Three new clients a quarter · next opening October
Six months of fortnightly sessions with someone who managed engineers for nine years and got it wrong often enough to be useful. We start with the situation you cannot talk about at work.
No sales sequence · A written read after the first call · From $1,180 for six months
60+ from managers since 2022
How it works
Nobody should commit to six months of anything from a landing page. So the first two steps cost you forty-five minutes and nothing else, and the second one leaves you with something in writing either way.
1
You talk, I ask questions. By the end you'll have one thing to try this week, whether or not we work together.
45 min · free
2
Two days later you get a page from me: what I think is actually going on, and what six months would focus on.
Within 48h
3
If the read doesn't land, that's a clean no and you keep the page. No follow-up sequence, no discount email.
No pressure
4
Twelve sessions, notes after each one, and a text thread for the Tuesday afternoons that go sideways.
From $1,180
Fit
Usually because someone in-house would serve them better. It is cheaper for both of us to work that out from a list than from three paid sessions.
Who you'd be talking to
Coach for first-time engineering managers
I spent nine years managing engineers — four of them badly, which is the part that turned out to be useful. Two of those teams I inherited, one I built from three people to nineteen, and one I had to shrink.
What I learned is that first-time managers almost never have a skills problem. They have a permission problem: nobody has told them it is now their job to decide, to say no, and to be unpopular by Thursday.
So I do not teach frameworks. I sit with you in the specific situation you cannot talk about at work, and we make it smaller.
Clients
I went in convinced my problem was a difficult report. It took two sessions to see that my problem was that I had never told anyone what I actually expected. That reframing was worth the whole six months.
Dele has done the job, which matters more than I expected. He knew what the Monday one-to-one felt like from the inside and never once told me to 'have the courageous conversation'.
The written read after the first call was the most useful page anyone has written about my work. I would have paid for that alone.
Six months in I run a team of eleven and I finish work at six. Neither of those was true in March.
Packages
A single 90-minute session on one specific situation, with written notes afterwards.
Twelve fortnightly sessions, notes after each, and a thread for the days in between.
or 6 × $210 a month
Start with a callThe six-month programme for three or four managers in the same org, plus a monthly group session.
Prices in USD, excluding VAT where it applies. Most clients are invoiced to their employer — you'll get a summary of the engagement to forward, never anything you said in a session.
Questions
You bring what is live — a person, a decision, a piece of feedback you cannot land. We spend most of the hour on that, and the last ten minutes on what you'll do before the next one. It is not a syllabus and there is no homework beyond your own job.
It is a real session that happens to be free. You'll leave with something to try. I say no to about a third of the people I speak to, usually because someone in-house would serve them better.
Usually, and most do. You'll get a proper invoice, and a short summary of the engagement you can forward — never anything you said in a session.
All of it. Nothing from a session reaches your company, including in the team programme, where I only ever report themes and never attribution.
Tell me and we stop. Unused sessions are refunded in full, and I would rather that than have you sit through eight more out of politeness.
The first call
Tell me what is going on in two sentences. I'll send you a time this week, and a page of notes two days after we talk — whether or not we go any further.
Goes to me, nobody else. Usually answered the same day, always within two.