When smart stops working
I work with senior leaders and their teams on how they decide and work together under pressure.
Executive coaching, leadership team coaching and cross-cultural consulting for organizations where the quality of thinking and conversation at the top shows up directly in results. Clients have included leaders at Anthropic, Microsoft, Meta, Deloitte and Sequoia Capital.
Trusted by leaders at
When clients call
Clients usually call when the people are capable and the business is sound, yet something in how they work together keeps costing them. A decision that seemed settled gets reopened a month later. A senior leader's intensity is narrowing what people are willing to tell him. A newly promoted executive is still leading the way the last role required. A headquarters and an overseas team read the same situation in opposite ways.
Three ways to work together
One-to-one coaching for VP to C-level leaders and founders. We work on the decisions, relationships and conversations in front of you, and on how you respond when the pressure rises.
Executive Coaching →Work with an intact leadership team on what its stakeholders need from it and how it decides together. We start with a diagnosis, then work with the team over several months.
Leadership Team Coaching →Diagnosis and facilitation for leaders whose teams, across countries or organizations, interpret the same situation differently. Includes a specialization in China–West work.
Cross-Cultural Consulting →China and the West
I lived and worked in China from 2005 to 2013, coaching and facilitating mixed Chinese and Western leadership teams at P&G, Carrefour, Airbus and Deloitte Greater China. Since then I have coached Chinese leaders in U.S. technology companies. I am researching the organizational friction that arises when Chinese companies operate in the United States and Europe, for a book in development.
China–West Work →In clients' words
"Michael's coaching has helped me make decisions that have saved our company many months of time and many millions of dollars."
"This was more than a 'team-building exercise'; rather it transformed how our execs support and challenge one another."
"You have provided us with invaluable, ongoing support in helping us realign people and processes to harness cultural differences."
Start with a conversation
Thirty minutes to describe what you are facing and who is involved. If I am not the right person for it, I will say so and, where I can, suggest who is. A proposal follows only if we both see a fit.