Growing the leader alongside the venture

What's happening?

BD Giving’s GROW programme supports purpose-led entrepreneurs in Barking and Dagenham to develop commercially sustainable ventures that create meaningful local impact.

Participants receive funding, expert business support, peer learning, coaching and access to social investment. Alongside developing their strategy, finances and business model, they are often also navigating an important transitions for their leadership and team.

Plus, as a venture grows, what it needs from its founder changes. The personal drive and deep involvement that helped establish the organisation can eventually make it harder to share responsibility, build capacity and lead the next stage of growth. 

The Future Works will contribute to GROW 2026 through:
 

• Leadership and management support for the programme cohort;

• One-to-one leadership coaching.

The aim is to help participants step back from building their ventures and consider how their leadership needs to evolve. It will explore:
 

• What their venture now needs from them as its leader;

• Where their leadership builds capability - or creates dependence;

• How to provide direction while enabling others to take ownership;

• The culture created through their everyday behaviour;

• Practical changes that could strengthen how they lead.

The coaching will provide confidential, sustained support to work through particular challenges, understand patterns and assumptions holding them back, and test new approaches.

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The work aims to help entrepreneurs lead with greater clarity and confidence, develop capability around them and create purposeful organisations that do not depend entirely on their founder.

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I connect the commercial and organisational realities of growth with the personal experience of leading. Participants gain practical insight while examining the habits, assumptions and pressures shaping how they show up - helping the leader and the venture grow together.