • 5. Test

    The final stage involves testing the experiences, ideas and actions with actual users to gather feedback and observe how they interact with the experimentation. This stage is iterative, meaning feedback is used to make improvements and refinements to the leadership approach. The testing process helps to validate ideas and uncover new insights.

How Do We Apply Design Thinking?

At Sequel Professional Development, we harness the power of design thinking to elevate the coaching experience for mission-driven individuals. By deeply understanding your unique challenges and aspirations, we craft empathetic, user-centered solutions that drive impactful change. Through a process of empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing, we empower you to innovate and adapt, ensuring your mission aligns seamlessly with effective leadership. This creative, iterative approach not only enhances problem-solving but also fosters a resilient and forward-thinking mindset, essential for driving meaningful, sustained impact

Individual Coaching

We collaborate one-on-one with changemakers to harness the power of design thinking in their leadership journey. By deeply empathizing with their unique challenges and aspirations, we co-create innovative, user-centered solutions that lead to tangible outcomes such as increased impact, enhanced problem-solving skills, and strategic alignment with their mission

Contact Us

Business Leader Collaboratives & Peer Advisory Councils

At Sequel Professional Development, our business leader collaboratives and peer advisory councils leverage the experience, skills and connections of other leaders hungry to take their mission or business to the next level. Infusing the design thinking process into group dynamics, leaders will generate innovative ideas and uplevel their problem solving that could be implemented right away.

Contact Us

Coaching for Leadership or Fellowship Programs

For directors or those fellowship or leadership programs, whether you need a coach experienced in creating and delivering a fellowship curriculum or need a coaching program to compliment the learning and journey your participants are on, Sequel has the specialized experience and knowledge to bring a positive ROI to you investment.

Contact Us