From Doing the Work to Leading the Team
This six-session 1:1 coaching program is designed for new and emerging leaders, especially technical professionals making the transition from individual contributor to leading others. We’ll start with what is actually happening in your role: what feels harder than you expected, where you’re getting stuck, and what you want to be able to do differently. From there, we’ll focus on the leadership skills and habits that will make the biggest difference in the situations you’re facing. Your actual work becomes the material for our coaching. Bring the person you're struggling to lead, the conversation you've been putting off, a project you can't seem to let go of, or a situation where you aren't sure what good leadership looks like. Depending on what you need, our work might involve listening, feedback, delegation, difficult conversations, self-management, assumptions, priorities, or developing your own approach to leadership. Between sessions, you'll put what we're working on into practice. We'll use what happens—the things that work as well as the things that don't—as material for our next conversation.
What's included
I’m curious, direct, and practical as a coach. I’ll give you plenty of room to think, but I’ll also ask questions, challenge assumptions, and tell you what I’m noticing. One of my strengths is staying with a problem long enough to understand what is really going on before we start trying to solve it. That’s particularly useful with technical leaders, who are often very good at finding solutions and have been rewarded throughout their careers for doing it quickly. Our work will be grounded in what is actually happening in your job. We’ll use real conversations, decisions, relationships, and leadership challenges rather than hypothetical cases. When a leadership concept or tool would be useful, I’ll teach it. Then we’ll figure out how it applies to you and give you a chance to use it in the real world. I also believe good leadership starts with self-awareness. We’ll pay attention to your assumptions, values, habits, and reactions under pressure, not as an abstract exercise, but because they affect how other people experience you as a leader.
- A clearer understanding of your role as a leader and what your team needs from you
- Greater ability to slow down, ask better questions, and understand a problem before acting
- Practical tools for listening, feedback, delegation, and difficult conversations
- More confidence handling the people situations that don't have an obvious technical solution
- Better awareness of your own reactions, assumptions, and habits under pressure
- Experience applying new leadership approaches to real situations at work. Not just learning about them
- A clearer sense of the leader you want to be and how you want that to show up day to day
Meet your expert
Robin P.
Lead with clarity, build a stronger team, and stop carrying everything your
I came to coaching and leadership development after more than 20 years in technology, where I learned a lot about leadership by watching smart, capable people wrestle with the parts of the job that had very little to do with technical expertise. That eventually led me to Cornell Engineering, where I've spent the past several years coaching and teaching leadership to emerging and experienced leaders and helping build leadership development programs that have reached thousands of engineers and technical professionals. Along the way, I've become increasingly interested in what actually helps people change — especially when they're under pressure. I'm a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), currently working toward my MCC, and co-founder of NeuroLead, where we're developing neuroscience-informed approaches to leadership and team development. My coaching is grounded in a simple idea: most people already know a lot about what good leadership looks like. The harder work is changing how we see a situation and how we respond when the stakes are real. I work with people navigating leadership transitions, difficult decisions, challenging relationships, career changes, and the sometimes uncomfortable gap between the leader they want to be and how they're actually showing up. My job isn't to hand you a framework or tell you what to do. I'll help you slow down enough to see what's really happening, challenge assumptions that may be getting in your way, and find choices you couldn't see before. My background also includes coaching individuals on the autism spectrum, which has deeply influenced how I think about communication, perspective, and what it actually means to meet someone where they are. Today, I run Rob Parker and Associates while continuing my work in leadership development and building NeuroLead. I especially enjoy working with smart, thoughtful people who are good at what they do and have reached a point where expertise alone isn't enough to get them where they want to go. If that sounds like where you are, I'd be glad to work with you.
