Leadership engagement · Melbourne and online
Coaching for the leader whose reactions move faster than their judgement
A confidential, employer-sponsored coaching engagement for one senior leader, run over six months. Built around a body-based method alongside the usual coaching conversation.
Book a scoping callWho this is for
Usually someone promoted for the exact habits now causing the trouble
What worked running a function stops working once the job covers a P&L, or a leadership team that no longer trusts the old style. Putting in more effort doesn't fix it. Effort is usually what built the habit in the first place. There's often a trigger behind the call: a blunt 360, a resignation letter that names the real reason, or a new CEO who runs the room differently.
Newly at executive level
Making the jump from running a function to owning the whole P&L.
Founders and scaling leaders
Growth that's stalled at the level of the person leading it.
High performers under load
A default response under pressure that has started to cost something specific.
How the method works
Most coaching happens entirely in language
You talk a decision through, leave with a plan, and under real pressure the old response still arrives first. That reaction is a pattern the body learned across years of high-stakes repetition, and it moves faster than any amount of insight can. Alongside the conversation, we work directly with what the body does in the seconds before the old response takes over: the breath, the bracing, the small shift right before you say the thing you'll walk back later. Catch that shift early and there's a choice available that wasn't there a moment before.
The ceiling most senior leaders hit has little to do with competence. It comes down to the range of who they can be.
Rudi Doku
Format and price
The leadership engagement
Leadership engagement, sponsored by the employer
For a senior leader whose reactions under pressure are starting to cost the organisation people, usually after a piece of feedback or a step up. What changes is range: more ways to be in a hard meeting than the one that fires automatically.
- Format
- Twelve fortnightly sessions of ninety minutes over six months
- Included
- A 360 or Leadership Circle Profile, plus a sponsor conversation at the start, midpoint and end
- Price
- $9,000 + GST, assessment at cost
- First step
- Thirty minutes with the leader, then fifteen with the sponsor
Inside the six months
Four phases, from scoping call to close
Scoping call
Thirty minutes with the leader, then a short call with whoever's sponsoring the work, to check the fit before anything is signed off.
Set the goals
A Leadership Circle Profile or a handful of stakeholder conversations gives us a starting point, and a small number of goals come out of that first phase.
Work the pattern
Fortnightly sessions, ninety minutes, in person in Melbourne or online. What happens in the gap between sessions becomes the material for the next one.
Review and close
A written review at the halfway point, a sponsor conversation at the end, and a finish date rather than an open-ended retainer.
Where an organisation sponsors the work, goals and progress are shared with the sponsor at the agreed points. What's said inside a session stays between the leader and the coach, and that boundary is set out in writing before the first one.
Who does the work
Rudi Doku
Fifteen years in management consulting, then coaching leaders across their own boardrooms. The commercial background is why a story about a board paper doesn't need explaining first. Every engagement is delivered by Rudi directly, with no account manager and no substitute midway through.
Leaders coached at
Before you commit
The questions sponsors and leaders actually ask
Is this coaching or therapy?
Coaching. The focus is performance and self-regulation for a capable person under pressure, and it doesn't diagnose or treat anything. The method borrows from body-based training, so sessions stay aware of how pressure shows up physically, but the frame never shifts. Someone dealing with a mental health concern needs proper clinical care, and coaching can sit alongside that.
What does the sponsor get to see?
Goals and progress against them, shared at the points set out at the start. What's actually said in a session stays between the leader and the coach, agreed in writing before the first one.
Why work with a practice instead of a firm?
Mainly continuity. There's no associate substitution partway through and no account manager sitting between the leader and the coach. The trade-off is honest too: this doesn't scale to two hundred managers at once, and a firm is the better fit for that job.
The leader doesn't know what they'd bring to a session
That's what the first phase is for. A Leadership Circle Profile or a short round of stakeholder conversations gives a starting point that isn't guesswork, and the goals get set from there.
Next step
Send the shape of it and get an outline back within a day
A few lines about the leader, what's been tried, and roughly when. If this turns out to be the wrong kind of help, the reply will say so and point somewhere better.