Leadership Development Lead

The Recipe

Warburtons has an approach to leadership development that has served us well for the past decade. As our business evolves, what we need from our leaders is changing too.

We’re looking for a highly skilled, modern leadership development expert who can reshape our leadership offer and help us build a more adaptive, inclusive and agile leadership population.

This is a hands-on role for someone who combines excellent design with powerful facilitation. You’ll be quick on your feet, able to read a room and confident working with leaders senior leaders and leadership teams.

You’ll know what genuinely shifts mindset and behaviour. Rather than relying on lengthy frameworks or theoretical models, you’ll create practical, stretching experiences that help leaders respond to real business challenges and lead an organisation built for change, rather than stability.

You’ll bring fresh thinking, strong external connections and the judgement to know when to design and deliver something yourself and when an external expert or partner can add greater value.

Working closely with our Head of Talent, Learning & Culture, Chief People Officer and wider People Leadership Team, you’ll play an important role in strengthening leadership capability, performance and culture across Warburtons. You’ll also work as part of our broader People Team, connecting leadership development with talent, performance and organisational change.

Key Accountabilities and Measures

• Reshape and modernise our leadership development offer across different leadership levels.
• Design practical, engaging development that responds to genuine business and leadership challenges.
• Facilitate high-impact sessions with senior leaders and teams.
• Create experiences that challenge established thinking, shift mindset and translate into visible changes in leadership behaviour.
• Help leaders build the adaptability, judgement and confidence needed to lead through uncertainty and continual change.
• Strengthen enterprise leadership, helping leaders work across boundaries and lead for the whole business.
• Refresh and improve existing leadership programmes, retaining what works and changing what no longer meets the needs of the business.
• Work with business and People leaders to quickly understand leadership needs and translate them into targeted development.
• Bring external insight, contemporary thinking and innovative approaches into Warburtons.
• Use your external network to identify and engage excellent speakers, facilitators, coaches and specialist partners.
• Evaluate impact through observable behaviour change, participant insight and relevant business outcomes.
• Build practical tools, resources and internal capability so the strongest elements of the work can continue beyond the 12-month appointment.

Essential Ingredients

• Significant experience shaping, designing and facilitating leadership development in a complex organisation.
• A strong track record of working credibly with senior leaders and leadership teams.
• Excellent facilitation skills, with the confidence to think on your feet, adapt in the moment and work constructively with challenge or resistance.
• Strong design capability, with the ability to create engaging development around real work rather than defaulting to theory or generic content.
• A practical understanding of what shifts leadership mindset, behaviour and ways of working.
• Contemporary knowledge of leadership, organisational change, culture and adult development.
• The ability to translate complex thinking into clear, relevant and accessible experiences.
• Confidence moving between strategic conversations, detailed design and hands-on delivery.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, with strong judgement and senior stakeholder credibility.
• A collaborative approach and an understanding of how leadership development connects with talent, performance, learning and organisational change.
• A strong external network and the ability to identify high-quality partners and emerging leadership practice.
• Comfort working at pace, navigating ambiguity and turning broad opportunities into tangible outcomes.
• A recognised coaching qualification and experience using credible psychometric tools would be advantageous.

If you’re an accomplished leadership development practitioner who loves being in the room, creating the conditions for honest conversations and helping leaders turn insight into action, we’d love to hear from you.

Extra Dough

At last and by no means least you will want to know what your breads worth:

• Car allowance
• A slice of the annual profits (discretionary profit share)
• Family time is important to us and we know it will be to you, so you will have 5 weeks holiday and bank hols. Plus the opportunity to purchase up to an extra weeks annual leave
• Award winning pension scheme with company contributions up to7%
• Private medical insurance, health screening and life assurance
• Products you will love along with deals and discounts for you and the family through our Extra Dough website
• Support for your health and wellbeing, including access to free physiotherapy, 24/7 access to a confidential helpline for practical advice and a comprehensive occupational health service