John Mattone

Why organisations work with John Mattone

• His Intelligent Leadership framework draws a structural distinction between the “Inner Core” of character, values and emotional maturity and the “Outer Core” of skills and competencies. Most leadership development programmes work only on the outer layer. Mattone’s argument is that this is why they underdeliver.
• The Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory, in use since 1996 and administered to more than 10,000 leaders worldwide, quantifies the internal drivers of leadership behaviour. It gives organisations a measurable starting point for executive development rather than a qualitative one.
• John Mattone Global is recognised among the world’s top ten executive coaching and leadership development firms by Worldwide Research Reports, STATS N DATA, and Infinity Business Insights. Its ICF-accredited Intelligent Leadership certification has produced more than 800 certified coaches across 55+ countries, so the methodology can be deployed at scale rather than through a single practitioner.
• Named #1 Executive Coach in the World by Global Gurus six times between 2019 and 2026, and inducted into the Corps d’Elite (Hall of Fame) in 2025 for lifetime achievement. Both are credentialled external rankings, not self-conferred titles, which gives procurement teams an independently verified benchmark when selecting executive development partners.
• His critique of the leadership development industry is pointed and specific: he argues that the sector systematically overinvests in outer competencies and underinvests in the inner character work that determines how leaders actually behave when stakes are high. That position gives boards and CHROs a framework for re-evaluating their existing development spend.

Biography highlights

• Creator of the Intelligent Leadership framework and the Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory; the MLEI has been administered to more than 10,000 leaders globally since 1996
• Named #1 Executive Coach in the World by Global Gurus six times between 2019 and 2026; inducted into the Corps d’Elite (Hall of Fame) in 2025 for lifetime achievement
• Author of 11 books, five of them bestsellers: Talent Leadership (AMACOM, 2012), Intelligent Leadership (AMACOM, 2013), Cultural Transformations (Wiley, 2016), The Intelligent Leader (Wiley, 2020), The Executive Coach’s Handbook (2022). Marshall Goldsmith wrote the forewords for Intelligent Leadership and The Intelligent Leader. The Intelligent Leader was named a Forbes #1 Holiday Book and a Soundview Best Book of 2020. Most recent contribution: Pinnacle of Influence (Global Gurus, 2024), a multi-author anthology with Marshall Goldsmith and other Global Gurus-ranked leaders
• Founder of John Mattone Global; the firm is recognised by Worldwide Research Reports, STATS N DATA, and Infinity Insights Research among the world’s top ten executive coaching and leadership development firms. Its ICF-accredited Intelligent Leadership certification programme has produced more than 800 coaches across 55+ countries
• Industrial/organisational psychologist by training (MS, University of Central Florida); coaching engagements with C-suite leaders across global organisations, including the publicly documented coaching of Steve Jobs
• Featured in Forbes, Chief Executive, HR Magazine, and Training magazine; the John Mattone Global leadership blog has been ranked #1 in its category by Feedspot from 2017 through 2025

Biography

Leadership development has a measurement problem. Organisations can assess whether a leader has the right skills; they struggle to assess whether that leader has the inner constitution to deploy those skills when conditions deteriorate. John Mattone’s work is built around that gap.

His Intelligent Leadership framework distinguishes the Inner Core, a leader’s character, values, emotional maturity and self-awareness, from the Outer Core of visible competencies and behaviours. His argument, made across 11 books and four decades of executive coaching practice, is that outer performance is only as reliable as the inner foundation beneath it. Competency training without inner-core development produces leaders who look good in stable conditions and struggle in everything else. The Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory, in use since 1996 and administered to more than 10,000 leaders globally, translates that argument into a quantified diagnostic; organisations get a baseline measure of leadership character, not just leadership style.

The published work is more methodology than motivation. Intelligent Leadership (AMACOM, 2013) and The Intelligent Leader (Wiley, 2020), both with forewords by Marshall Goldsmith, set out the structural argument and the implementation path. Cultural Transformations (Wiley, 2016) extends it into how senior leadership character shapes organisational culture. Global Gurus has named Mattone the #1 Executive Coach in the World six times between 2019 and 2026, and inducted him into the Corps d’Elite in 2025 for lifetime achievement.

Mattone is the founder of John Mattone Global, recognised by Worldwide Research Reports, STATS N DATA, and Infinity Insights Research as a top-ten executive coaching and leadership development firm. Its ICF-accredited Intelligent Leadership certification programme has produced more than 800 coaches across 55+ countries, so the IL methodology can be deployed at organisational scale rather than through a single practitioner. An industrial/organisational psychologist by training (University of Central Florida), Mattone has consulted with more than 250 organisations and directly coached over 200 senior executives, including the late Steve Jobs and former PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico.

For CHROs and boards reviewing leadership development strategy, Mattone offers a diagnosis of why current programmes underperform, a named alternative framework, the diagnostic instrumentation to apply it, and the certified coaching infrastructure to implement it at the individual executive level.

Key speaking topics

• Intelligent Leadership and the Inner Core / Outer Core model
• Executive character and leadership sustainability
• Leadership development programme design
• Executive coaching methodology and practice
• Culture transformation and leadership alignment
• CEO and C-suite succession readiness
• The Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory (MLEI) and leadership diagnostics
• Internal coaching capability and certified networks

Ideal for

• CHROs and chief people officers reviewing or redesigning executive development programmes
• Boards and nomination committees focused on CEO succession and senior leadership pipeline
• Transformation leads overseeing culture change initiatives where leadership behaviour is a critical variable
• Executive development teams in large organisations seeking a diagnostic-led rather than programme-led approach to leadership capability

Audience outcomes

• A working understanding of the Inner Core / Outer Core distinction and why it reframes how organisations should design senior leadership development
• Familiarity with the MLEI as a diagnostic instrument and how it creates a measurable starting point for executive coaching engagements
• A framework for identifying which leaders in a pipeline carry the inner character foundations to perform under high-pressure conditions – and which do not
• Practical criteria for evaluating whether existing leadership development spend is addressing the right layer of leadership
• A replicable methodology, drawn from Mattone’s published books, that leadership teams can apply without ongoing dependency on external consultants