SCALING LEADERS & FOUNDERS
Bigger scope. New kind of leading. Let's make sure you're ready for it.
Connect, Inspire, Grow: From Doing to Leading
A 10-session, 1:1 coaching program for leaders and founders whose scope has outgrown what they can do — or personally oversee — themselves, built to help you lead the parts of the business you didn't build and don't run day to day.
A no-pressure conversation about what's actually happening with your team.
Is This You?
You used to be able to do, or personally oversee, most of what mattered. Now your team, or your company, has grown past the point where that's possible, and you're still figuring out what good leadership looks like at this size.
You catch yourself stepping in directly — fixing something yourself, overriding a call, sitting in on a meeting you didn't need to join — because you can, and it's faster. Every time you do, it quietly teaches the people around you to wait for you instead of deciding for themselves.
You built your reputation being excellent at one thing — the product, the code, the deal, the craft you started in — and more of your job now happens in areas where you're not the expert, where you have to trust someone else's judgment over your own instinct.
The org chart says you have more people, more scope, more leverage. Some days it feels more like you have more to worry about, and less control over any of it.
This is one of the least talked-about shifts in a career: from leading a team to leading something whose success now depends on people and decisions you can't personally make yourself. It doesn't show up on an org chart. It's learnable, the same way leading a team was learnable once.
The real gap
This is what happens almost every time someone excellent at running something gets handed more of it to run.
There are three levels of relationship at work: transactional (task for pay), strategic (performance for outcome), and human — the level where people bring you their best thinking, not just their output. Getting your team, or your company, to that third level once was hard enough. Now you need it to hold at a scale you can't personally touch every day — across teams you don't manage directly, disciplines that aren't your own, and decisions where your instinct, sharpened by years of being right about one thing, isn't automatically right about this.
It's also, quietly, an identity shift. The thing that made you valuable — being the one with the answer, the steadiest hands on the work — is exactly what you now have to give away, on purpose, to other teams. The organization keeps running, but problems surface later than they should, people default to asking rather than deciding, and too many decisions still find their way back to you regardless of who's technically responsible for them. Nobody names this gap, because on paper, more scope looks like more success. Naming it is what makes it fixable — and that's exactly where this program starts.
Competence gets you the role. Trust is what gets a team to actually follow you.
The Work We'll Do Together
This program exists for exactly this shift — from leading a team to leading something bigger than you can run yourself. The premise is simple: what made you excellent — the work itself, or being the best leader of a single team — isn't automatically what makes people across a wider, more distant part of the business trust your leadership. That trust is built in a specific, learnable sequence, the same way any other skill is. Part of the work is also yours alone: redefining what makes you valuable now that it's no longer about being the best at, or even directly across, the work.
We'll use the Connect, Inspire, Grow method — the three-phase approach behind my book of the same name — but coaching isn't a fixed script, and these three phases aren't stages you check off in order. They're the kind of work we return to, in different mixes, across all ten sessions, aimed at one shift: from being in the work to leading everything around it.
Connect
We look honestly at how much of the organization trusts your leadership versus your competence — and where the two have quietly become different things — surfacing what the people and teams you don't touch daily actually need from you.
Inspire
We work on turning your experience and judgment into a direction the wider organization can rally behind — one built with the leaders under you, not handed down as another directive.
Grow
We shift the focus from running things yourself to developing the leaders who run them — building their judgment and confidence so the organization's success stops depending on you being personally involved. A few months in, this is meant to feel like an organization that brings you decisions already made well, not just problems.
Expect to move back and forth between these rather than through them in a straight line. A breakthrough in Grow often means going back to Connect on something you'd assumed was settled. That's not a detour, it's how the work is supposed to go.
What's included
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10 one-on-one coaching sessions, every two weeks
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The ELI (Energy Leadership Index) Assessment at the outset, giving you a clear, measurable picture of how you lead under normal circumstances and under pressure.
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The Connect Card and vision-building exercises, adapted to lead people and teams beyond your day-to-day reach
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A concrete plan for growing ownership across the parts of the business you don't run yourself; a clear picture of what's ready to move without your direct involvement
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Built for the long run: what you learn here becomes the foundation for every larger role, or larger company, ahead of you.
Where this comes from
I'm the founder of GLTD, based in Dubai, and the author of the Amazon-bestselling Connect, Inspire, Grow. As I write in the book, too many people move into bigger leadership roles, including founders scaling past what they can build or oversee themselves, based on competence alone — and competence, on its own, isn't enough to build an organization that actually follows you. I've lived and worked in the Netherlands, China, Germany, Hong Kong and the UAE, and coached leaders globally at organizations including The Coca-Cola Company, PwC, Standard Chartered, and Danone, as well as founders navigating this same shift firsthand. This program brings that same method, and the same ELI-based diagnostic starting point, to leaders and founders as their scope grows past their own hands.
See more of my work on LinkedIn.
Investment
$3,000
ex 5% VAT when based in the UAE
10 sessions, every two weeks, including the ELI Assessment.
See if this is the right moment.
Book a Discovery Session to talk through what's actually happening across your team or company and whether this is the right program for where you are.
FAQ
How is this different from a formal management training course?
Coaching isn't about being handed a framework or a set of answers to apply. As the ICF (International Coaching Federation) defines it, coaching is a thought-provoking, creative partnership, not advice-giving, built to help you discover options and possibilities you couldn't quite see on your own. Every session, along with the ELI Assessment, works by asking the right questions about your actual organization, your industry, and what's really happening in your environment, so what you walk away with is something you've uncovered yourself, not something you've been told to do.
Can my company or employer sponsor this program?
Yes, many participants have coaching sponsored by their employer as part of a leadership development plan or a promotion package. The program can be invoiced directly to your company if that's easier.
Is this remote or in-person?
This program is delivered virtually, over video call, so it fits your schedule wherever you and your team are.
What Participants Are Saying…
When I started coaching with Liesbeth, I was a sole founder with a growing team and business, and I was in a similar situation. I didn't always feel equipped to have the right answers or solutions. I lacked the practical tools and experience to tackle specific challenges, and I started noticing that I was stuck in a loop of procrastination, which could eventually affect the business, especially with tasks that felt overwhelming or unclear.
Liesbeth helped me break that cycle.
She supported me in organizing my thoughts, identifying what really mattered, and staying on track. Just having someone to be accountable to made a huge difference, both mentally and practically.
From our very first session, there was an energy match. Even through a screen, her style felt powerful, supportive, but focused. She struck the perfect balance between asking the right questions to guide me to my own answers, and being just directive enough to help me move forward.
One of the biggest changes was pivoting a key part of my business that I had been approaching the wrong way, something that felt critical but had been stuck. That shifted through our coaching sessions. One thing I loved, and that made things tangible for both of us, was that, at the very beginning, Liesbeth asked me what success would look like by the end of our sessions. And we made that happen. That shift was pivotal for us as a business.
If you're considering hiring Liesbeth, just do a session. You'll feel the value immediately.
Before coaching with Liesbeth, I was challenged by the way I reacted to situations and my inability to gain clear direction for the next steps in both life and career.
What I enjoyed most about coaching with Liesbeth was the well-thought-out plan tailored to my specific needs. There was no 'one size fits all' approach. Every session was dynamic, and nothing was off the table.
While the work was tough, it became one of the most enjoyable parts of my 'homework' because it made me dig deep to uncover aspects driving my behaviors. Once these were identified, the deep discussions and tools she provided were invaluable, not just for that moment but for my future as well. I still use these tools today.
Liesbeth was always engaged, nothing was too hard to tackle, and she made the sessions fun, which made me look forward to each one!
In the months I worked with Liesbeth, a lot has changed in my life. I react differently to situations, ensuring I have the right intentions and outcomes for both sides. I've improved how I listen to people. The most impactful change has been learning how to manage my energy levels: how to avoid emotional reactions, stay curious, and motivate myself. These components combined have created a different person. I have drive again, fulfillment, and alignment between my goals and my values, which we discovered during our sessions.
If you're considering a coach, I can't recommend Liesbeth enough. It was one of the best experiences I've had in my life. Not a minute was wasted, and it's something everyone should do. If you're ready for a change, Liesbeth is one of the best out there. I've worked with another coach before, but the outcomes with Liesbeth were incomparable.