The Deprogramming Company

About

Most organisations have someone like this: the one with the best idea in the room who opens with "this is probably a silly idea, but...". The one who absorbs the invisible admin nobody assigned her, says yes to every stretch project, and is somehow still not the name that comes up when succession planning starts. We call the pattern behind this Good Girl Conditioning, and it's costing organisations real capability, innovation and retention, not just morale. Most approaches to this pick a side: put her through a confidence workshop, or rewrite the policy and leave her exactly as conditioned as before. Neither works alone. We work on both. Individual work helps her recognise that the caution, the over-preparing, the reflex to say yes, was trained into her and isn't a fixed trait - so she can access the judgement and capability that were there all along. Organisational work changes the systems, managers, and reward structures that keep reinforcing the same conditioning, so that when she does speak up or ask for the role, the room rewards it instead of quietly labelling her "difficult." Led by Michelle Minnikin, a Chartered Organisational Psychologist and author of Good Girl Deprogramming, and James Eves, a Gallup-certified Strengths Coach, our approach is grounded in organisational psychology and evidence, not generic leadership training. Our flagship programme, Rise Above, is a 12-month hybrid leadership cohort combining facilitated group sessions, monthly workshops, peer "power circles," one-to-one coaching and in-person intensives - alongside organisational culture and executive sponsorship work, so the change holds on both sides. We also offer one-to-one executive coaching and in-person leadership retreats. The result: organisations that stop losing their best women to burnout or slow progression, and start converting the capability, judgement and revenue-generating potential that's already in the building.