Matthew Trenholm

Most leadership development doesn't work because it treats leadership as a knowledge problem.

Give people a framework. Teach them the right language. Send them back to the office.

I've spent twenty years watching what actually happens after those programs end. The language fades. The framework gets filed. The behavior stays the same. And the good people keep leaving.

That's what this work is about — not adding information, but changing behavior.

I came to this through healthcare, which turns out to be one of the most instructive environments for leadership development that exists. High stakes. Constant pressure. Thin margins for error. Clear consequences when leadership fails. If you can lead well in a busy emergency department or an imaging department running at capacity, you can lead well anywhere.

Over two decades I moved from frontline practice into supervisory and leadership roles, watched patterns repeat themselves across departments and organizations, and eventually decided to study them formally. My MSc in Healthcare Leadership — completed with Distinction — gave me the research foundation to understand why those patterns exist. That research has since been published in the Journal of International Health Sciences and Management. The twenty years before it gave me the context to make that research mean something practical.

I founded Trenholm Leadership Group to bring that combination — frontline experience and rigorous research — into workshops, keynotes, and coaching engagements that actually change how leaders behave. Not just how they think about leadership.

I also co-founded Bearing Institute, a non-partisan policy institute producing evidence-based research at the intersection of leadership, governance, and policy. I write The Accidental Manager — a weekly newsletter on the real challenges of leadership, for people who found themselves in charge before anyone fully prepared them for it.

If you lead people — or you're responsible for the leaders who do — I'd like to talk.