Standalone four-week engagement
Before deciding what to do, it can be necessary to understand what is actually organising the situation.
The fee is $5,000. The Diagnostic stands on its own and is not a prerequisite for The Inner Authority™.
Duration
A concentrated, bounded period of inquiry.
Focus
Leadership friction, transition, decision or relationship.
Outcome
A concise synthesis with developmental implications.
The presenting problem
Senior leaders often arrive with a clear account of the external facts. The Diagnostic asks a different question: what may be shaping the leader’s perception, response and relationship to those facts beneath conscious intention?
The people or circumstances may change while the same friction, withdrawal, escalation or impasse reappears. The work looks for the recurring structure rather than treating each episode as isolated.
High consequence can activate prior experience, threat responses, projection or role expectations. The task is to distinguish what belongs to the present decision from what the leader may be bringing into it.
A transition, board relationship or organisational pressure can expose a gap between formal authority and the interior position from which it is being exercised. The Diagnostic makes that gap more visible.
What the work examines
The assessment brings biographical, psychological and executive reality into the same field. The purpose is not to create a total account of the person, but to understand what is most relevant to the defined leadership question.
History in relation to the question
What has this situation touched before? Relevant experience, relationships and prior adaptations can continue to organise present-day authority. Biographical inquiry helps distinguish current reality from older structures that may have become active inside it.
Pattern beneath intention
What repeats despite understanding? Attention is given to recurring patterns, projections and defences that may shape judgement or relationship before conscious intention has caught up.
The current organisational field
What is happening between person, role and system? The question is examined in relation to current board, executive-team and organisational dynamics so interior material is not mistaken for the whole explanation.
Where the pattern enters leadership
What does this change in practice? The inquiry stays connected to consequence: how the identified dynamics may be influencing decisions, relationships, communication, authority and the leader’s available range of response.
The arc of the work
Four weeks creates enough distance for the material to settle into a shape the leader can work with.
01
Clarify the leadership situation, its stakes, the relevant relationships and what currently feels difficult to understand or resolve.
02
Use biographical inquiry and depth-oriented conversation to identify what may be recurring beneath the presenting issue.
03
Examine the emerging understanding against current executive and organisational dynamics rather than accepting an interior explanation too quickly.
04
Bring the material together into a concise account of what appears most significant and where greater consciousness may change the leader’s available response.
The written brief
The written diagnostic brief distils the material most relevant to the defined leadership question. Its purpose is to give the leader a clearer map of what may be organising the situation and the developmental implications that follow from that understanding.
Clarity can be a complete outcome.
The Diagnostic does not assume that the leader needs a longer engagement. Neither The Threshold™ nor The Inner Authority™ is a prerequisite, and The Diagnostic is not a prerequisite for either of them. If further work later appears appropriate, that is considered separately on its own merits.
The Diagnostic is a depth-oriented leadership assessment. It is not a psychometric test, medical diagnosis, therapy or mental-health treatment.
Engagement terms
The fee reflects the complete assessment: five private conversations, the work of synthesis between them, the written diagnostic brief, and a final conversation to read it together.
The questions brought here are rarely small — a co-founder relationship that no longer works, a succession that keeps stalling, whether to sell. The assessment provides a defined space to examine what may be shaping such a decision.
Tell James the leadership question you want examined and why it matters now. If The Diagnostic appears appropriate to the situation, the next step is arranged personally.
The Diagnostic
$5,000
One engagement fee.
A standalone assessment.
DurationFour weeks, plus the reading
ConversationsFive · 60 minutes each
FormatVideo, or in person by arrangement
The reading60 minutes, after the brief
PositionStandalone engagement
OutcomeWritten diagnostic brief
The fee is for The Diagnostic as a complete engagement. It is not treated as a deposit against another Unitive Mind™ engagement.
Some diagnostics conclude with a recommendation to continue into The Inner Authority™. Others conclude with clarity and nothing further. Both are complete outcomes.