It is what happens when the room is hard, the answer is unclear, and people are watching to see what you do next. That skill is coachable. It is also, almost always, coached by someone who has never actually had to do it.
Trained and practicing in one of the most demanding executive coaching environments in the world — where performance is measured, feedback is direct, and nobody has time for platitudes.
Where the people you lead cannot be fired, poached, or re-orged. They have to be actually led — in public, under a board, with the microphone on.
Silicon Valley coaches have never been accountable to a school board. Education leaders have never coached at Google. That combination is the reason people choose this practice.
Confidential, one-to-one coaching for leaders carrying more than they can say out loud. Two tracks, depending on where you are.
For aspiring superintendents and rising school executives. You are being evaluated for a job nobody has taught you how to do. The interview is a performance. The first year is a minefield. Most people navigate both alone, and it shows.
For sitting superintendents, cabinet-level leaders, and business executives. You are already in the chair. The question is no longer whether you can do the job — it is whether you can keep doing it at this intensity without losing the thing that made you good at it.
Three shapes, depending on how you want to work. Most people start hourly and move to a retainer once they realize they want the conversation every week, not every crisis.
| Engagement | What you get | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Session by session. No commitment. Good for a specific decision, a board presentation, or an interview you cannot afford to lose. | $250 / hour |
| Monthly Retainer | Up to eight hours a month — typically a standing weekly session, plus access between sessions when something breaks and you need a read before you respond. | $1,500 / month |
| Project Coaching | Coaching through a specific initiative — a superintendency search, a first hundred days, a district transformation, a technology rollout. Scoped to the project. | Up to $2,500 / month |
The retainer is the one that works. Coaching delivered only in emergencies produces insight and no change. A standing weekly hour is what actually moves a leader — and at eight hours a month, the retainer costs less per hour than booking the same time piecemeal.
You did not hire weak people. Every person on your leadership team is individually excellent. And the team, together, is slower than the sum of its parts — and everyone has quietly stopped saying so out loud.
The Performance Sprint is a ten-week engagement that diagnoses where an executive team is actually fracturing — decision rights, unspoken conflict, competing definitions of success, or an operating rhythm nobody ever designed — and then repairs it in the room, with the team present.
This is not a retreat. Retreats produce a good feeling and a poster. This produces named decision rights, a written operating rhythm, and a set of agreements the team has to live with on Monday.
Built on the Leader Elevation Framework™ — Dr. Adams's tiered methodology for moving leaders from competence to alignment to elevation.
| Deliverable | Format | When |
|---|---|---|
| Team Diagnostic | Confidential 1:1 interviews with every member of the leadership team, plus a synthesis nobody has been willing to say out loud | Weeks 1–2 |
| Findings Session | Dr. Adams delivers the diagnostic to the team, together. This session is the intervention. | Week 3 |
| Decision Rights Map | Who decides, who is consulted, who is informed — written down for the decisions that actually matter | Week 5 |
| Operating Rhythm | Meeting architecture, escalation paths, and review cadence. Designed, not inherited. | Week 6 |
| Executive Coaching | Four 1:1 sessions with the senior leader; two with each direct report | Weeks 3–10 |
| Team Agreements | What this team commits to, in writing, signed by the people in the room | Week 8 |
| 60-Day Check | Return session. What held, what slipped, what gets corrected. | Post-close |
Confidential interviews with every leader. What emerges is almost never what the senior leader thought the problem was. It is usually something everybody knows and nobody has permission to name.
The findings session. Delivered to the whole team, with the senior leader present and accountable. This is the session that changes the engagement from a project into a turning point — and it is the one people remember years later.
Decision rights. Operating rhythm. Team agreements. Concurrent 1:1 coaching so individual leaders can actually execute what the team agreed to.
Close-out, then a return session sixty days later. Most consulting engagements end before you find out whether they worked. This one comes back to check.
Full diagnostic, findings session, decision rights, operating rhythm, and the coaching that makes them stick.
Ongoing 1:1 coaching for the senior leader or a designated successor. Available standalone or as a continuation of the sprint.
Teams larger than twelve are scoped separately. The sprint depends on Dr. Adams knowing every person in the room — that does not scale past a certain number, and we will not pretend it does.
Thirty years of leading real organizations through real change — where the team you have is the team you have, and the results are public.
Lead with Elevation™ · A Dr. Adams Global™ Division · Leader Elevation Framework™Elevation is not motivation. Motivation lasts a week. Elevation is what happens when a team's decision rights, rhythm, and agreements finally match its ambition.
Tell us about your team. You will receive a scoped proposal within one business day.
Prefer to talk first? Schedule a strategy session.