Organisations across the Middle East can now access Mindset Advantage and Collective Advantage through ecap – and independent practitioners can become accredited in Mindset Advantage.
We have been appointed Regional Lead for the Middle East by Matthew Syed Consulting, the performance and culture consultancy founded on the work of author and journalist Matthew Syed.
The programme launches as ecap advantage. It formalises a relationship that already sits inside our assessment work, and extends it to the wider regional market.
Why mindset, and why here
Every appointment we advise on ends in a judgement about the future. Track record is evidence of what a leader has already done. It is a weaker guide to what they will do in a role that is larger, faster, or structurally different from anything they have held before – which, in this region, is almost all of them.
National transformation programmes have created leadership demand faster than the region can produce leaders with directly comparable experience. Sectors are being built rather than grown. AI is changing what execution looks like inside functions that were stable for decades. In that environment, the question is not only what someone has delivered, but how they think when the conditions change underneath them.
That is what Mindset Advantage measures. It is Matthew Syed Consulting’s proprietary diagnostic, and the only psychometric registered with the British Psychological Society designed specifically to measure growth mindset. It assesses nine aspects of individual growth mindset alongside six characteristics of the organisational culture around the individual – because a leader’s capacity to learn is only as useful as the environment’s willingness to let them.
Collective Advantage, Matthew Syed Consulting’s team diagnostic, offers a different lens on performance, focusing on four dimensions and four people perspectives to quantify team effectiveness.
What this means for organisations
For clients, the practical change is that these tools are now available regionally, delivered by a team that already knows the leadership context they are being applied to.
We use them where they do the most work: assessing shortlists where the appointment carries genuine risk, giving key decision makers a defensible basis for a decision that would otherwise rest on interview impressions, focusing development on the behaviours with the greatest potential for change, and showing whether a team’s culture will let a strong appointment succeed.
“The fast-moving, complex and ambitious Middle East market is an exciting place to operate; it’s a space that provides huge opportunity for organisations whilst simultaneously presenting immense leadership challenges. ecap offers the dual advantages of having well-established standing with boards and executive teams across the Gulf, whilst also demonstrating a long-term track record with Mindset Advantage. I have every confidence this new chapter will serve many more organisations in the Middle East in their pursuit of identifying and developing future-ready leaders.”
Helen Deavin, Managing Director at Matthew Syed Consulting
What this means for practitioners
The appointment also makes ecap advantage the accreditation route for Mindset Advantage across the Middle East.
For executive coaches, leadership consultants, and organisational development professionals in the region, that means the opportunity to add a globally recognised, scientifically validated diagnostic to your own practice – with training, regional pricing, and continuing support from our team.
We are assembling a founding ecap advantage cohort of practitioners accredited in Mindset Advantage across the Middle East. If that is your work, we would like to hear from you.
“This region has no shortage of people doing excellent work with leadership teams. The opportunity is to strengthen that work with clearer evidence of how leaders approach learning, respond to feedback and embrace change. Through ecap advantage, we bring structured insight into these attitudes and behaviours, giving organisations a fuller picture alongside past achievements. Our role is to make those insights useful to the organisations we advise and equip the practitioners we accredit to apply them in leadership selection and development.”
Daniel Murphy, Senior Managing Partner & Co-Founder, ecap
Get in touch
Whether you are looking to deploy Mindset Advantage or Collective Advantage in your organisation, or to join the founding Middle East accreditation cohort, register your interest here.
Mindset Advantage and Collective Advantage are proprietary diagnostics of Matthew Syed Consulting. ecap is Matthew Syed Consulting’s appointed Regional Lead for the Middle East.
