We believe leadership development
works from the inside out.
If you're an HR or L&D director, chances are you've already paid for leadership training that looked great in the room and quietly evaporated by the following Monday. We build something that holds, development that reaches into how a person actually leads when no one's watching.
Watch our story
Who founded Henley Leadership Group?
Henley Leadership Group was founded in 2003 by Dede Henley and Carol Zizzo, two leaders who set out to disrupt an outdated model of leadership and replace it with something more honest: development that starts on the inside and works its way out into how a person actually shows up for their team.
Twenty-three years later, that founding belief hasn't moved. What's grown around it is the reach, thousands of individuals coached, hundreds of organizations partnered with, and a firm that continues to shape what leadership development looks like from a Seattle home base.
What is Henley's approach to leadership development?
Headquartered in Seattle, we're a team of expert executive and leadership coaches who engage the whole leader through coaching, training, and assessment, with programs spanning executive development, team development, emerging leader development, and collaboration.
We work especially closely with the HR and L&D directors tasked with proving that a development investment actually changes behavior, across organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Since 2003, that work has ranged from a single executive in individual coaching to the large-scale design of an internal leadership academy built to serve hundreds.
Five pillars, each a doorway into fuller leadership.
Explore the full leadership model →Productive Engagement
Asks a leader to be fully present, not merely in the room.
Intellectual Agility
Asks a leader to think flexibly when old patterns want to take over.
Vital Fulfillment
Asks a leader to lead from energy instead of depletion.
Innovative Actions
Asks a leader to take the kind of risk that actually moves something forward.
Integrated Ideals
Asks a leader to close the gap between what they believe and how they behave.
When those five pillars take hold, a leader learns to balance the task in front of them with the relationships around them, to act on a larger vision without losing the urgency of today, and to seek out perspectives that don't already match their own.
You're never working with a single coach in isolation.
The workshop is often where leadership development quietly loses its momentum, once the room empties and the calendar moves on. What we've built works differently.
Every HLG coach draws on the full team behind them, shared resources, shared insight, collective accountability for the outcome, so the relationship you build keeps its footing even when a single person's calendar fills up or a single engagement wraps.
That structural choice is a large part of why the results tend to hold well past the room.
What results does Henley Leadership Group deliver?
Henley Leadership Group's clients report measurable gains in engagement, relationship quality, and leadership growth, tracked across thousands of participants and used to guide every program we build.
Engagement
Organizations working with us report double-digit engagement gains within the first year.
Behavior
Leaders show meaningful, observable change in how they lead day to day, not just how they talk about it.
Retention & growth
Clients see movement in outcomes like internal promotion and the strength of their leadership bench.
What does Henley Leadership Group believe about inclusive leadership?
After coaching thousands of clients, we've seen the same pattern hold true again and again: healthy workplace cultures are more innovative, more profitable, and more durable. They're built by leaders willing to do the harder work of belonging, not just performance.
We stand for workplaces where all people thrive, and we believe that vision is built when teams and leaders commit to seven things.
Seven commitments for teams and leaders
- Cultivating cultures of belonging, seen through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Empowering an ecosystem of collaboration, where no single person is carrying the whole
- Engaging with whole systems, holding the complexity of multiple perspectives at once
- Adapting to the emerging future rather than defending the way things have always worked
- Prioritizing health, well-being, and psychological safety as the foundation the rest is built on
- Embracing multifaceted intelligence, the kind that shows up in more than one way of thinking
- Bringing steadiness into a volatile, uncertain, and constantly shifting world
How we do our own work
We hold ourselves to this before we ask it of anyone else.
- We donate 5% of our profits annually to nonprofit organizations chosen by our own team members
- We facilitate a monthly book club centered on authors whose views haven't typically been represented in leadership work
- We hold bi-monthly team meetings dedicated to exploring and integrating inclusive practices
- We work deliberately to diversify our own team, because we believe that's at the heart of transformational leadership
- We attend events, conferences, and retreats that challenge and expand our own perspective
- We offer our services at special rates to nonprofits building inclusive workplaces of their own
A diverse workforce includes people of different cultural backgrounds, ages, races, genders, disabilities, religions, sexual orientations, and levels of professional experience.
Where has Henley Leadership Group been featured?
Our work and our thinking on leadership have been covered by national trade publications and regional business press alike, and our founder is a Forbes contributor.
Want to know who you'd actually be working with?
Every HLG coach brings a professional certification or advanced degree, and draws on the full team behind them. Browse bios, specialties, and certifications to find your match.
Meet the Team →
What leaders and HR teams ask us
Every HLG coach comes in with a professional coach certification or an advanced degree in a relevant field like organizational development or psychology, and many hold specialized certifications in tools like the Leadership Circle Profile and the Enneagram.
Yes. Our approach starts by engaging the whole leader and the whole context they're working in, so the program we build reflects the actual roadblock in front of you, not a template pulled off a shelf.
Both. Coaching and development programs run in-person, virtual, or a blend of the two, depending on what fits your team.
Yes. Our monthly webinar and resource library are built for exactly that stage, a low-commitment way to see how we think before you decide whether to go further. Explore Resources →
Organizations working with us report double-digit engagement gains, meaningful improvements in leadership behavior, and measurable movement in outcomes like internal promotion within the first year. See the full data on the Results page →
We believe it's central to what makes a workplace thrive, not an add-on to leadership development but part of its foundation. Read our full stance under What We Stand For ↑
Coaching engagements typically run six to twelve months, and our development programs unfold across multiple phases designed to build on each other over time. Real behavior change takes repetition to settle in, so we build in enough runway for a new habit to survive contact with a full calendar again.
Picture a workplace where every person is fully alive to their potential.
And to each other's. We've spent more than twenty years building that picture into something real, one leader at a time. A vision like that begins with a conversation, a short, no-pressure call to talk through what you're actually trying to solve.
Start a Conversation →