It’s 9pm on a Sunday. You’ve circled the same decision all weekend. Tomorrow you have to walk into a room and have a conversation you’ve already rescheduled twice.
You don’t need a leadership book in that moment. You don’t need a workshop next quarter, or a coaching session booked for next Thursday. You need help right now, with this situation, with these people.
That is the moment Worksparks was built for. Today it has a new home at worksparks.com, and I’m inviting a group of founding members to help shape what it becomes.
Why I built Worksparks
I’ve spent 35 years in leadership, people and culture. I’ve run programs, coached executives and stood on stages. And I kept seeing the same gap.
People leave a great program inspired. Then Monday arrives. The difficult team member is still difficult. The manager still checks everything twice. The insight from the workshop is nowhere to be found when the real moment hits.
Coaching arrives on a calendar. Work doesn’t. Nobody schedules the moments that test you.
I built Worksparks so that support is there when the hard part happens, not three weeks later. It’s not just for senior leaders. It’s for anyone who deals with the people part of work, which is all of us.
I built this the way I built LeadershipHQ: from scratch, with my own hours and my own money, because I believed it needed to exist.
Five minutes to clarity
Worksparks isn’t a chatbot with a clever prompt on top. It’s a structured coaching method, built on the frameworks I’ve used with leaders for decades. It works in three steps.
- Say it badly. Talk for sixty seconds or type it out. Don’t tidy it up. The messier the truth, the more useful the coaching.
- Sort it. Worksparks helps you separate what’s actually happening from what you’re afraid of, and from what you can control. You don’t just feel better. You think better.
- Walk in ready. You leave with a specific opening line and the next steps. Not “communicate openly and build trust”. The actual sentence.
People use it for the one-on-one they keep putting off, the pay rise they don’t know how to ask for, the colleague who makes everything harder than it needs to be, and the restructure conversation where they’re carrying more than they can say.
Your employer will never see a word of it
Most workplace tools are built so organisations can keep an eye on their people. Worksparks is built for the person.
That only matters if it holds all the way down, so here is what it means in practice:
- Your organisation, manager and HR team have no visibility of what you write.
- No one can read your conversations. Not your manager, not HR, not us.
- Conversations are encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Your data is never sold and never used to train AI models.
- It’s built to the Australian Privacy Act and GDPR, and it’s Australian founded and hosted.
- You can delete everything, whenever you like.
You can’t be honest about a hard situation if you’re worried who’s reading. So privacy isn’t a feature here. It’s the foundation.
A new home at worksparks.com
The new site makes it simple to find your way in, whoever you are:
- For leaders carrying their team’s hard moments as well as their own.
- For everyone at work navigating managers, colleagues and career conversations.
- For teams who want a shared way to handle the people part.
- For organisations that want to support their people without watching them.
You’ll also find how it works, pricing and the FAQ.
Worksparks costs A$29 a month, or A$290 a year (two months free), GST included. That’s less than one hour with a coach, for a whole year. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, and you can cancel anytime.
I’m looking for founding members
Worksparks is live, and people are using it. But the next chapter shouldn’t be built by me alone in a room. I want it shaped by the people who use it when it counts.
So I’s inviting a group of founding members. I’m looking for:
- Leaders and managers who handle hard conversations every week.
- People early in their careers who want to get better at the people side of work.
- HR and L&D leaders who want to support people between programs, not just during them.
- Team leads ready to try Worksparks with their whole team.
Here’s what founding members get:
- A direct line to me. Your feedback comes straight to me, and I’ll read it.
- A real say in the roadmap. You’ll help decide what gets built next and how.
- [Founding member offer to confirm, e.g. locked-in pricing or a founders’ session with Sonia]
And here’s what I ask in return: use it in the real moments, and tell me honestly what works and what doesn’t.
What’s coming next
The AI coach, the Team tier and the team dashboard are already live. Here’s what’s on the roadmap, and where founding members will have the most influence:
- Habits. Small, motivating daily practices that build leadership muscle between the big moments.
- Development plans. Turning what you work through in Worksparks into a clear plan for growth.
- Learning and development. Bringing the depth of a leadership program into the flow of work.
- Surveys and assessments. Helping people and teams see where they are and where they’re heading.
I have strong views on all of these. Founding members will make them better.
Your next hard conversation is already in the calendar
You know the one. Be ready for it.
- For yourself: start your 14-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
- For your team or organisation: see team and organisation plans, or get in touch and we’ll talk about how it fits.
- To become a founding member: sign up, then send me a message telling me the moment you want help with. I’d love to hear from you.
The hardest part of work isn’t the work. It’s the people part. You don’t have to carry it alone.
Sonia McDonald is the founder of Worksparks and LeadershipHQ, a keynote speaker, executive coach and author of Leadership Attitude, Just Rock It! and First Comes Courage.