Planes Develop Their People Leaders with Coachable

The Brief

Planes is the product studio for the AI age, partnering with leading businesses to bring the next wave of breakthrough products to market. As a B Corp they take developing their people seriously and wanted a partner who really understood them and their business. 

Our Co-Founder Liz was previously an advisor for their Founding Partners, so we had a head start on the ‘knowing them intimately’ part. And if you’re wondering who designed our very sexy brand and website, well that was Planes too!

Whilst Planes is widely recognised as a great place to work, they identified there were opportunities to further strengthen trust and to ensure everyone felt their manager was prioritising their development. Keen to ensure there was a shared standard of excellence, every people manager at Planes, including the three Founders, needed development.

Planes sought a partner that could meet their high bar for design, to ensure individuals engaged with the learning (creatives will fixate on poor design and text out of alignment!), as well as one that could meet the differing needs of both first time managers and experienced founders. They were also keen to bring in diversity of thinking, and were up for collaborating with other agencies at a similar stage. 

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The Solution

Planes decided to join open cohorts of our Further Programme, alongside other creative agencies from our network. One cohort was designed for founders and senior leaders and one for people managers. Agencies that joined Planes included founders and leaders from StudioXag, Buff Motion and 10Up (now Fuelled).

Each person received 360 feedback via our LQ Report, along with a mini coaching session to set learning goals.

This approach brought multiple benefits to the participants:

1. Diversity of Thought - Something invaluable for entrepreneurial Founders who’ve never worked for others and value external experienced leadership
2. Psychological Safety - Managers were able to develop without fear of judgement from their manager
3. Coaching Buddies - Coaching pairs encouraged accountability, networking and social learning where it wouldn’t normally be possible. Some of these pairs continued working together as informal coaches long after the programme had finished!
4. New Awareness - 360 feedback raised self awareness, focused learning and accountability and allowed the coach-facilitator to adapt to the needs of the groups

Following the end of the Further Programme we then supported the wider Planes team by running half day workshops at their quarterly team days. Focusing on Feedback, Managing Client Changes and Coaching skills.

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The Impact

In their next staff survey, the scores they were measuring had improved significantly. And all of the scores that pertained to development managers were the highest they’d ever seen. 

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Here’s what development managers told us they’re now doing:

• Trialling new ways of leading their team, and adapting their approach
• Stepping back and not go straight into problem solving mode
• Coaching their teams to encourage better decision making

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We’re incredibly proud of the feedback, as well as the accolades Planes have since received:

• 95% of leaders said the Further improved their performance as a leader (average score 4.7/5)
• 95% of leaders said the content was appropriate, interesting and practical (average score 4.7/5)
• 4.8 out of 5 on Glassdoor 
• Campaign Magazine in 2025 as a Top Place to Work. Their commitment to their people has created a strong culture and team environment where creatives can do their best work. 

We still visit their offices in Shoreditch and see well thumbed copies of our programme Playbooks on their desks. The impact of the Further programme has endured multiple years and is still talked about. 

Read more about Sophie Aspden’s experience of working with Coachable and going through the programme herself in our People Leader Perspective on our blog. 

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Testimonials:

I have become more aware leader and have a tool set that I can refer back to and practise using. The Playbook has been a fantastic tool to refer back to. | CJ, Founder

Being able to have more understanding around certain frameworks, and use tools which explore how people might be interacting with different things differently has been amazing for me. Using different leadership styles has enabled me to feel more confident in making recommendations as a people person. | Sophie Aspden, People Lead

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