Your leaders arrive in Osaka with six months of coaching behind them and their
before-and-after scores in hand. They spend the week on what the numbers say is
still unfinished.
On day four they watch a swordsmith work steel. On day five each of them writes
down one business outcome they will deliver in ninety days, with a number and a
date on it, and reads it to the room.
The coaching runs first: assessment, one-to-one work, small groups, and measures you and we agree on before anyone starts. The week in Japan is where it finishes.
The week can also stand on its own. Most sponsors pair it with the six-month program so the leaders arrive with something to measure, and we will show you what that changes on the call.
Before-and-after assessment scores returned, individually and as a cohort picture. What moved, what did not, and what that says about the organization rather than the individual.
Anyone can have a bad quarter. When the same one keeps coming back, it's usually built into how the place runs, and that's what gets worked on.
Each leader maps their own function: who holds power that doesn't match their title, which decision nobody will make, and where they're the bottleneck. Then they show the map to a leader from a different function, whose only job is to say what they can't see.
A working swordsmith forge on the Sea of Japan coast. Your leaders watch tamahagane worked: what heat does to steel, what folding is for, and what gets driven out and discarded. Tanren is the Japanese word for that forging.
A hands-on sword class, then the closing session, then the ninety-day commitments.
Day 0 is arrival and day 6 is departure. One hotel in Osaka for the whole stay, so nobody changes rooms. The full agenda, hour by hour, including the exact coaching questions used in every small-group session, comes to you before you sign.
International flights aren't included. Your leaders get themselves to Japan, and anything they want to do before or after the retreat is their own.
The price is the price whether five leaders come or two. The cohort is yours to fill and we'll plan the calendar with you to make that easy.
Before: a call to agree what this week is for and what you will accept as evidence it worked.
After: a results meeting covering the themes across the cohort, the commitments each leader made, and what we think you should do next. We report themes, never what an individual said.
Every leader has a scheduled ninety-day check-in on their committed outcome. Their peers check on each other at day forty-five.
Every participant signs a confidentiality agreement before day one. Anyone may decline to share anything, at any point, without explaining and without it being reported to you.
Photography and participation are two separate signatures. Declining to be photographed doesn't affect attendance.
Participants carry their own travel medical insurance. There is a participation waiver covering the forge and the sword class, both of which involve real hazards.
Faculty at Georgetown University's Institute for Transformational Leadership, and an ICF PCC Assessor, which means he is one of the people the profession trusts to judge whether a coach meets the standard. He has coached leaders at Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal, Marriott, and Plaid, and across federal agencies.
A call with you to work out whether this is the right thing for your group at all. If it's not, we'll say so.