What this is
A handbook for practice, not inspiration.
Most of the handbook is material from my blog, rewritten as training curriculum: tenets, mental models, SBI, mechanisms, date sanctity, change, one-on-ones, Org OS design, and whatever the next hard problem forces onto the page. The essays stay public on the blog. The handbook is the same thinking, shaped for leaders who need to practice it with their teams.
The goal is capability with dates, owners, artifacts, and practice.
The goal is not inspiration. The goal is capability, with dates, owners, artifacts, and practice.
Tig's Leader of Leaders Training Handbook
How it works
Every engagement is custom. It starts with a few leaders and the real problem.
I do not show up with a fixed two-day script and force-fit your company into it. I start by working with a small set of leaders as a coach, long enough to understand the org's core issues: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, product judgment, hiring, AI behavior, or whatever is actually limiting you. The material we use follows from that, not from a stock agenda.
Office hours first
Bring the real problem. We make it sharper. No pitch theater. More than half of my coaching time is pro bono on purpose.
Coach a few leaders
I work with a small leadership set long enough to see how decisions, meetings, and accountability really work when I am not in the room.
In-person team training
When we decide to train the team, the training is built for that team: live practice, the handbook, and artifacts they can keep using.
Inside the handbook
A sample of what is in it today.
This is not a fixed syllabus. I add and revise chapters as leaders hit new problems. Each chapter is a tool for a specific crack in the system. The Pyramid is usually the diagnostic; the other chapters are operating manuals for the layers underneath. What you get in a live engagement is the current book, shaped to the work in front of us.
The Pyramid of Excellence
Relationships, trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, results. Plus the mediocre-team mirror. The diagnostic that stops you fixing the wrong layer.
People Management is not a Hobby
Stewardship as real work. Why lower pyramid layers only get built by people who treat management as a profession.
Principled Leadership (Tenets)
Write the how, not just the what. Decisions that stick because the principles behind them are explicit and debated.
Mental Models
Named, portable lenses leaders can reuse so the team sees the same problem the same way.
Feedback: SBI
Situation, Behavior, Impact. The conversational craft that makes conflict and peer accountability survivable.
One-on-Ones as a Mechanism
1:1s as the primary system for trust, reality, feedback, and delegation over time; not calendar filler.
Good Intentions are not Enough
Mechanisms: owners, cadence, inspection, and defaults that turn heroics into organizational behavior.
Accountability Through Dates
Date sanctity, paths to green, and status that tells the truth. Accountability without dates is theater.
Leading Change: D x V x F > R
Dissatisfaction, vision, first steps, and resistance. How change actually moves when influence matters more than title.
Organization Operating Systems
Scheduler, memory, interfaces, kernel, taxonomy, and fitness functions. Make the org run without you as the router.
Have a Plan (the 5Ps)
Purpose, Principles, Priorities, People, Plan. Fake plans hide missing owners, unresolved tradeoffs, or headcount that never shows up in the schedule. Inspect any plan and see which P is missing before reality does.
The Hiring Operating System
Bias is the default; interviewer confidence is not evidence. Role outcomes, independent signal, written feedback, and debriefs from observations. Capability and behavior both count.
From Job Description to 30/60/90
Define 12-month success, replace years-of-experience with repeated demonstration, design the loop, onboard before day one, and inspect the hiring packet at 90 days.
More coming. If your problem is not on this list, that does not mean we cannot work it. It often means a chapter is about to get written (or regurgitated from my blog). For a taste of what is next, see these posts on my blog: fitness functions, single-threaded leaders, working backwards, how to run meetings, product management excellence.
Next step