Our mission
To empower individuals, leaders and organisations to unlock their full potential through meaningful coaching, clear direction and continuous development, enabling lasting success in both business and life.
A leadership coaching and development practice in Dubai, built on one idea: lasting change starts with you.
Founded by leadership coach Ursula Crilly, Start With You works with business owners, executives, managers and whole teams across the UAE. We help people understand what drives them, lead with clarity under pressure, and build workplaces where others grow too.
Official SDI PartnerCrucial Learning
— Our story
With continued industry convergence, evolving workplaces, shifting employee expectations and the growing need for skills acceleration, developing people has become a strategic imperative. Individuals and organisations that prioritise growth are better equipped to thrive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.
As organisations navigate this changing landscape, so do their people. Today’s professionals seek guidance over authority: they value coaching over command, clear expectations, accountability, meaningful purpose, and continuous feedback and development.
Start With You exists to give business owners, leaders and individuals at every level the insight, clarity and tools to grow themselves and their people, driving success not only in business, but in life.
Who we work with
— Why we exist
To empower individuals, leaders and organisations to unlock their full potential through meaningful coaching, clear direction and continuous development, enabling lasting success in both business and life.
To create a world where people feel inspired, supported and equipped to grow: where leadership is driven by purpose, workplaces foster development, and individuals thrive with clarity and confidence.
— How we work
Most leadership development stops at behaviour: what you did, and what you should do instead. That change rarely lasts, because behaviour is the symptom, not the source.
Our work starts a layer deeper, with motive. Using the Strength Deployment Inventory® (SDI®) assessment, we map what genuinely drives each person when things go well, and how that shifts through three predictable stages of conflict. Once you can see your own pattern, you can choose your response instead of discovering it afterwards.
Motivated by protecting, supporting and growing others.
Motivated by results, pace and clear ownership.
Motivated by structure, accuracy and fairness.
Every person blends all three. Our coaching, training and team programmes all work on that blend, including what happens to it under pressure.
— Why it matters
Leadership shapes how people feel, how they perform and whether they stay. Investing in leaders is one of the clearest ways to invest in everyone around them.
Employee productivity depends on leadership
Companies prioritise leadership development
Engagement is driven by leadership quality
Managers lack formal leadership training
— Meet the founder
Leadership development coach and SDI® certified facilitator
Ursula founded Start With You after more than 20 years alongside leaders in airlines, global organisations and fast-moving corporate teams. She coaches every client herself, combining proven leadership frameworks with emotional intelligence and the SDI® assessment.
— Work with us
From private one-to-one coaching to programmes for whole leadership teams, every engagement starts with understanding the people in it.
— Follow along
Tell us where you are and what you want to change. Ursula will reply personally with an honest view of the right next step.
