Helping Neurodivergent Leaders Find Their True North
At True North Advancement, we do things differently. We combine strategic business insight and governance experience with lived neurodivergent expertise.
The result? Practical support that helps both neurodivergent and neurotypical professionals thrive. We don’t believe in generic, one-size-fits-all templates. Instead, we take the time to truly understand how you, your team, and your board process information, communicate, manage energy, and make decisions.
From there, we build real, actionable solutions tailored to you—whether that’s creating personal user manuals, auditing your communications, designing inclusive meetings, or providing confidential mentoring and conflict resolution.
The Story Behind True North Advancement
Hi, I’m Deborah Masterman. True North Advancement might be a team of one right now, but it is built on over two decades of high-level experience.
I started this business to bridge a crucial gap I saw throughout my career—the space between personal insight, organisational strategy, and board-level governance.
As an Autistic leader who holds an MBA and an MSc in Leadership, I spent 20+ years leading teams in the NHS, private, and voluntary sectors. A late-in-life diagnosis connected the dots for me, perfectly blending my lived neurodivergent expertise with my background as a senior executive and Chair of Trustees.
Today, I help individual professionals and senior decision-makers move past generic boxes. We work together on tailored coaching, leadership development, and governance strategy to build workplaces where everyones unique brain-wiring is setup for success. In essence, I help you find your “True North”: the steady point where your strategy, leadership, culture, and communication work in perfect alignment.
“I noticed Deb has a relaxed way of interacting with the people she works with, but calm and in control of the agenda at the same time... She always works hard to achieve the aims of any learning and development event she is involved in or leading but manages to project a sense of fun and realism at the same time...”
Services
How we can work together?
Whether you are looking for personal career support, trying to help your team work better together, or leading an entire organisation, True North Advancement is here to help.
We don’t do generic, box-ticking exercises. Instead, we look at the real-life ways people take in information, manage their daily energy, and talk to each other. By combining deep personal understanding with real-world business experience, we help you build a workplace where everyone—regardless of how their brain is wired—is set up to succeed.
Specialist tools we bring to the table
To make our work together as practical and engaging as possible, I am fully licensed to deliver:
Insights Discovery: A brilliant, colour-based psychometric tool that helps individuals and teams understand their unique communication styles, preferences, and how they react under pressure.
LEGO® Serious Play®: A hands-on, creative methodology that uses brick-building to unlock deep reflections, solve complex business problems, and ensure every single voice is heard equally.
1. Personal Career Coaching & Finding Your Groove
Best for: Professionals, managers, and executives who want to feel confident, lead authentically, and work in a way that matches their individual style.
If you are navigating a new role, stepping up into leadership, managing massive workplace pressure, or trying to bounce back from burnout and the exhaustion of trying to fit into a mould that doesn’t suit you, this private one-to-one coaching is for you. We focus on how you naturally think and work best so you can build a sustainable career that feels good.
What we work on together:
Your Personal “User Manual”: A simple, practical guide to help you understand—and explain to others—how you do your best work and process information.
Managing Energy & Getting Things Done: Practical tools to help you handle your workload, set healthy boundaries, make choices, and map out your next career steps without draining your battery.
Confidence & Authentic Leadership: Working through your unique strengths, learning to drop the exhausting corporate armour, recovering from burnout, and speaking up for what you need (often supported by Insights Discovery profiles to map out your natural style).
The Results: You will get clear on your unique strengths and what you need to thrive. You will feel more confident, protect yourself from burnout, and build a career path that feels completely right for you.
2. Team workshops & Better Collaboration
Best for: Managers and teams who want to build deep trust, make sure everyone feels safe to speak up, and get along better day-to-day.
We skip the usual generic team-building days and look at how your team actually works together every single day. By understanding the different ways people think, process information, and communicate, we clear away hidden frustrations and create a friendly, smooth-running workplace for everyone.
What we work on together:
Team “User Manual” & Insights Discovery Workshops: Interactive sessions using the Insights Discovery so the whole team learns exactly how everyone prefers to communicate, collaborate, and do their best work.
Hands-on Problem Solving with LEGO® Serious Play®: Creative, engaging workshops that break down communication barriers, level the playing field, and let the team visually build solutions to their biggest challenges together.
Spotting Communication Friction: Looking closely at where misunderstandings happen—like messy workflows, confusing expectations, or simply having too many meetings.
Better Ways to Meet and Work: Redesigning your meetings, agendas, and daily habits so that introverts, extroverts, neurodivergent, and neurotypical staff can all contribute comfortably and effectively.
The Results: Your team will have fewer misunderstandings, less meeting fatigue, and a much happier workplace where people feel safe to be themselves. When people feel understood and valued for their unique perspective, they stay at the company longer and do their best work.
3. Support for CEOs, Chairs and Boards
Best for: Leaders, CEOs, Trustees, Directors, and HR heads who want to make sure their leadership and big decision-making include all types of thinking.
Having a mix of different minds and processing styles at the top is a massive strategic strength, not just a compliance rule. This private advisory and mentoring service helps senior leaders build meetings and structures that welcome different viewpoints, stop people from just nodding along, and make top-level leadership work better for everyone involved.
What we work on together:
Strategic Alignment through LEGO® Serious Play®: Using advanced corporate building techniques to help boards visually model their strategy, explore complex risks, and tackle difficult governance questions in a highly collaborative way.
Reviewing How the Board Works: Looking at how board meetings are run, how reports are written, and how decisions are made to ensure they are easy for everyone to follow and contribute to.
CEO & Chair Partnership: Giving targeted communication support—often using Insights Discovery—to help top leaders work together smoothly, especially if they have very different ways of organising thoughts and processing information.
Private Mentoring for Leaders: A safe, strictly confidential space for leaders to talk through heavy pressure, big changes, workplace conflict, or professional identity.
Opening Up the Leadership Pipeline: Finding ways to encourage, support, and retain a wide variety of thinkers so they can step confidently into senior roles.
The Results: Your leadership team will make safer, smarter, and more creative decisions because you are actively making room for different perspectives. Your top- level meetings will run more smoothly, and you will build a stronger, more welcoming path for future leaders.
Get in touch
If you are looking for coaching support or you’d like some more information about how I can support you, please get in touch via the form.
Alternatively, email : hello@truenorthadvancement.co.uk