When you become an engineering manager, VP, or CTO, you're suddenly responsible for problems that have no clear solution. How do you build a culture that attracts great engineers? How do you give feedback that actually changes behavior? How do you manage up to executives who don't understand technical constraints? How do you make decisions with incomplete information and live with the consequences?

These aren't problems you can solve by working harder or being smarter. They require a different kind of skill: self-awareness, emotional intelligence, the ability to influence without authority, comfort with ambiguity. Most engineering education and career development ignores these entirely.

The result is that many technical leaders struggle in silence. They feel like impostors, unsure if they're doing the job right. They burn out trying to do everything themselves. They avoid difficult conversations until problems become crises. They lose good people because they don't know how to help them grow.

Our coaching practice exists specifically for technical leaders. We work with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, engineering directors, and technical founders who are navigating the challenges of leading technical organizations.

What makes our approach different is the combination of perspectives. Lena Reinhard brings deep expertise in organizational psychology, leadership development, and cultural transformation. Teal brings 20+ years of hands-on technical leadership—having been a CTO, having built engineering teams, having dealt with the specific pressures of the role. Together, we address both the human dynamics and the technical context.

This isn't generic executive coaching with a technical veneer. We understand the specific challenges: the tension between shipping and sustainability, the politics of platform teams, the difficulty of communicating technical risk to non-technical stakeholders, the particular stresses of startup environments. When you describe a situation, we've usually seen something similar.

What Coaching Looks Like

Coaching engagements typically involve regular sessions—every week or two—over an extended period, usually 6-12 months. Leadership development isn't a quick fix; it requires sustained attention and practice.

Sessions focus on real situations you're facing. The difficult conversation you need to have. The reorganization you're planning. The underperforming team member you're not sure how to help. We work through these together, exploring options, examining assumptions, sometimes role-playing approaches.

Between sessions, you practice. You try new approaches and observe what happens. You notice your own patterns and reactions. The next session, we debrief: what worked, what didn't, what you learned. Over time, this builds genuine capability, not just intellectual understanding.

We also do 360-degree feedback, assessments, and other structured development work when appropriate. But the core of coaching is the ongoing relationship and the work you do in real situations.

First-Time Engineering Managers

You were a strong individual contributor, and now you're responsible for other people's work and growth. The job feels completely different, and nobody taught you how to do it. You're not sure if you're supposed to still write code, how to give feedback, or how to deal with the engineer who was your peer last month.

Engineering Directors and VPs

You're managing managers now, which is a different skill again. You're responsible for organizational design, for building culture across teams, for influencing strategy at the executive level. The problems are more ambiguous, the feedback loops are longer, and the stakes are higher.

CTOs and Technical Co-founders

You're the most senior technical leader, which means there's nobody to escalate to. You need to communicate with boards and investors, balance short-term delivery with long-term technical health, and represent the engineering perspective in decisions that affect the whole company. The role can be isolating, and the demands pull in multiple directions.

Technical Leaders in Transformation

Your organization is going through significant change—rapid growth, a pivot, a restructuring, a cultural shift. You need to lead your team through uncertainty while dealing with your own uncertainty. The playbook that worked before may not work now.

Every coaching engagement is shaped by the individual, but certain themes come up repeatedly:

Delegation and letting go: Learning to trust your team with work you could do yourself (probably better and faster), and accepting that they'll do it differently than you would.

Difficult conversations: Giving honest feedback, addressing performance issues, saying no to requests from powerful stakeholders, having the conversations you've been avoiding.

Managing up: Communicating technical concepts and constraints to non-technical executives, building credibility with the board, influencing decisions where you don't have formal authority.

Building culture: Creating an environment where great engineers want to work and can do their best work, scaling that culture as the organization grows.

Work-life sustainability: The demands of technical leadership can be consuming. Finding a sustainable rhythm, setting boundaries, avoiding burnout while still meeting responsibilities.

Career decisions: Should you stay or leave? Should you take the bigger role or optimize for something else? How do you think about your career trajectory?

We start with a conversation to understand your situation and what you're hoping to get from coaching. This is also a chance to see if there's a good fit—coaching requires trust and rapport, and that's not something you can force.

If we decide to work together, we'll do an initial assessment: understanding your current challenges, your development goals, and your context. This shapes the focus of our ongoing work.

Coaching is an investment—of time, money, and emotional energy. It's not right for everyone or every situation. We're happy to discuss honestly whether coaching makes sense for where you are.