The Case for Custom Fit Leadership Development

In boardrooms and executive suites across industries, we are told that leadership is about vision, performance, and results. But behind the polished biographies and strategic plans lies a quieter truth. Not every leader gets there on the same terms.

For some, the path to senior leadership is paved with unspoken codes, cultural filters, and silent disqualifications that have little to do with talent or potential.

That is why tailored leadership development programmes are not a luxury, they are a necessity, and the reason why initiatives like Altitude X, a group coaching programme for aspiring and emerging senior executives, have never been more relevant.

Leadership is not just what you do, but it also leans heavily on how you are perceived while doing it.

This perception is shaped by bias, societal expectations, and cultural familiarity. Standard leadership programmes often assume a universal baseline that participants enter with the same access to networks, confidence, language fluency, and cultural legitimacy. In reality, individuals from minoritised racial groups, differing social classes and even for those programmes shaped for men, there is often a lack of appreciation that people are navigating a different terrain entirely.

I have seen this happen so many times.
The benchmark is your typical blue-chip organisation that pays the most money.
People looking for best practices in organisations whose culture is not replicable or alien to others

And so while participants enter these spaces, they often leave programmes wondering how this is relevant to their needs. Sending follow-up questions because they don’t want to speak out in the open for fear of being seen as a problem.

For leaders from Black and Black mixed backgrounds, the climb into executive roles is often done under the weight of expectation and hyper visibility. Often carrying the weight of being the first or the only. They are expected to be brilliant, but not intimidating. Assertive, but not “too much.” Visionary, but always grateful. The burden of representation means that many Black leaders of colour must simultaneously lead, represent, and translate often in rooms where they are the only one.

Leadership development for such individuals must go beyond technical skills. It must create space for identity safety, cultural storytelling, and strategies to navigate double consciousness with the ability to see oneself through one's lens and the dominant gaze. It must acknowledge the exhaustion of code-switching and the emotional toll of diversity without power.

For leaders from working-class or socially mobile backgrounds who ascend to executive roles, they are often expected to assimilate. To swap their accent, dress differently, adopt elite hobbies, and dilute parts of their identity to "fit."Social class may be the most invisible barrier in the leadership pipeline, especially if you aren’t part of the old school tie clique.

Yet such leaders bring extraordinary assets of resilience, adaptability, emotional intelligence born from navigating complex environments, and the ability to relate across the organisational spectrum. They just don’t always speak the language of privilege. A tailored programme must affirm these strengths while teaching the unspoken codes of boardrooms not to force conformity, but to equip them to lead authentically within elite systems.

The conversation about gender in leadership often (rightly) centres on women, but there is also a quiet crisis among men in leadership, especially those raised on traditional ideas of masculinity that equate vulnerability with weakness, or performance with stoicism.

Many male leaders have not been given permission, let alone training, to develop emotional literacy, reflect on power, or lead from a place of empathy and self-awareness. As a result, we see senior men who are operationally effective but emotionally underdeveloped; brilliant strategists who struggle to build trust; powerful voices who lack the tools to listen.

Leadership development for men must not reinforce performance-driven masculinity. It should challenge it. It must invite men to examine their emotional worlds, unpack socialisation, build better relational intelligence, and cultivate reflective practice, not just reactive leadership.

This is the premise behind Altitude X, a group coaching experience designed for professionals who fit into these groups who are preparing for senior executive or board roles. Designed and lead by me, David McQueen , who is Black, a Man, and comes from a working class background, and not only holds executive and senior board roles but coaches many others too.

Altitude X is not a pipeline programme. It is a recalibration space. A place where leaders don’t just learn how to perform leadership in preparation for executive director roles, but also have agency on how to define it for themselves. Where cultural capital is not seen as deficit but as difference. Where emotional intelligence and strategic acumen go hand in hand.

The name says it all.
Altitude, because these are leaders ascending into high-stakes, high-influence roles. X, because no two journeys are alike, and because we are addressing the unknown variables—identity, culture, belonging—that most programmes ignore.

Altitude X includes

Identity-Centred Coaching. Sessions that explore leadership through the lens of race, class, gender, and personal narrative

Boardroom Decoding. Learn the strategy, structure, and subtle politics of executive and board roles

Self Awareness. Developing the skills of presence, empathy, feedback, and reflection

Power and Sponsorship Mapping. Navigating influence, securing allies, and building real access

Community of Practice. An intentional peer group who reflects, challenges, and grows together

The core curriculum is the same for all cohorts but tailored to address the specific needs of each identity.

Leadership development must evolve. It cannot continue to shape leaders in the image of the status quo and expect different results. The future belongs to those who can lead with both range and roots. Those who can bring vision without erasure, strategy with soul, and confidence grounded in context.

Programmes like Altitude X are not just leadership courses. They are spaces of redefinition for individuals, for organisations, for culture, and for the leaders who refuse to leave parts of themselves behind to succeed.

Our first cohort for Black Leaders kicks of in H2 of this year.

More details to come, but for now the taster