The three example custom programmes summarised below are designed to develop board leadership excellence, venture resilience, and founder-executive partnerships. They are rooted in psychological insights and leadership research, blending evidence-based findings, real-world case studies and actionable strategies.
Effective Board Leadership: Building Expertise and Trust
Who is the programme for?
This programme is designed for board members, senior executives and governance professionals.
This programme is very timely. Enhancing communication between boards and founders is paramount and yet under-addressed.
Martin Gilbert, Chairperson of Revolut
What you will learn
- Discover how to integrate diverse domain expertise into board composition to enhance oversight, decision-making and organisational performance.
- Understand the critical role of relational expertise - the ability to develop trust, transparency and open communication - between boards, founders and executives.
- Explore strategies such as emotional intelligence, psychological safety and authentic engagement to strengthen the board’s collaboration with the leadership team.
- Recognise the need for evolving, up-to-date expertise to maintain optimum board leadership culture.
- Learn to balance competing stakeholder priorities, promoting governance practices that support growth while ensuring ethical and responsible accountability.
This is an important initiative. As a founder, I’ve learned the value of being an anchor for both employees and the board - providing solutions to drive growth and mitigate risks.
Cultivating a strong board culture is equally crucial, where founders offer clear direction and boards act with transparency and receptiveness.
Christian Facey, Founder & CEO, AudioMob
The Psychological Underpinnings of Venture Success
Who is the programme for?
This programme is designed for venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) professionals, founders, and senior advisors or leadership coaches in high-growth ventures.
This programme addresses exactly what our ecosystem needs, and perfectly aligns with my view that the soft skills in business impact the best investment outcomes - derived from understanding people, building genuine relationships, and creating collaborations based on trust.
Tarek Waked, Founding Partner at Type One Ventures
What you will learn
- Understand the psychological drivers of founder and leadership success, such as emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility, which foster critical skills like customer engagement, adaptability and team cohesion.
- Develop practical strategies grounded in psychology to help VCs and advisors navigate uncertainty and reframe setbacks as opportunities for growth.
- Understand the importance of leveraging communication psychology to build trust, commitment, engagement and alignment across all stakeholders.
- Cultivate stronger mentoring and coaching strategies by gaining deeper insights into the founder mindset.
In startups and established companies alike, there's no playbook for the hardest decisions. Every founder has to chart their own course through uncertainty, but that doesn't mean we can't be smarter about how we select, support and grow leadership teams as well as partner with boards and investors.
This course tackles the human complexities that can make or break a venture - something I've lived through first-hand as founder, CEO, investor and board member.
David Berry, Founder, Co-Managing Partner, Bedford Bridge
Managing Leadership Partnerships: Founder-Executive, CEO-Deputy, Co-Founder, and Co-Head
Who is the programme for?
This programme is designed for founders, senior executives, VC and PE professionals who assess or guide leadership teams. It is also tailored for advisors specialising in leadership transitions, scaling organisations and managing complex team dynamics.
I've seen how leadership teams can make or break success. This course is original and provides the tools and understanding needed to create strong leadership partnerships, ensuring they drive organisational success.
Jeremy Ghose, Managing Partner and CEO of Investcorp Credit Management
What you will learn
- Discover how complementary roles enhance strategic decision-making, improve execution, and mitigate leadership isolation.
- Understand the psychological and emotional dynamics of each role.
- Explore transparent decision-making frameworks, including boundary-setting, to support accountability, maintain constructive challenge, and avoid duplication of effort.
- Learn effective conflict resolution mechanisms, including pre-defined escalation processes, to address disputes early and constructively.
- Align leadership teams with organisational culture and values to ensure sustainable growth and seamless succession planning.
Having been a serial entrepreneur for the last 30 years, I fully endorse this programme. The founder-CEO relationship is critical to success, yet there is still not enough research or understanding on how to navigate it from both psychological and practical perspectives.
Lowell Kraff, Chairman & Co-Founder of Ubicquia
Programme faculty
Each programme is delivered by faculty from Bayes Business School with significant experience in leadership, psychology and organisational development.
Professor Amanda Goodall: Professor of Leadership, author of Credible: The Power of Expert Leaders, and a recognised authority on expert leadership and organisational performance.
Dr Robin Bagchi: Honorary Visiting Professor, Chair of the London Technology Club, and specialist in leadership psychology with a focus on uncertainty and resilience.
Natasha Maw: Programme Director of Leadership Development and Coaching in Executive Education at Bayes Business School and a trained mediator, facilitator and NLP Master Practitioner.
