The Resolution Centre  ›  LIRA

LIRA · Leadership is Resolution Academy

Leadership is not simply learned. It is formed.

LIRA is the developmental home of our work — where the capacity to resolve is deliberately built, in leaders, practitioners, teams and whole organisations. Accredited qualifications, formation programmes and a living community of practice.

Our flagship certificate All programmes
Why it matters

People look to leadership for hope and trust.

Across the world, the qualities people most associate with leadership that positively shapes their lives are hope and trust — yet fewer are finding them, and many leaders feel unprepared for the moments that matter most.

9 in 10of what people most want from leaders is hope and trust.
1 in 5employees worldwide are engaged at work.
71%of leaders report rising stress; many consider stepping away.

Sources: Gallup, Global Leadership Report & State of the Global Workplace (2025); DDI, Global Leadership Forecast (2025).

What LIRA is

A discipline of formation, not a catalogue of courses.

Much leadership training delivers content and hopes it sticks. LIRA forms people through practice — developing Identity (who you are becoming), Capacity (what you can notice, hold and do under pressure) and Maturity (how wisely and consistently you exercise it). Its overall practice is Mediative Coaching: coaching, mediation and leadership held together.

We create the conditions; we never confer the outcome.

Formation is something people do, with support — not something done to them. Everything below is built on that principle.

Flagship qualification
PCMMS

Professional Certificate in Mediation & Mediation Skills

Our flagship, university-accredited qualification, delivered in partnership with Queen Margaret University Edinburgh. For leaders, people and project managers, directors, HR specialists, lawyers and dispute-resolution professionals who want to resolve — and lead — with real confidence. You'll learn to spot conflict early, hold difficult conversations well, and conduct structured mediations across grievances, commercial and workplace disputes.

Full course details Register interest
AccreditedTriple-accredited — 15 credits at SCQF Level 9
PartnersQMU EdinburghScottish MediationCIArb
FormatSix full days (4 tuition · 1 reflective · 1 assessment)
AssessmentObserved mediation 60% & reflective essay 40%
Next cohort19–22 May 2026
Programmes

Ways to build resolving capacity.

Peer Mediation

Our schools programme: we train pupils to help classmates resolve disagreements as neutral third parties — building confidence and empathy, and making whole schools calmer. Backed by the Civil Mediation Council's national report.

Explore Peer Mediation →

Mediative Coaching

LIRA's core practice — coaching, mediation and leadership working as one. For leaders holding development, relationship, authority and responsibility at the same time. An advanced pathway deepens the craft for experienced practitioners.

Foundational & Advanced pathways

Leadership Formation

Formation, not just training. We develop Identity, Capacity and Maturity through real practice — so leaders can stay present under pressure and help people move towards what matters.

Individuals & Home Teams

Negotiation

"Negotiating for better success in politics" — a CPD programme for those in political and public life, built on principled-based negotiation. Delivered with Queen Margaret University.

Explore the programme →

CPD & Practice Series

Keep resolving capacity sharp. Lunchtime learning, CPD events and an ongoing practice series for practitioners and leaders who want to keep developing between programmes.

Ongoing · open to alumni

Bespoke for organisations

Programmes designed around your people and your real situations — from difficult-conversation skills to whole-team formation and culture change.

Tailored & in-house

Not sure which fits?

Tell us the situation you're facing or the capability you want to build, and we'll point you to the right starting place — or design one.

Start a conversation →
Leadership MaturityHome TeamsVisible PresenceResearch & Papers
The Resolution Framework™

Reason to hope. Reason to trust. Turn both into movement.

The Resolution Framework™ helps people find reason to hope and reason to trust, and turn both into constructive movement. The LifeRing is not only the first movement — it is the field within which all three occur. They can be taught in sequence, but they’re better understood as movements: people pause, return, and move between them as understanding develops.

01

LifeRing — create the conditions for hope

LifeRing helps us understand where people are now, what matters, and what would make movement possible. It holds four conditions:

  • Autonomy — I have agency and choice.
  • Belonging — I am included, and I matter here.
  • Contribution — I can make a meaningful difference.
  • Coherence — who we are, what matters and what we do begin to hold together.

These support the human movement from FEEL to THINK to DO to BE. Hope begins here — not as optimism, but as the grounded belief that a meaningful next step remains possible.

The Resolution LifeRing: Autonomy (FEEL), Belonging (THINK), Contribution (DO), Coherence (BE); with Vision, Wellbeing, Performance and Outcomes.
Find hope.
02

INVITE — reason to trust, from me to we

INVITE brings the LifeRing conditions to life between people. It is the visible expression of the practitioner’s or leader’s identity, capacity and maturity in action. Through presence, listening, genuine inquiry and responsible participation, INVITE creates enough permission and trust for people to enter the work together.

The movement is from my perspective, my answer and my control, towards our understanding, our responsibility and our capacity to move — so we can choose who we want to be together, especially under pressure.

INVITE badge — Visible Presence: warmth & competence, trustworthiness
A reason to trust. Visible Presence is how we show up — warmth & competence, and the demonstrated trustworthiness that gives people reason to trust and move from me to we.
03

IDEAS that ECHOS™ — enable and sustain movement

IDEAS is the practical journey — Invite · Discover · Engage · Agree · Stretch. It is not a rigid sequence; people may pause, return or move between stages as understanding develops.

ECHOS is what happens when that movement travels beyond the immediate conversation — into everyday relationships, leadership practice, the Home Team and organisational culture. The work is complete not when the matter moves, but when people become able to create constructive movement without us.

IDEAS that ECHOS — Invite at the centre; movement travels through discover, engage, agree, stretch, coach and purpose, held by motivation & commitment, openness & clarity, empathy & understanding, confidence & authority
Enable movement. INVITE sits at the centre; movement travels outward — discover, engage, agree, stretch — into relationships, leadership and culture.

Where Mediative Coaching™ sits

Mediative Coaching™ is the integrated practice through which The Resolution Framework™ is applied. IDEAS that ECHOS is its principal movement pathway. It holds two inseparable concerns:

The Resolution Circle — people, perspectives, relationships, and what stands between them.
The Leadership Circle — purpose, possibility, responsibility, development and movement.

At their overlap sits Visible Presence — where purpose and people are held together, and resolving leadership becomes observable.

It is mediative because it works with the relational field before difference hardens into formal dispute; coaching because it develops agency, responsibility and purposeful movement — while going beyond the assumption that the individual already holds everything they need within themselves.

One framework, two applications.

Provide · delivery capacity

We use our resolving capacity, with you

We bring our own capacity and experience, create the LifeRing conditions, INVITE participation and guide movement through IDEAS that ECHOS.

What remains: the immediate matter moves — and the people involved become more able.

Develop · capacity building

We help you form and use your own

We use the same framework deliberately to develop the capacity and practice of others.

What remains: they can create the conditions, guide movement, and build resolving cultures themselves.

The complete logic.

Reason to hope. Reason to trust. Enable movement. Build capacity.

Develop the capacity to resolve.

Whether you're an individual wanting the certificate, or an organisation building its own capability, tell us where you're heading and we'll help you get there.

Enquire about LIRA