The Coach Well, Lead Well Program
Your people have only ever had tools for half the job.
They were trained well. They have instruments for the technical half of the work: the diagnosis, the plan, the curriculum. Nobody gave them a tool for the part where a person hasn't decided what they really want yet.
Coach Well, Lead Well gives them the missing half.
Sixty minutes, free, no pitch unless you ask for one.
The people who care the most are the ones you're most likely to lose.
Ask the best person on your team what's hard about the work and you'll get some version of the same four sentences.
I can see what they're capable of. They won't move. I've tried everything. It's costing me more than I can keep paying.
Advisors say it about a student. Managers say it about the person who's quietly checked out. Physicians say it about a patient. Consultants say it about a client. The noun changes. Nothing else does.
Underneath it, the same three questions keep surfacing, usually in almost identical words. Where's the line? What's actually my role here? I don't know when we're successful anymore.
That last one explains more than any wellness framing ever will. Someone working toward an objective nobody ever finished defining will never feel like they've finished the job. They'll just feel vacant. So they take it home, replay the conversation on the drive, and answer the email at nine at night, because nothing ever told them they were done.
It's a tooling problem, not a caring problem.
When the real obstacle is that a person hasn't decided they want the thing yet, your people reach for the only tool they were given. They give more advice, harder. Another resource. A third follow-up.
And the harder they work, the more it feels like a verdict on them when nothing changes.
Every resource offered to someone who hasn't named what they want lands as noise, or as one more piece of evidence that they're failing. The advice wasn't the problem. The timing was.
Tooling problems are fixable.
Three questions, small enough to use in a hallway.
What do you want. What are your options to get there. What are you going to do about it.
Wanting, deciding, doing. That's the method, and it's deliberately small enough to run in the fifteen minutes between meetings.
Underneath it sits the Thought Model, the diagnostic that shows a person their own thinking. Data, thought, feeling, behavior, outcome. Data is what's provable in court. A thought is an optional interpretation. Most of what feels like an impossible situation turns out to be a thought sitting where data should be, and once someone sees that on paper, the conversation changes.
Around those two, your people learn the distinctions that do the daily work.
Ask before you tell. Four seconds. "Would it help if I shared a few options, or do you want to keep thinking out loud first?" Now they've said yes to help, which means they can use it.
Coaching is a consent-based activity. You can't coach someone who isn't ready. Knowing that ends an entire category of frustration.
Getting out of the pool. Empathy puts you in the water with them. Coaching requires getting out. Both are useful. They aren't the same move and they shouldn't happen at the same time.
Frustration is a gift. It's an invitation to honor something that matters to you, which makes it information rather than a failure of professionalism.
Boundaries versus aspirations. If you want something and you're not willing to take action for it, it isn't a boundary. It's an aspiration.
Detached commitment. One hundred percent committed to the outcome. Zero percent responsible for another person's thoughts, feelings, or behavior.
Nobody is asked to do less of their actual job. Your people keep their expertise and keep giving the advice. What changes is what they do with the part advice was never going to reach.
Give the advice. Coach the doing.
Proven, and unusable on any given Tuesday.
The research that reliably changes behavior is locked where your people can't reach it: the therapy hour and the journals. Cognitive behavioral theory from Beck and Ellis. Self-efficacy research from Bandura. Motivational interviewing from Miller and Rollnick. Appreciative inquiry from Cooperrider and Srivastva. The Gottman work on repair.
All of it demonstrated. None of it built for a fifteen-minute conversation with a real person in front of you.
The work was rebuilding it into one method a busy person can actually run, without being a therapist and without wanting to be. It's in use across advising, clinical care, consulting, law, and social work.
And it doesn't stay at work. Same brain in every room.
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About eight hours, self-paced, video with subtitles plus audio, lifetime access.
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With Tarah, or with a certified Coach Well, Lead Well associate coach. Used on real situations, not hypotheticals.
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Twice a month, ongoing, with participants from every institution in the program. Times rotate so schedules can accommodate it.
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A digital interactive workbook they keep for life, where they can tag a coach with a question the day it comes up instead of saving it for a session.
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Three parts: Verified completion of the curriculum, a demonstration of the method applied to real scenarios, and an interview with a program coach. They certify when they're ready.
What every seat includes.
The tier changes the price. It never changes the program.
This room makes everything else more valuable.
Your people learn as much watching someone else get coached as being coached. Almost everything that goes on the board applies to everyone in the room, so they don't have to be the one talking to get value from it.
And hearing how another field handles the same problem is perspective they can't get inside their own building.
It's ongoing, not a cohort that ends. People who certified in 2021 are still in that room today.
What it can look like a year from now.
A department chair we worked with took two weeks off last month. International, real distance, phone mostly off, in the middle of active hiring, program development, and a round of organizational change.
A year earlier that trip would have been unthinkable. Most of it ran through one person, with two or three key people covering the rest.
What she said on getting back was this: "We have a backup for every single thing that we do."
Nobody prescribed rest. She'd spent the year coaching instead of solving. Clarifying who owned what. Redesigning roles around what the work actually needed instead of automatically replacing the last person. Letting other leaders take on things she used to handle herself.
Being able to leave wasn't the point. It was the proof. The real result was a department that no longer ran through one person.
And if that sounds like being needed less, it's worth saying differently. A less burdened leader isn't doing less. They're leading at a higher level, and they finally have the room to.
About a hundred professionals across multiple institutions have come through this work. Alumni who certified in 2021 are still in the group coaching room today.
"Your coaching makes a difference in our team every day. I am certain one reason we have such a good environment is because so many of our team are engaged in coaching and thought model work."
Nicole, certified Coach Well, Lead Well coach since 2021
"The coaching really helped me to see things as they needed to be seen and not how I wanted to see them. We focused a lot of the coaching for work, but it was so beneficial in my personal life."
Meka, certified Coach Well, Lead Well coach since 2021
"I feel confident in the tools that I'm giving and in the advice that I give, instead of just fixing whatever issue someone is having. I think this will help the people I work with feel more confident in their ability to problem-solve."
Mary, currently certifying
See more transformations here.
What it costs to not do this.
Replacing one mid-career staff member runs seventy-five to a hundred and fifty percent of salary. On a $75,000 salary, that's $56,000 at the low end.
A twelve-seat cohort is $54,000, once, and it reaches twelve people.
And these aren't the people you'd replace easily. They're the ones holding the place together, the ones you'd fight to keep. Keep one, and the cohort has paid for itself several times over.
$150,000
Replacing one mid-career faculty member
On average, runs one and a half to two times their salary, and six to twelve months to search and hire. At the conservative end, $150,000.
In STEM, clinical, and research-intensive fields it passes $500,000, and research productivity takes three to five years to return.
$56,000
Replacing one mid-career staff member
On average, runs seventy-five to a hundred and fifty percent of salary. On a $75,000 salary, that's $56,000 at the low end.
A twelve-seat cohort is $54,000, once, and it reaches twelve people.
And these aren't the people you'd replace easily.
They're the ones holding the place together, the ones you'd fight to keep.
Keep one, and the cohort has paid for itself several times over.
What it costs.
List price is $5,000 per seat, all inclusive. Volume tiers are published, so nobody has to negotiate for them.
Every seat includes everything above, at every tier.
Larger than thirty, or a structure that doesn't fit a row on this table? That's a conversation. Bring the shape of what you need.
Limited scholarships are available for leaders in nonprofits, education, emerging regions, or with demonstrated financial need.
Grant-funded? Say so early. Grant-funded professional development needs theoretical grounding, defined outcomes, and a delivery plan in writing, and all three come in a format your grant writer can use.
What it asks, and what we'll report back.
About 1.5-2 hours a week for six months. Most people finish in that window. The online curriculum is self-paced and access is permanent, so nobody is racing a clock.
We measure what we're responsible for. This program teaches that outcomes belong to the person who owns them, which means we're careful about what we promise to move. What we report: completion and certification rates, group coaching attendance, private session uptake, and self-reported confidence before and after.
A 100% money-back guarantee. If someone completes the curriculum and it wasn't worth it, we refund the seat.
The questions worth asking before you buy this.
"My team is already trained in difficult conversations. Why another training?"
Because that training taught them what to say. This teaches them what's theirs to own. Those are different problems, and the second one is why they're tired. Most communication training makes people better at the conversation and does nothing about what happens after it.
"Isn't this soft skills? My people are technical."
Your people are technical, which is exactly why the method is built from cognitive behavioral theory, motivational interviewing, appreciative inquiry, and self-efficacy research, with the sources named. It's also why it's taught as a repeatable sequence rather than a philosophy. Skeptics tend to be the fastest adopters here, because the material holds up when you push on it.
"Will this turn my people into their team's therapist?"
No, and it's the question we answer first, every time. Therapy takes the past to functional. Coaching takes the future to created. The program teaches the distinction explicitly, along with when and how to refer out. Coaching is a consent-based activity with a defined edge, and knowing where that edge is makes people less enmeshed, not more.
"Things are fine. Why now?"
Sometimes fine is the honest answer and you should wait. The reason people don't wait is usually that they can name two or three people who are quietly running out, and they'd rather spend on skills now than on a search later.
"My people don't have time."
The problem usually isn't hours. It's that "done" was never defined, so nothing ever ends. That's a definition problem, and definitions are cheap once someone hands you one.
How to start.
Book a Leadership Consult. An hour. You bring the situation that's costing you the most, and you leave with a written definition of success for that role and one conversation to run next week. Free, and there's no pitch unless you ask for one. If you’re a fit and ready, then…
You’ll receive a proposal, within 48 hours. Seats, tier, timeline, delivery plan, and what we'll measure. Grant-ready if you need it that way.
Your cohort starts. Curriculum access, private sessions scheduled, and your people join the cross-cohort group room already in progress.
Buying this for yourself?
Most of this page is written to someone bringing Coach Well, Lead Well to a team, because that's how most people arrive. But individual seats are available at $5,000, and everything above is included: the curriculum, six private sessions, the group room, the workbook, and certification with no deadline.
The Leadership Consult is the same first step either way, and it's still free.
FAQ’s
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Yes, and it works great that way. Teams of three or more also get dedicated group coaching and a team visioning workshop.
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Plan on six months at roughly 1.5-2 hours a week. This includes group coaching time. Curriculum access is permanent and certification has no deadline. Private sessions are used within six months of enrollment.
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Tarah, and certified Coach Well, Lead Well associate coaches who are working professionals with real leadership experience in fields like yours.
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Three parts. Verified curriculum completion, a demonstration of the method applied to real scenarios and reflections, and an interview with a program coach. No exam, no deadline, and it's intentionally less punishing than the professional accreditations your people already hold. That's a design decision, not a shortcut. The point is competent use, not credential theater.
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Then they aren't, and that is totally ok. Also, the program says so out loud. Coaching is a consent-based activity. We'd rather that surface in week two than have someone sit through six months of something they didn't choose.
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Yes. Live cohorts are delivered in person, typically in late July or early August before the semester starts, which participants consistently name as the reason it worked. Ask about it on the consult.
Your people care more than the job formally requires.
That's not a flaw in them. It's the reason they're good, and it's the reason the work matters to them.
They just don't have a framework for what to do with the excess. Give them one and you don't get people who care less. You get people who can keep doing this for another ten years.
Sixty minutes. Nothing to prepare. Bring one situation.