The Strength Report 2025: a research report Be Business Fit can actually use

The Strength Report 2025 is the inaugural annual research report from Be Business Fit, capturing leadership and coaching attitudes from 170 UK leaders and managers. We designed the report to do what most research reports don't: turn the data into something senior decision-makers can read, trust and act on.

The outcome

A 2025 annual research report for Be Business Fit, designed end-to-end. The Strength Report turns survey data into a clear, scannable, evidence-led document built around real leadership questions rather than abstract theory.

The report now anchors Be Business Fit's work with organisations:

• Reference point for internal leadership development conversations
• Evidence base for HR and senior leadership discussions about coaching investment
• Content engine for workshops, briefings and follow-up insight sessions
• Source material for ongoing thought leadership, drawn from one well-structured asset rather than a dozen scattered ones

The challenge

Leadership coaching tends to get treated as discretionary. Access varies by seniority, understanding is inconsistent, and most organisations struggle to explain its value in concrete terms. Be Business Fit wanted to ground the conversation in evidence, using first-hand responses from the people working inside UK organisations.

The brief was three things at once:

• Capture credible insight from a wide mix of leaders and professionals
• Analyse the data without flattening behavioural nuance
• Present findings in a way senior decision-makers could read quickly and trust

That meant balancing depth with clarity, narrative with evidence, and visual interest with editorial restraint.

Our approach

The work focused on clarity, structure and decision-readiness rather than persuasion. Every design decision followed the same principle: the report should help readers understand the data, not interpret it for them.

Key creative decisions:

• Single-focus visuals that answer one question at a time. Each infographic page handles one finding, not a cluster, so readers move through the report at a pace that matches comprehension rather than scrolling.
• Statistics paired with anonymised quotes. Numbers carry the pattern; quotes carry the lived experience. Together they prevent the report from feeling like a deck of statistics with no human anchor.
• Visual alignment to the Strength Model. Be Business Fit's existing strategic framework runs through the report, so the data ties directly back to the behavioural model the consultancy already uses with clients.
• Comparison panels for decision moments. "The cost of unresolved issues" and similar panels surface evidence that helps a reader make a specific call, not just understand a trend.
• An editorial register, not a marketing one. Calm typography, generous spacing, a restrained palette. The report reads as a research document, not a sales asset.

The data underneath

The Strength Report 2025 is built on a national survey of 170 leaders, managers and professionals, collected over a 69-day window. Respondents include business owners, senior leaders, middle managers and professional specialists, with coverage across Wales and England.

The data strategy ran in parallel with the design:

• Quantitative questions to identify patterns and trends
• Open-text responses to capture lived experience
• Transparent use of raw counts and percentages, with no weighting applied
• Clear explanation of caveats, including regional concentration and self-selection bias
• Independent peer review by four experienced coaches before publication

The report's credibility rests on being honest about what the data can and can't say. The design backs that up rather than glossing over it.

What it does for Be Business Fit

The Strength Report 2025 gives Be Business Fit an evidence base that does the qualifying work in conversations that the consultancy used to have to lead from scratch every time. HR teams, senior leaders and prospective clients arrive at the conversation with the data already in front of them. The report supports workshops, internal briefings and follow-up insight sessions, and one well-structured asset now generates months of thought-leadership content.

Credits

• Client: Be Business Fit · Sam Heighway, Founder
• Studio: Alchemy