Unlocking human potential for the past 25 years.
Founded by Gilles Barbot, Groupe Esprit de Corps is a boutique organizational performance firm dedicated to helping organizations thrive — through stronger leadership, more effective executive teams and sustainable transformation.
Our multidisciplinary team combines executive advisory, facilitation, leadership development, behavioural science, experience-based learning and visual storytelling to create meaningful organizational change. For more than two decades, we have partnered with organizations across North America to help leaders think differently, teams perform better and cultures evolve.
The people behind the work.
Gilles Barbot
Gilles is the founder and president of Esprit de Corps, specializing in strategic planning, leadership team effectiveness, organizational culture and executive development. A former high-performance athlete, he studied psychology and exercise physiology in California before graduate studies in management and entrepreneurship at HEC Montréal.
For 25 years he has partnered with executive teams across North America to align culture, governance and collective leadership, and to translate strategy into execution. He is also founder and skipper of Atlas Ocean Racing — winners of the 2024 Transat Québec–Saint-Malo — whose lessons in decision-making under pressure directly inform his work with leadership teams.
Aviva Lavallée
For more than 20 years, Aviva has helped leaders, teams and organizations unlock their full potential through communication, leadership and experiential learning. Grounded in exercise physiology and human performance, she brings deep expertise in leadership communication, psychometric assessments (including MBTI), presentation skills and stage techniques inspired by improvisation.
A passionate outdoor leader and expedition facilitator, she blends adventure, experiential education and leadership development to create lasting behavioural change. Since joining Esprit de Corps in 2007, she has designed and delivered transformational programs across North America, and contributed to major communication initiatives — including Cadillac's acclaimed Dare Greatly campaign.
Around them, we nurture a team of experts in psychology, organizational development, culture, content creation and experiential training.
Organizations don't transform because they receive more information.
They transform when leaders think differently. When teams trust one another. When behaviours evolve. When experiences create lasting learning.
Our role is to create the conditions where that transformation becomes possible.
Rooted in the open ocean.
The Atlas Leadership Lab™ — born from our offshore ocean racing initiatives — is where we continuously test and refine our understanding of leadership under real conditions. It keeps our work grounded in practice, not theory.
Inside the Lab →