Melbourne · working across Australia
Leadership work for people whose reactions arrive before their judgement
Vertical Development Consulting coaches senior leaders and runs sessions with leadership teams that are carrying sustained load. The method is body-based, so it works on how someone behaves in the moment rather than on what they already understand about themselves.
Book a scoping callThe duty that arrived on 1 December 2025
Victorian employers now owe a duty over how work is designed and how people treat each other
The Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 commenced in Victoria on 1 December 2025, with a Compliance Code alongside them. Employers have to identify psychosocial hazards in work design, systems of work, management and workplace interactions, then eliminate the risk or reduce it. Victoria left out the mandatory prevention plans and mandatory reporting that appeared in earlier drafts, so what remains is a duty about practice rather than paperwork.
Manager behaviour under load sits inside that duty, and it is the part an insurer cannot underwrite and a policy cannot fix.
Source: Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025. The 2023–24 claim figures are preliminary and typically revise upward. The two medians reference 2022–23, which is the most recent year Safe Work Australia publishes them for.
Three ways organisations buy this
Format, price and first step, before you have to ask
Each of these is sold to a budget holder rather than to an individual, and every price below excludes GST. The coaching engagement is a fixed figure. The day starts at the number shown and settles on the outline, because scope moves with the size of the group and the amount of preparation behind it.
Leadership engagement, sponsored by the employer
For a senior leader whose reactions under pressure are starting to cost the organisation people, usually after a piece of feedback or a step up. The promise is more range in how they can be under pressure. It is not a guaranteed outcome and we will not describe it as one.
- Format
- Twelve fortnightly sessions of ninety minutes over six months
- Included
- A 360 or Leadership Circle Profile at the start, plus a sponsor conversation at the start, the midpoint and the end
- Price
- $9,000 + GST, assessment at cost
- First step
- Thirty minutes with the leader, then fifteen with the sponsor
Leading under pressure, a facilitated day
For a leadership team of six to fourteen where meetings have got sharper or quieter under sustained load. The team leaves with a shared language for what happens to a group under pressure, and a small number of practices they actually use afterwards. Culture transformation is not on offer.
- Format
- One day in person, plus a ninety-minute online follow-up at six weeks
- Bought by
- An HR director, an L&D lead, or the team's own leader
- Price
- From $5,000 + GST per day, settled on the outline
- First step
- A scoping call, then a one-page outline within 24 hours
The Capacity Program, run for one employer
For a cohort of eight to ten senior individual contributors or new managers running hot, where the employer wants something more substantial than a wellbeing webinar. Measurement happens at the start and the end, and the design is shown to you before you buy so you know what it can and cannot tell you.
- Format
- Eight weeks, four live sessions, eight to ten people from one organisation
- Measure
- A validated psychosocial safety instrument at the start and the end, reported to the sponsor
- Price
- $12,000 to $18,000 + GST per cohort
- First step
- A free sample session with the team, then a proposal
A practice, not a firm
The person at the scoping call is the person in the room
Nobody gets substituted in once the contract is signed, and there is no account manager sitting between the sponsor and the work. Decisions about scope or dates take one email rather than an internal approval chain, which is most of why organisations choose a single practitioner over a consultancy.
The trade is depth against breadth. Six months of fortnightly work with one leader, or a day with one team, is a different thing from a rollout.
From first email to signed outline
Five steps, most of them finished inside a fortnight
You send the shape of it
A few lines about who the work is for and what has already been tried. Enough to know whether this is the right kind of help.
Scoping call, thirty minutes
No charge, no assessment, no pitch deck. The useful question in that call is usually what a good outcome would look like to the person paying.
A one-page outline within a day
Scope, dates, price and what is excluded, on a single page you can forward to whoever signs.
Sponsor conversation
When an employer is paying, we agree in advance what gets reported back and what stays between coach and leader. Getting this wrong late is what damages trust in the whole engagement.
Signed outline, then the work starts
Invoicing runs from the same page. There is no separate proposal document.
Who does the work
Rudi Doku
Fifteen years in management consulting, including time at Accenture and Deloitte, then a decade coaching leaders across five continents, with a body-based method underneath the second half. The commercial background is the reason a story about a board paper does not need explaining first.
- Executive Master in Change, INSEAD
- Certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner
- Fifteen years in management consulting, including time at Accenture and Deloitte
- Trained in Gestalt group dynamics and Adaptive Leadership, with a group relations background
- Director, Vertical Development Consulting Pty Ltd, ABN 15 628 060 015
Leaders coached at
Questions a buyer usually asks
The five that come up before anyone signs
Is this coaching or therapy?
Coaching. The subject is how someone leads under pressure, and the contract is with the organisation. The method borrows from body-based training, which is why the work often shifts patterns that talking about them has not, but nothing here treats a diagnosis and nothing here is clinical care. When something belongs with a psychologist, we say so early and refer.
What does the organisation actually get for the money?
A defined format, an assessment at the start, and a sponsor conversation three times across the six months so the person paying is not left guessing. What we will not do is promise a behaviour change on a date. Anyone who does is either measuring nothing or overstating what their measurement supports.
Why not use a leadership consultancy?
Continuity is the honest answer. A consultancy gives you a bench, case studies, a procurement-friendly entity and the ability to scale. It also gives you associate substitution and an account manager. If the work needs to reach two hundred managers, a firm is the better buy and we will say so on the call.
We already have an EAP. How is this different?
An EAP responds to an individual who has already reached the point of asking for help, and it is confidential by design, so it tells the employer nothing about the conditions producing the calls. This work is preventive and collective, aimed at the team and the manager behaviour inside it. Most organisations end up wanting both.
Can you prove it works?
The Capacity Program uses a validated psychosocial safety instrument at the start and the end of the eight weeks, with the design shown to you before you buy. A short pre and post measure on a single cohort with no control group can show movement and rule out very little, and pretending otherwise makes the second cohort impossible to sell. Alongside the numbers we collect specific accounts of moments in real meetings, which a board tends to find more persuasive than a percentage.
If you are comparing suppliers, the question worth asking each of them is what their measurement design can rule out.
Next step
Send the shape of it and get an outline back within a day
A few lines about the leader or the team, what has been tried, and roughly when. If it turns out to be the wrong kind of help, the reply will say so and point somewhere better.
