Commissioning
Is there a clear commission for this team, with defined success criteria, from those who brought it into being?
Mandate · Resources · Success criteria
The Alignment Read
Your team already knows
what's wrong.
They're just not saying it in the room. You've felt the symptoms:
- Decisions that don't hold.
- The real meeting happening in the corridor afterwards.
- Capable people producing a stuck team.
The Alignment Read asks your team anonymously, puts the answers in a written report, and gives you sixty minutes with me to work out the move. You stop guessing what's wrong and start dealing with it.
See the report
Don't take my word for it.
Read one.
A sample report for "Acme Leadership Team," a fictional six-person team, run through the same pipeline as a real one. The same template you would receive, with your team's findings.
Print-ready A4. The report is the conversation starter, not the conversation. The conversation is the debrief.
No email gate. No download. Opens in your browser.
Who this is for
For leaders running a team
that's fine on paper
and stuck in practice.
You have built or inherited a team of strong individuals. They show up, they deliver, they are not in crisis. Something is off. The pattern is hard to name. You want an honest read before deciding what to do about it.
The pattern usually looks like this:
- Decisions get agreed in the meeting and quietly relitigated after it.
- The real meeting happens in the corridor, or on the side channel, once the actual one ends.
- Capable individuals, every one of them. The team still produces less than the sum.
- The same issue keeps coming back wearing a different name each quarter.
- You've tried the offsite, the personality profiles, the restructure. Nothing stuck.
Each member responds in about twenty minutes, once. Your debrief is sixty minutes, with me.
What you walk away with
The truth, the pattern, and the move.
i.
Hear what your team isn't saying in the room
Every member rates the team honestly. Anonymously. Things they wouldn't say at a stand-up. The questions ask what rarely gets asked in the room.
- Seventeen rated questions across the five disciplines, each scored twice: where we are now, and where we need to be
- Six open-ended responses, in their own words
- A per-discipline reflection on what could shift
- Shared back word for word, never with a name attached
- About twenty minutes per person, in their own time
ii.
See the pattern you've been sensing
A written read that names what your team actually thinks, in language you can take into the room.
- All five disciplines, scored against where the team needs to be
- The three biggest gaps the team has to close
- Where the team disagrees with itself, and why that matters
- The themes beneath the numbers, in their own words
- A page that names where the team is most vulnerable right now
iii.
Walk back in knowing what to do next
Sixty minutes, just the two of us. We sit with the picture and find the move that would actually shift it.
- What the report has named, talked through together
- What it matches in your experience, and what it doesn't
- The one or two moves that would change the pattern
- The conversation to take into the team next
- One to one, leader only. No team in the room.
What it measures
Five disciplines. One system.
Built on Peter Hawkins' five disciplines model. Each discipline asks one question of the team. The Read measures all five, scored against where the team needs to be.
Clarifying
Is this team aligned on its purpose, goals, roles, and ways of working?
Team charter · Purpose · KPIs
Co-creating
Does this team think and decide well together, producing more than the sum of its parts?
Culture · Conflict · Ways of working
Connecting
Is this team effectively connected to the people and wider system it needs to serve?
Stakeholder partnership · One voice, not many
Core Learning
Does this team reflect, learn and grow over time, as a team and as individuals?
Reflection · Feedback · Integration
At the centre"You cannot fix trust, conflict or accountability in a team that doesn't share a definition of success."
What it costs
$1,500. You're paying for misalignment either way.
A leadership team running on assumed alignment spends senior salaries on it every week: rework, re-decisions, stalled priorities. $1,500 is the price of finding out.
One price, everything included:
- The questionnaire
- The written report
- The sixty-minute debrief
If the debrief surfaces work worth doing, team coaching engagements run $10,000 to $25,000. The Read is priced so the decision doesn't need a business case.
What happens after you pay
- Within one business day, your team's link is ready, with a short briefing note you forward to them.
- Your team answers anonymously, about twenty minutes each. Most teams complete inside a week.
- I write the report personally, and we book your sixty-minute debrief inside a week of the last response.
If you already know you want it, pay and we start. If you'd rather talk first, take twenty minutes with me on a call. Both doors lead to the same place. You've already seen exactly what you're buying; the sample report is the product.
I write every report and hold every debrief personally. No associate model. That caps how many Reads run in a month, so if the report needs to land before a board meeting or an offsite, say so and we'll work backwards from your date.
Questions leaders actually ask
What will my team think?
Usually the opposite of what leaders fear. Being asked what you actually think, anonymously, by a leader who wants the real answer, reads as respect. I'll give you the exact wording to send your team, framing it straight: a read on how we work as a team, not a review of any person. And if the idea of asking makes you nervous, that nervousness is itself information.
What if the results are ugly?
Then it's named, and you can work with it. The report describes patterns, not people, and an uncomfortable read usually confirms something you half-knew. That's what the debrief is for: sixty minutes to sit with what's on the page and work out the move. Knowing is cheaper than guessing.
How does anonymity get me honest answers?
No names are collected. Everything your team writes is shared back with you and with the team, word for word, with anything that would identify the writer replaced. Scores show as a team range, never by person. Your team is told all of this before they start. People write things in an anonymous questionnaire they have never said in your meetings. The gap between the two is usually the finding.
What size team does this work for?
It's built for leadership teams of four to fifteen, and that's where it works best. A team of three still gets real value; at that size responses are harder to keep anonymous, so we'd talk first about how to run it well. A smaller team sometimes gains more from openness than anonymity. Above fifteen, you're usually looking at two teams wearing one name, and that's worth a conversation first.
Do I have to go on to coaching?
No. The Read is built to stand alone, and some leaders run the debrief and take it from there themselves. If the report surfaces something coaching should work on, I'll say so plainly, and the report becomes the baseline. No obligation either way.
What happens after
The debrief is the work.
What comes next is your call.
The diagnostic is built to stand alone. Some leaders run it, hold the debrief, and that is the engagement. The report becomes the team's reference point for the next two quarters. The conversations you have with your team afterward are the work that shifts the pattern.
Other leaders use the diagnostic as the entry point to a structured three-to-six month team coaching engagement. The report becomes the baseline. Outcomes are defined up front, measured as we go. No obligation either way.
Who's behind it
Holgate is led by James Correy.
The diagnostic, the report, and the debrief are all written and held by James personally. There is no associate model.
Fifteen years designing and delivering leadership development across the private sector and government. Trained under Peter Hawkins (AoEC), the leading authority on systemic team coaching, and applied the method with leadership teams on major public infrastructure.
Also trained in positive psychology coaching under Valorie Burton. John Maxwell Team certified. ICF ACC credentialed coach.
The corridor conversations
are happening either way.
The only question is whether you get to hear what's in them. Start the Read, or take twenty minutes on a call first. Either way you'll know more about your team than you do today.