Leadership development to move people and businesses forward.
We believe every person has potential waiting to be unleashed, and channelled into business success. We’re the catalyst that helps make it happen—supporting you to uncover untapped talent, accelerate growth, and translate potential into measurable impact.
Our founder
Laura Barker
Accredited Executive Coach | Facilitator | Speaker
Building my own leadership skills completely transformed my career — and now, my passion is helping others unlock their own untapped potential.
Like many managers, I found myself leading people without any formal training on how to do it well. My lightbulb moment came when I joined a leadership development programme and experienced professional coaching for the first time. It changed everything. I realised that strong leadership isn’t about fitting into a mould — it’s about understanding yourself, playing to your strengths, and leading in a way that feels authentic.
That belief sits at the heart of Leading Up. We help managers of all levels to recognise, build, and embrace their strengths so they can lead with confidence and authenticity — creating teams that trust, connect, and perform at their best.
My work focuses on developing the potential of experienced managers and emerging leaders. My coaching experience also spans maternity and return-to-work transitions, neurodiversity, and mental health in the workplace. As a mum of two, I’m especially passionate about supporting parents to build exciting, fulfilling careers that work for them — at every stage of life.
Expertise
Our founder, Laura Barker, is an Accredited Executive Coach with the Association for Coaching and holds ICF accredited diplomas in Personal Performance Development and Corporate & Executive Coaching.
In addition to leadership development, our specialities include neurodiversity, confidence, positive psychology, work life balance, neuroscience, return to work & maternity coaching.
We are accredited in delivering DiSC personality profiling on a 1:1 and group basis to support resilience, communication, conflict resolution and change management.
What we do
Leading Up partners with clients across a wide range of sectors, from engineering and accountancy, to law, and education. We support new managers, senior leaders, and everyone in-between - because leadership skills and culture are formed through everyday interactions at every level.
We offer three leadership growth pathways. Each area can be developed individually, or combined in flexible ways, to create the route that best suits your organisation’s needs.
Strategy
Looking at the bigger picture to understand where you are now and where you want to be, then designing a clear, actionable path to help you navigate forwards with confidence.
Design + Facilitation
Creating and delivering purposeful, engaging learning experiences that are tailored to your teams and designed to spark growth, connection, and lasting impact.
Coaching
Empowering individuals and teams to build confidence, navigate change, drive progress and perform at their best.
How we do it
For us, it all starts with listening deeply to understand your organisation and your challenges. Our goal is to feel like an extension of your team, working with you to craft a tailored response to your leadership challenge that fits your organisation’s culture, and specific ways of working.
Unlock individual leadership potential
We work with individuals to build self-awareness and clarity. Leaders gain a deep understanding of their strengths, values, and patterns of behaviour, and how these shape the way they lead. This work focuses on personal insight, confidence, and intentional leadership.
Empower teams to lead together
We work with teams to turn individual capability into collective strength. Our focus is on how leadership shows up between people: trust, communication, decision-making, and shared accountability. We help teams recognise what enables (or limits) their effectiveness and support the organisational shifts needed to embed stronger, more consistent leadership.
Drive meaningful organisational impact
We focus on sustainable, scalable change. By equipping leaders to develop their own teams, leadership capability ripples across the organisation. This creates alignment across multiple levels of leadership and supports long-term cultural and organisational development.
Ready to make a bigger impact?
We’d love to discuss your leadership challenges and support you in developing a solution to overcome them.
Let’s work together to make it happen!