You're already performing at the next level.
It's time your title, your salary, and your organisation caught up. Watch the video below.
Does any of this sound familiar?
The quiet frustration of being overlooked, despite consistently delivering.
It isn't. And that's exactly what this programme is built to fix.
APPLY AND SEE IF YOU QUALIFY (TAKES 3 MINS)The real reason high-performers don't get promoted
By the time your name comes up in that room, the conversation is already over. The decision has already formed, quietly, over months, through a hundred small moments you didn't know were being evaluated.
Promotions at associate director and director level don't go to the best performers. They go to the best-positioned leaders. The ones who've been visible to the right people, speaking the right language, building the right relationships, long before the window officially opens.
That's not a character flaw. It's a gap in what you were taught. And it is completely fixable.
The 5P Magnetic Strategic Leadership Framework was built specifically for this — for the high-performers who keep getting passed over not because of what they do, but because of what the right people never get to see.
This programme vs everything else you've tried
What they get from the 5P Magnetic Strategic Leadership vs generic coaching programmes.
5P Magnetic Strategic Leadership
Built from the inside of corporate, by someone who's navigated every promotion dynamic.
- Built From15 years of lived global corporate experience
- Designed ForOverlooked senior managers and over-extended associate directors ready for director level promotion.
- ApproachApplied inside your actual organisation, with your real stakeholders
- Promotion FocusDirectly targets the 5 questions promotions committees actually ask
- Political NavigationTeaches corporate political capital, the real promotion currency
- YOUR EXECUTIVE CAREER COACH, STRATEGIC LEADER & MENTOR A former corporate director and direct line manager who sat in promotion decision rooms.
- AccessHigh-touch 1:1 or maximum of 10 per cohort, executive career coaching and mentoring with real-time support.
- TimelineDesigned to move you within 6 to 9 months
- The ResultA promotion case so strong the answer feels inevitable
Generic Coaching Programmes
Broad frameworks and theory, not built for the specific promotion window you're facing.
- Built FromCoaching methodology and classroom theory
- Designed ForAnyone, at any level.
- ApproachGeneric frameworks you're left to apply alone
- Promotion FocusGeneral confidence and mindset work
- Political NavigationRarely addressed, consistently oversimplified
- The MentorCoaches who study corporate from the outside
- AccessPre-recorded content, group calls, limited access
- TimelineOpen-ended, no defined outcome
- The ResultGeneral growth and a sense of clarity
The 5 Invisible Questions Promotion Committees Are Actually Asking
Before you can build a case, you need to know exactly what's being evaluated.
Identity
Does this person lead themselves like a leader at the next level? Not manage tasks, lead. Do they carry themselves in meetings, in how they communicate, in how they show up under pressure, like someone who already belongs up here?
Visibility
Do we actually see them? Not just know of them. See them. Can the decision-makers picture this person in the role, because they've witnessed them operating at that altitude, even informally?
Fluency
Can they speak our language? Can they talk about their work in terms of business impact, financial consequence, strategic risk? Or do they speak in tasks and deliverables?
Sponsorship
Who is advocating for them? Not who likes them. Who is willing to put their own credibility on the line and say "this person is ready"?
Presence
Are they already operating there? The strongest promotion cases aren't built in the conversation. They're built in the preceding six to twelve months of deliberate, strategic presence.
The 5P Magnetic
Strategic Leadership Framework
Five pillars. Each one builds on the last. Skip one and the rest collapses.
Purpose
Before tactics, before strategy, there is identity. If you still see yourself as the best executor in the room, everyone else will too. This is where we reset that, so everything you do from this point forward signals the level you're moving into, before you're officially there.
Positioning
Strategic visibility to the specific people who control your career. Not self-promotion. A deliberate, consistent rhythm of presence that makes your value impossible to ignore by the decision-makers who need to see it.
Preparation
The language of the leadership table. Financial fluency. Business impact framing. The ability to communicate your work in terms that executives respond to and hiring committees remember. This is the gap most high-performers don't know they have until it costs them another cycle.
Promotion
Corporate political capital. The real currency of corporate promotion. Who your sponsors are, how decisions actually form, and the unwritten rules everyone at the top already knows and nobody at your level has been taught. We build your promotion case until it's airtight.
Progress
What happens after the promotion. Your first 90 days in the new role determine your next promotion. This is a system for your entire career, not a one-time fix.
About Dr. Iris Palmer, PhD
Dr. Iris Palmer, PhD is a former corporate director with 15+ years of global corporate experience, 6-8 of those years spent inside calibration and promotion rooms. Her career moved across top 10 global Pharma, CRO and Biotech such as Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Syneos Health (formerly INC Research), and Worldwide Clinical Trials.
Inside Syneos Health and Worldwide Clinical Trials, she was not an observer of promotion decisions. She managed 16-22 direct reports across global teams, sat on calibration panels, watched the names that get called and those that get passed over or overlooked, and understood exactly why.
She also served on the hiring committee and knows exactly what a hiring manager is assessing for a senior manager or associate director who desires to transition into an associate director or director role.
During her 15+ cumulative years in corporate, she worked on high stake large global projects, led, co-led, managed directly and indirectly 100-120 multifunctional global teams.
For 8.5 years in one of her tenures, she was frequently the person everyone relied on, delivering consistently 2 levels above her roles, yet her contribution and strategic value were invisible to the right decision makers before she decoded the system that changed everything.
The turning point came during 2018-2019. In addition to her line management duties, stabilising 16 direct reports absorbed post-merger in 2017, she stepped in and delivered high-value, high-stakes client solutions work as was allocated, but her official transition into that function did not follow. The work was real, but it did not automatically grant her the role in the strategic client solutions space, and the gap between doing a function and being named to it is where her method was born.
The through line is the one she learned the hard way. The leaders who move up are not the ones working hardest in the role they already hold. They are the ones already standing where the next one gets decided.
She tested the same method externally two years later. In May 2021, she was an associate director (strategic/client solutions), in June she applied for a director role and ran the framework through the entire process. By October 2021 she held a director offer.
Today, Palmer runs the Magnetic Strategic Leadership Accelerator™, built on the 5P Magnetic Strategic Leadership Framework™ — a 3-6 month executive career coaching and mentoring programme for overlooked senior managers, over-extended associate directors and high performers in Pharma, Biotech, CRO and other global corporate settings ready to step into director-level positions, to be rewarded with the salary, title, and respect they deserve, in 6-9 months.
Two ways we can work together
Both begin with a strategy call. That conversation determines which pathway fits your situation.
Private Coaching and Mentoring
- Private login access to the Full 5P curriculum
- Private 3 months weekly (90 mins) coaching and mentoring sessions built entirely around you
- Direct access to Iris through emails, WhatsApp and unlimited voice notes
- Real-time guidance, communication on situations as they unfold at work
- Optional community access to peers going through the same transformation
- A complete director promotion or transition readiness portfolio on completion
- 3 additional bonus months for ongoing leadership support and community access
- For leaders who want accelerated, personalised transformation from overlooked and passed over, to sought after associate director or director in 6-9 months
What's the Cost?
Immersive Programme
- Private login access to the Full 5P curriculum
- Group cohort 6 months weekly (60 mins) coaching and mentoring sessions alongside other peers
- Direct access to Iris through unlimited emails
- Real-time guidance, communication on situations as they unfold at work
- Community access to peers going through the same transformation
- A complete director promotion or transition readiness portfolio on completion
- 3 additional bonus months for ongoing leadership support and community access
- For leaders who want more space to integrate their work without being overwhelmed
- Shifting from overlooked and passed over, to sought after associate director or director in 6-9 months
What's the Cost?
How to apply
Iris reads every application personally before getting on a call. The more honest you are, the more useful the conversation will be.
Fill Out The Application
A short form. Takes about three minutes. Be honest — every application is read personally.
Book Your Strategy Call
Access Iris's calendar directly and book a 30 to 45-minute strategy conversation.
Show Up Ready
Talk about where you are, what's blocked you, and where you want to go. Iris comes prepared.
Know By The End
If it's a fit, you'll know by the end of the call. If it isn't, you'll leave with the most useful direction Iris can give you.
One promotion window
just closed.
The next is already forming.
One promotion
window just closed.
The next is
already forming.
Cohort cap: Limited to 10 leaders per cohort to guarantee direct, personalised feedback on your specific corporate promotion or transition situation.