“The entire leadership cohort, from the frontline to the board, must be aligned and working together to achieve the goal.”
For organisations seeking to strengthen their long-term value and build reputation as a preferred employer, transformation must start within leadership. The attitudes, conversations and behavioural patterns of leaders determine how decisions are made, teams align and culture performs. The way they approach and react to real-world situations can make or break an organisation.
Metattude operates with a singular goal to transform the attitudes of leaders who will create healthier cultures and better performing organisations. It works with ambitious, coachable senior leaders determined to become employers of choice.
Founded by seasoned executive leadership coach David Deane-Spread, the consultancy delivers its distinctive, research-informed Attitudinal Competence framework that equips senior leaders to consciously choose the right mindset in every situation. The proprietary methodology uses behavioural profiling and experiential coaching to align leadership, build high-trust cultures and promote growth, with visible performance outcomes within months.
“Our framework supports ambitious, coachable senior leaders who are committed to becoming employers of choice in their sector, and then leveraging that position to become providers of choice,” says Deane-Spread, founder and chief education officer.
Deane-Spread has more than two decades of professional experience as an executive coach, mentor, consultant, trainer and keynote speaker. He draws on a wide range of experience across the military, law enforcement, government and private sectors in Australia and Europe to bring the field-tested leadership framework into the executive arena through Metattude. The transformative framework that redefines executive leadership from the lens of attitude and behavior has earned Metattude recognition as Top Executive Leadership Coaching Service 2026.
A Blueprint for Surfacing the Ideal Leadership Version
The Attitudinal Competence framework forms the spine of every bespoke executive coaching program, workshop and keynote engagement.
The origins of the framework lie in Deane-Spread’s role as a coach for a discreet agency’s covert operators. He helped them maintain their cover and stay calm under pressure without losing personal grounding through his Attitudinal Mastery course program. He created a practical method that trained operators not to default to habitual behaviour. They learned to consciously adopt their most effective attitude toward past, present and future scenarios to improve outcomes.
Encouraged by its success, Deane-Spread later adapted this method as the Attitudinal Competence framework, which now supports both leaders and teams. It systematically strengthens situational and self-awareness, while building adaptability, resilience, optimism and flexibility.
The framework is distinguished by how it uncovers the root of what shapes leadership decisions and behaviour. Leadership models focusing solely on emotional quotient (EQ), emphasising social and self-awareness, social and self-regulation, and motivation. Attitudinal competence goes deeper to address the underlying drivers of emotion, such as perceptions, meanings, beliefs, intentions and expectations. Focusing on these drivers contributes to rapid improvement in EQ parameters.
Clients interact with the framework in workshops that empower them to examine the components of their attitude, discard rigid belief patterns and select more constructive approaches. Leaders learn to consciously move from automatic reactions to more positive, yet realistic choices. When they apply those shifts in real leadership situations, they discover an improved version of themselves with better decision-making abilities.
In the final step, they define a personal standard for their “best-version” behavior. This creates a custom working blueprint that prevents them from lapsing into their former, pre-awareness state and guides ongoing coaching and continuous self-improvement.
Though workshops help the leadership team achieve a common understanding, Deane-Spread prefers coaching sessions due to their greater effectiveness at driving a more personalised adoption of the framework. Keen to democratise access to the framework, he has also produced a comprehensive self-help workbook, “Master the Power of Your Attitudes.”
“The aim is to make myself honourably redundant rather than create dependence,” says Deane-Spread
A Guided Path to Driving Measurable
Outcomes
A diligent process guides leaders toward the realisation of the attitude components shaping their behaviour and decisions. The starting point is usually addressing the needs of senior leaders. The scope eventually expands to include mid-level leaders, who are in highly vulnerable positions and often ignored for development and alignment.
Deane-Spread starts by tackling difficult behaviours and everyday roadblocks at all leadership levels. This is achieved by resolving the persistent challenges leaders face, such as people issues, unproductive meetings, misalignment across teams, and ineffective task delegation. The result is a more collaborative, accountable and capable leadership.
“The entire leadership cohort, from the frontline to the board, must be aligned and working together to achieve the goal,” says Deane-Spread
This early alignment lays the foundation for faster decisions, a stronger culture and improved organisational momentum. Once the foundation is in place, Metattude works with senior and mid-level leaders to drive sustained change.
Leadership coaching, delivered over a minimum of 12 sessions across six to 12 months, is shaped around each leader’s goals, personalities and organisational reality. Every engagement begins with a rigorous assessment of their behavioural and communication traits, underlying driving forces and emotional intelligence. These insights are compiled into a comprehensive report that clearly defines leadership strengths and development opportunities. From there, Deane-Spread partners with leaders to identify priorities and design tools and action plans that deliver the greatest impact.
Progress is tracked with discipline and transparency. Leadership and culture improvements are measured within the first six months against key performance indicators (KPI) and objectives and key results (OKR), critical success factors (CSF) and cultural indicators. Employee satisfaction is evaluated through established motivation frameworks such as Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Structured 90-day review cycles continuously track progress in KPI, OKR, CSF and culture Each win is duly celebrated to retain momentum and keep results visible.
The results are tangible, with measurable performance improvements in KPIs and OKR performance within six months of deployment. Leaders also report stronger alignment and trust, with improved employee retention and quick conflict resolution.
“Our framework supports ambitious, coachable senior leaders who are committed to becoming employers of choice in their sector, and then leveraging that position to become providers of choice.”
Tailored Coaching That Fosters Real-World Success
Trusted by directors, C-suite executives and business owners, Metattude operates entirely on referrals and repeat engagements. Client relationships span generations.
That loyalty is not incidental. Deane-Spread attributes repeat engagements and referrals to a culture built on courage and clarity. He works with leaders willing to confront limiting beliefs, communicate transparently and uphold organisational values even when doing so is uncomfortable. By helping leaders care for both individuals and the broader organisation, he creates environments where trust deepens and discretionary effort rises. In his view, sustained performance improvement follows when ambition is paired with coachability and vulnerability.
Alongside that, personalisation is a hallmark of Deane-Spread’s coaching style and the prime factor that brings clients back. One-to-one coaching is reinforced through adaptable workshops ranging from focused half-day sessions to immersive multi-day programs. For organisations seeking inspiration at scale, he delivers tailored keynote presentations with clear, engaging messages that energise leaders.
The coaching sessions help leaders transform cultures across high-risk and commercial environments. For instance, a special forces unit with a demanding weapons program was losing an average of eight students per course due to attitude, safety and skill deficits. Attrition decreased after Deane-Spread trained instructors. Senior instructors reported the highest standards they had seen in candidates. The approach was subsequently rolled out across all training.
The same methodology delivered a turnaround for a multinational commercial fleet and ride-share management company severely affected by COVID-19. Engaged to coach the C-suite, Deane-Spread helped align the leadership and calibrate their behavior to help improve performance and regain strategic clarity. Talent retention stabilised and profitability improved within 18 months, with the company becoming a top provider in Australia and the UK in the following 24 months.
These outcomes earned praise from clients. Leaders value Deane-Spread’s consistent attention to their individual needs and prefer his clear communication style, while applauding the framework’s proven competence. They appreciate the way the program addresses disruptive patterns to attain cultural change and ensures each improvement in performance and productivity is measured
An Evolving Framework Built for Lasting Impact
Deane-Spread is dedicated to refining the Attitudinal Competence framework. He views it as a living, evolving entity strengthened by cross-disciplinary insight and collaborates with experts in organisational psychology, HR and neuroscience to improve how the framework is applied and experienced by organisations.
Since 2004, Deane-Spread has helped hundreds of people across diverse backgrounds employ the disciplined practice of attitudinal competence to break through limiting beliefs and become more effective versions of themselves. That long record of personal and organisational transformation will continue to shape Metattude’s work. Looking ahead, he is exploring how Al-enabled delivery can extend the reach and impact of his framework.
Metattude continues to apply its framework to organisations seeking measurable cultural improvement, leading to evolved leadership for executives and a preferred employer and provider label for the organisations they lead. Its act of anchoring leadership development in attitudinal competence and structured behavioural recalibration, ensures leadership capability and discipline are sustained long after formal coaching concludes.
