Who we are

What we do

We train managers and employees in the mindset and abilities needed to lead in more involving ways.
We support working climate shifts from dysfunctional to working, or from working to a much more open and trust-based culture.
We help companies introduce or develop self-managing teams, or facilitate an organisation-wide shift to self-management.

Our history

What do jobseekers who need coaching have in common with companies in crisis that need to a quick turnaround? Our founder, Karin Tenelius, has worked with these two contexts, and discovered that the same method is effective in helping both.

In the nineties, Karin worked as a coach supporting huge numbers of unemployed people affected by the financial crash. She developed a conversational methodology that enabled the coachees to tap into their own potential. The method is now widely used in jobseeker centres around Sweden. Key to this approach is the individuals becoming aware of their unproductive mindset and achieving results by changing their attitude.

Karin had also always been inspired by the idea that organisations should be more employee-driven, like Semco in Brazil. Her first opportunity to put this into practice was with Freys Hotel in Stockholm. Though already successful, after just six months of working without managers, the hotel’s profitability increased. After this, Karin was given several more assignments with small businesses as an interim CEO, using organisational self-management to turnaround companies in crisis.

At this point Karin realised that what was needed for managers to be more involving and employees to take more responsibility was not about theory, but about training in new mindsets and abilities. With this in mind, Tuff Leadership Training was founded in 2003, with a name that reflects the challenge of actually learning a new way of being and behaving.

Today, we are proud to have a whole faculty of skilled trainers, a number of small and large satisfied customers, specially-built course rooms in central Stockholm, and a large range of services to transform organisations to support a modern, trust-based way of working.

Our coaches

Our trainers are masters of creating safe learning environments for our tough training, mastering our methodology so that results can be achieved in a short time in order to create real change in individuals and groups.

All of our trainers are evaluated by all course participants and have an average score of 9.5 out of 10. We recruit on the basis of abilities rather than CVs, and all trainers undergo extensive internal training, both before and after they become certified as continuous personal development is part of our culture.

Our Team