Turning decision-making into a measurable leadership offer

This case study shows how Salt and Light Coaching used BeTalent Decision Styles to build a distinctive, evidence-based decision-making offer for senior leaders and teams. By embedding Decision Styles into masterclasses, leadership team development and client projects, Jon Bircher and Mark Herbert have created a practical way to make decision-making preferences visible, improve decision process clarity and support better decisions in complex organisations. In one recent senior pharma leadership project, the approach delivered measurable improvements in decision speed, efficiency, quality and process clarity, while creating the foundation for broader regional change.

Challenge

Salt and Light Coaching had identified a significant gap in leadership development: decision-making is one of the most important responsibilities of senior leaders, yet few have been taught how to do it. Decision-making was showing up repeatedly in coaching conversations, leadership team work and organisational frustration, particularly in complex sectors such as pharma and biotech.

The challenge was how to turn that insight into a credible, structured and repeatable offer that could support leaders individually, help teams understand their collective decision-making patterns, and deliver measurable outcomes for clients.

Approach

Salt and Light Coaching embedded BeTalent Decision Styles into its decision-making masterclasses, leadership team development and client work.

The tool gave Jon and Mark a structured way to help leaders understand their own decision-making preferences, and how those preferences play out across a team. Rather than using the profile as a static report, they used it as a practical conversation starter, helping teams explore where they cluster, where they differ, where their strengths sit and where they may need to flex.

In a recent senior pharma leadership project, this approach was used as part of a six-month engagement embedding decision insight and decision-making process across a regional leadership team. Around 150 Decision Styles reports were delivered, and 20 internal champions were trained and equipped to sustain the work.

Deployment and impact

The project helped the client make decision-making more visible, structured and intentional. Leaders explored how different decisions require different approaches, from more measured and inclusive processes for high-stakes decisions, to faster experimentation for lower-risk and reversible decisions.

The engagement delivered:

• 20%+ improvement across speed, efficiency and quality of decisions

• 35% improvement in Decision Process Clarity

• 4.5/5 satisfaction score on work delivered to date

• 20 internal champions trained to sustain the work

• Training rated practical, insightful, challenging and highly valuable

• Next stage: scoping a change management programme to extend the work throughout the region

For Salt and Light Coaching, the work also strengthened a distinctive consulting niche. Decision Styles helped turn an important but often hidden leadership challenge into a structured, scalable and commercially relevant offer, supporting richer conversations with clients and opening the door to broader organisational work.