Lead as yourself.
What comes easily to you is the core of you. Be proud of it: that's where you find your creativity, and creativity is a hardcore leadership skill. ®CREATE is the six-step way I coach it, one to one, in workshops and with leadership teams, and from this autumn in a year-long group for women whose life is changing.
Book a free 45 minute conversationNo pressure either way. For yourself, or for a woman you lead.
The CREATE® Year
A year-long creative leadership journey for women standing at a turning point.
Something has shifted. A marriage has ended, or a role has, or the life you organised everything around has quietly stopped fitting. Meanwhile the job is as demanding as it has ever been, and you are expected to lead well through all of it.
This is a year to meet that on purpose, with a small group of women who are in it too.
First group forming now. The group is small on purpose, and places are agreed in conversation. Come and talk while the group is still forming.
Apply: book a conversationWho this is for
Women in leadership, in demanding specialist roles, or running their own business, who are in the middle of a change, whether they chose it or not.
- You are going through a divorce or separation, and still expected to be at your best at work.
- Something else in your private life is taking everything you have, and work is where it shows.
- You are between roles, or between versions of the same role, and the old answers have stopped working.
- You are carrying a bigger idea, a business, a book, a project, and you need a year of structure and company to do it.
You do not need a plan to start. You need the willingness to look honestly, and the courage to keep going for a year.
What the year holds
This is business coaching. It just does not pretend that the rest of your life stays outside the room. We go through the full programme in the conversation.
The group.
A handful of women in their own turning points, walking the six steps together, month after month. Small enough that trust forms and no one hides.
The rhythm.
We meet face to face once a month at Gallery Fast Creative in Helsinki, with a break in July. Eleven gatherings in a year. The rest of the journey happens around them, in your ordinary life, which is where the change actually takes place. There is no homework waiting for you at eleven at night. Monthly visits to Helsinki work from anywhere in Finland.
Personal conversations with me.
We also meet one to one along the way, confidentially.
Other professionals to support your journey.
I am gathering a network of professionals to support the journey.
CREATE materials.
CREATE book and workbook and other materials built into the programme.
Peer support.
The women beside you are not your colleagues and not people who need you to be fine. You stop being the only one, and you become useful to someone else, which is its own kind of medicine.
Self-knowledge that goes deep.
Personality profile and deep self-reflection throughout the year.
A room worth coming to.
Gallery Fast Creative inside How Violins, a violin atelier in Helsinki, surrounded by art and handmade instruments. A perfect space for rebuilding something new with an open and curious mind.
Everything you bring is confidential, including when someone else is paying.
What you leave with
- Your own strengths, patterns and edges, in language you can use.
- An answer to "where am I going" that has been tested for a year, not written in one hopeful afternoon.
- Your light at full strength, and something made in it that was not there when the year began.
- A small group of women who know your story and are still there at the end.
The six steps
The journey follows CREATE®, the six-step framework from my book CREATE: Crack the Cast and Become the Creative Leader You Want to Be, a finalist at The Business Book Awards UK. Creativity here is not art and it is not soft. It is a hardcore leadership skill, and it can be practised.
- Curiosity brings possibility. Opening your senses again, and finding the door where everything felt closed.
- Respect builds trust. Knowing your strengths and your edges well enough to stop performing.
- Ease creates capacity. What feels light is right. This is how you get room back.
- Attitude gives agency. The moment things stop happening to you and start being yours to decide.
- Taking opportunities makes momentum. One chance taken moves more than a year of planning.
- Enabling brings connection. Creativity is not a hero myth, it is about doing together.
Possibility. Trust. Capacity. Agency. Momentum. Connection.
One to one: the CREATE® coaching journey
Nine sessions of 60 to 90 minutes over five to six months, a personality profile, and the CREATE book and workbook. Face to face where we can, fully online for international clients, and a mixture if you live elsewhere in Finland. Coaching in English and Finnish.
Apply: book a conversationFor leadership teams
The same framework works between people. For your leadership team, a half-day CREATE® workshop or a longer journey, with personality profiles and the book, at Gallery Fast Creative or at your offices. The CREATE® Leadership Pair session, for two leaders who have each been through the journey, takes it further.
Book a conversation and I will make your team an offer.What people say
The group year is new. The work behind it is not. These are from the one to one CREATE® journeys, the Leadership Pair sessions and the workshops it is built on.
Maija's steps are clear, consistent and concrete. The programme was built as a logical whole, and in every meeting and at every step I had insights and learned something new about myself, which is not an easy thing to do. If you want to grow as a person and as a leader, but you want a broader angle than traditional management, this could be your thing.
Maija stands out as an inspirational enabler and catalyst. She is able to create unique solutions. Her ability to empower especially female leaders makes her an exceptional partner if you are seeking transformation and empowerment. For me, working with Maija made a deep personal impact during the journey.
Surrounded by art, music, and women who want to lift each other, it showed me how powerful it is when people come together to recharge, listen, challenge each other and share inspiration. I left feeling recharged, and with a reminder that investing in yourself is crucial.
Maija has the whole package. She understands artists, personal development, business development and human psyche. She kept me right on track. Really encouraging and also challenged me with difficult questions exactly when needed. At the same time she can provide insight and directions when I needed that more than coaching. I highly recommend Maija for women entrepreneurs, artists or those who are not that conventional and feel a normal coach just can't help you.
The first group
I have taken leaders through the CREATE® journey one to one for years, and through pair sessions and group workshops where the same framework does its work between people. The CREATE® Year is new. I am building the support for you that I would have wanted myself, when I was in demanding roles while my own life was changing.
Maija Fast
Creative leadership coach, author and speaker, founder of Fast Creative. I spent over twenty years in international HR leadership, in seven leadership teams, before I cracked my own cast. I wrote CREATE: Crack the Cast and Become the Creative Leader You Want to Be, a finalist at The Business Book Awards UK, and co-wrote a Finnish book on age diversity. My next book, Creating Connections, is built on interviews with people who bring others together. ICF certified professional coach, certified in Enneagram iEQ9 and Workplace Big Five, working in English and Finnish.
If your employer is paying
Many organisations fund this from a leadership development or wellbeing budget, and it is worth asking. Supporting a senior woman through a demanding period is one of the cheapest forms of retention there is, and she comes back leading better, with her people brought along rather than left behind. Here is the case in one paragraph, ready to forward:
Book a free 45 minute conversationBring HR or another decision maker to the call if you like, or I will send your employer a fuller description.The CREATE® Year is a year-long creative leadership programme built around a small peer group of women in senior roles, guided by a certified professional coach, with personal conversations along the way. It works through six steps with outcomes an organisation can recognise: possibility, trust, capacity, agency, momentum and connection, using the ®CREATE framework and validated profiling (Enneagram iEQ9, Workplace Big Five). The aim is a leader who leads from her strengths rather than from depletion. The coaching is confidential. Development goals are agreed at the start and reviewed at the end, with the participant present.
How to join
- We talk.A free 45 minute conversation, no pressure either way.
- You apply.If it is a yes on both sides, a short form, so I know what is changing in your life.
- You start.Your place in the first group, or in the queue for one of the next.
The first CREATE® group journey is done in Finnish. You can also apply if you want to do it in English: we have a conversation and agree together whether the one to one journey suits you now, or whether you go on the waiting list for the next CREATE® group journey in English.
Do not wait for the perfect moment. Take it and make it perfect.
