This Leadership Masterclass series has been designed so that you can attend one, or both events - it's up to you!

Facilitated by internationally recognised leadership experts from the highly regarded team at Cultivating Leadership, these two Masterclasses capture the heart of what Best Places to Work™ and Cultivating Leadership are all about: growing leadership from the inside out.

Together, they offer a deep, human-centred approach to leadership development - helping you align your internal capability with the evolving demands of today’s world. You’ll walk away with greater clarity, confidence, and connection - and the ability to lead with real impact. And that’s exactly what it takes to shape and sustain New Zealand’s Best Places to Work™.

Part One: The Inner Work Of Purposeful Leadership

Tues, 9th September 2025 at EMA, Auckland

Part one of our two-part Masterclass series on Leadership focuses on developing the self-awareness, mindset, and agility needed to lead with clarity, resilience, and purpose. You'll explore how your inner capacity shapes your ability to respond to complexity, and gain tools to shift unhelpful patterns and lead with greater intention. Through reflective practice, real-world case studies, and experiential learning, you’ll build a stronger leadership presence and unlock new ways to influence and connect. Ideal for executives, people leaders, and business owners, this session offers practical insights to strengthen resilience, navigate uncertainty, and drive meaningful change. Expect a high-energy, thought-provoking day alongside other leaders committed to growing from the inside out.

Part Two: Scaling Your Leadership, From Self Awareness To Wider Influence

Thurs, 20th November 2025 at EMA, Auckland

Part two of our Leadership Masterclass series shifts the focus outward - to leading others, expanding your influence and impact, and shaping the culture your organisation needs to thrive. In today’s fast-changing, high-pressure environment, traditional leadership models often fall short. This Masterclass equips you with the tools, mindsets, and confidence to lead through complexity, inspire innovation, and navigate competing priorities with clarity. You’ll gain practical strategies for enabling collaboration, guiding teams through change, and taking leadership action that matches the scale of your challenges. Ideal for executives, people leaders, and business owners seeking to amplify their impact and lead cultures where people and performance flourish.

Learn more about each part below 👇

This Masterclass series is ideal for:

Executives, senior leaders, people managers, business owners, and professionals who want to strengthen their presence, build resilience and establish a powerful foundation for authentic, meaningful leadership growth.

What to expect:

Prepare for high-energy learning, interactive sessions, and invaluable connections.
Hear real case studies from previous BPTW™ Awards finalists and winners
Make progress on your own leadership challenges in a supportive environment of other leaders also committed to their best
Network with other leaders within the BPTW™ community
PLUS a bonus 90-minute follow-up action learning session included

Turn insight into impact.

A few weeks after the Masterclass, all attendees can reconnect in a 90-minute online action learning session designed to keep the momentum going, bridge intention with execution, and help you turn ideas into lasting change. This session is more than a recap, it supports the transformation you are within!.

You’ll:

Share outcomes from what you have implemented post-Masterclass
Hear what’s working (and what’s not) from others on the same journey
Workshop real-world challenges with expert facilitators and peers
Stay accountable to the actions you committed to
Leave with renewed energy, clarity, and support

Facilitators

Facilitated by internationally respected leadership experts, the day is led by the Cultivating Leadership team - known for their deep, human approach to growing leaders in complexity.

Leanne Holdsworth

Leanne stands for a future where it is normal for work environments to be places where human beings thrive, enabling organisations to succeed whilst at the same time, building social capital through how those humans are able to show up with their families and communities.

She is the co-author of Human Work: Five Leadership Mindsets for Humanising workplaces and author of the book A New Generation of Business Leaders and has spent 15 years advising organisations predominantly in the private sector (across most sectors including banking, primary sector, FMCG, tech, pharmaceuticals) as well as the public and not for profit sectors in sustainability strategy and leadership.

Geoff Harrison

Geoff believes that leadership is both learned and co-created, and that the conditions necessary for leadership to emerge can be actively cultivated. He feels that in our increasingly complex world, the leadership patterns and behaviours that brought success today will need to evolve to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Using experiential and action learning techniques, Geoff helps leaders develop the self-awareness and interpersonal skills necessary for leading high performance teams, those with the capacity to grow and thrive while operating under conditions of complexity, risk, and uncertainty.

Geoff has over 15 years’ experience helping individuals and organisations identify and re-frame issues that can derail effective team performance. He specialises in designing and delivering innovative developmental learning experiences and has had the opportunity to work with leaders in a variety of venues ranging from boardrooms to snowy mountaintops.

Speakers

Stew Darling - Part One
Stew spent more than 20 years as a senior officer in the British military, leading in high-stakes, high-pressure environments around the world. Today, he brings that same clarity, discipline, and systems thinking to executive teams across Aotearoa and beyond.

He is the founder of Unstoppable Force, a global leadership and performance consultancy. Here, Stew partners with CEOs and senior leaders to strengthen their mindsets, build resilience, and lead cultural change. His approach combines strategic precision with performance science, helping leaders cut through complexity and perform under pressure without burning out.

With experience spanning New Zealand, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe, Stew brings a truly global perspective to the challenges of modern leadership. He’s known for his ability to simplify the complex, shift mindsets, and spark real transformation, from the inside out.

Heather Polaschek - Part Two
Heather is a People & Culture leader at RUSH, known for driving inclusive change, developing strong leaders, and embedding sustainable DEI frameworks. With 15+ years' experience across multiple industries, she brings deep expertise in leadership development, change management, and team performance. Heather also leads RUSH’s Managed Services function, combining her strengths in people strategy and operational delivery to build trusted client relationships and high-performing teams.

Part One: The Inner Work Of Purposeful Leadership

Your inner edge: Build capability and purposeful leadership

Tues, 9th September 2025 at EMA, Auckland

True leadership doesn’t start in a team meeting, or the boardroom. It starts from within. That’s because we only lead to the level of complexity we can make sense of within ourselves.

Part one of our two-part Leadership Masterclass series focuses on ‘Inner Leadership’ - the self-awareness, mindset and agility needed to lead with clarity, resilience and purpose.

Given leaders today face new levels of uncertainty and challenges that traditional leadership skills and tools can’t always meet, this Masterclass will help expand your leadership capacity - uplifting your ability to hold more, see more, and lead more effectively. By creating space between who you are and how you show up, you’ll gain real choice in how you lead, rather than just reacting to what’s happening around you.

Together, we will step back from the action to observe how, and when old mindsets, behaviours, and patterns are getting in the way of the good things you want to create. You'll explore new ways of thinking, challenge old or unhelpful patterns, and leave with the clarity to understand why some situations feel hard, as well as the capacity to respond to them with greater intention and impact.

Through practical tools, reflective practice, and experiential learning, this workshop will help you grow your leadership presence and unlock new levels of freedom and confidence.

Why attend?

Expand your ability to lead through uncertainty with agility.
Strengthen your resilience under pressure and navigate constraints more effectively.
Lead with greater authenticity, clarity, and purpose.
Shift your mindset and practices to match the complexity of your leadership situation.
Increase your ability to influence others.

You’ll learn ways to:

Show up with greater impact by adapting your mindset and strategies to suit the moment.
Build stronger, more productive relationships with your team, stakeholders, and customers.
Recognise when your strengths become limitations and adjust your leadership approach to match the challenge.

Part Two: Scaling Your Leadership, From Self Awareness To Wider Influence

Leading others: Expand your influence and shape culture

Thurs, 20th November 2025 at EMA, Auckland

Building on ‘The inner work of purposeful leadership’, Part Two of our Leadership Masterclass series turns outwards, towards leading others, shaping culture, and influencing beyond your own team - across departments, partnerships, and wider workplace systems.

Today, leaders face constant change, competing priorities, and growing complexity. Traditional leadership approaches often fall short or are unhelpful in environments that are uncertain and demand agility and connection.

This Leading Others Masterclass helps you build the confidence and clarity to lead in these conditions. Whether you’re shaping a culture of innovation, managing competing priorities, guiding a team through change, or trying to make progress when the way forward isn’t clear, this session gives you the tools to lead effectively.

Why attend?

Guide your team through uncertainty with greater clarity and confidence.
Empower innovation and collaboration by integrating diverse perspectives.
Strengthen your ability to influence and shape human dynamics across teams and contexts.
Enhance resilience and responsiveness when leading through crisis or change.
Build confidence in working with tension, polarities, and competing priorities.
Expand your capacity to see the bigger picture and take leadership action that reflects it.

What you’ll learn:

Tools and practices to distinguish between complexity and complicated challenges for better decision-making in an unpredictable world.
Strategies to enable a culture of innovation through experimentation and continuous learning.
Insight into the workplace culture needed for teams to perform well together, not just once but over time.