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A Growth Circles Programme · For UK Employers

The Workforce Changed. Most Leadership Training Didn't.

Most managers, faced with a genuinely mixed team, default to treating everyone the same way. Counterpoint is a small-group coaching programme that builds the specific, evidenced skills to read people accurately, adapt how you communicate, build trust in the right order, and lead every individual fairly.

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8.9%
of people in England and Wales have a main language other than English. In large urban employers, the real figure runs higher.
6 of 6
countries in a recent cross-European study named the same failure driver: communication breakdown, not lack of goodwill.
1 style
is what most UK managers default to, per CIPD research, even though adapting to the individual is the stronger approach.

The Assumptions Underneath Most Leadership Training.

None of these are bad managers. They are managers applying a playbook that assumes everyone reads a room the same way.

Reading behaviour
ASSUMED

If someone is quiet in a meeting, they agree, or they have nothing to add.

ACTUAL

Silence means something different depending on who is being quiet, and what their own norms around hierarchy and speaking up actually are.

Giving feedback
ASSUMED

Direct, blunt feedback is just good management.

ACTUAL

The same direct feedback lands as clarity for one person and as an ambush for another, in the same room, on the same day.

Building trust
ASSUMED

Trust builds itself once a team has worked together long enough.

ACTUAL

Some people need the relationship built before the work starts. Others need the work delivered first, and the relationship follows.

Treating people fairly
ASSUMED

Treating everyone identically is the fair, safe default.

ACTUAL

UK-specific research found managers who default to uniform treatment get weaker outcomes than those who flex to the individual.

Sources: ONS Census 2021; CIPD, Managing Multicultural Teams, 2021; cross-European action-learning study of multicultural team management, 2026.

Four Instruments, Delivered In The Order They Build On Each Other.

Each month introduces one capability, worked through your own managers' real team situations, not a hypothetical case study.

Month One

My Map

Building trust in the right order for the person in front of you, not the order that comes naturally to you.

–Diagnosing whether someone needs the relationship built first, or the work delivered first
–Sequencing your own behaviour to match, rather than defaulting to your own pattern
Left unaddressed: trust never fully forms with part of the team. Shows up as a manager who is well liked by some direct reports and quietly held at a distance by others, with no idea why.
Month Two

My Lens

Reading behaviour accurately, before deciding what it means.

–Suspending judgement before attributing behaviour to culture, personality, or the situation
–Catching the bias that mistakes accent or fluency for lower competence
–Reading silence correctly, rather than defaulting to one interpretation
Left unaddressed: capable people get quietly underrated, and the manager never finds out why their read of the team keeps missing.
Month Three

My Tuning

Adapting how you communicate, instead of running one default style on everyone.

–Reading direct versus indirect style, and high versus low-context communication
–Building awareness of code-switching, and what it costs the person doing it
Left unaddressed: the most consistently cited driver of multicultural team friction across international research. Shows up as feedback that keeps landing wrong, for reasons the manager cannot name.
Month Four

My Standard

Leading with real fairness, not the appearance of it.

–Moving off "treat everyone the same" toward genuine, individual fairness
–Handling task conflict constructively, since mixed teams reliably generate more of it
–Staying alert to your own hand in allocation and opportunity decisions
Left unaddressed: perceived unfair treatment, one of the most consistently named reasons multicultural teams break down, whatever the manager's actual intentions were.

What The Programme Actually Does, Month By Month.

One organisation, one cohort, one real team situation each manager brings and keeps working through the whole programme.

Before Month One

Baseline

  • Every manager takes two validated diagnostics before the programme starts, one on self-perceived readiness, one scenario-based
  • A short intake conversation surfaces one real, current team situation each manager will keep working through the programme
Months One To Four

The Build

  • My Map, My Lens, My Tuning, and My Standard, one per month, delivered as small-group coaching, not a lecture
  • Every session includes time on each manager's own real situation, not just the framework
  • The group also works, session by session, toward one real, practical output for your organisation
Months Five To Six

Application And Close

  • A clear gap with no sessions, so managers actually try what they have built with their real teams
  • Both diagnostics repeated, so progress is measured, not assumed
  • An individual 1:1 for every participant, then a closing session that reviews the results as a group

One Cohort, One Organisation, Fully Built.

Priced per seat, for a single-organisation cohort of six to eight managers.

The Full Build
£3,000
per seat · £18,000–£24,000 per cohort
9 sessions across roughly 6 months, single-organisation cohort of 6 to 8 managers
All four pillars, My Map, My Lens, My Tuning, My Standard, in full
Two validated diagnostics, taken before the programme and again after
An individual 1:1 for every participant, built into the price
A real, practical output your organisation keeps at the end
25% upfront, 65% across the first three months, 10% on completion. HR-selected cohorts.
Shiva, Executive Coach
Who's Behind It

Shiva, Executive Coach

As a coach from an ethnic minority background myself, I have seen firsthand the struggles leaders face when managing a multicultural, multinational workforce, often without the tools to fully understand what is actually going on. On the back of working across four countries and delivering over 2,000 hours of coaching globally, I built Counterpoint specifically for managers leading culturally mixed teams here in the UK.

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