Case Study – Fortune 50 Global Tech Company
Providing leadership training programs for a Fortune 50 global tech company since 2016 to achieve measurable results with our proven methodologies.
This work with Fortune 50 Tech Company began with a small group of courageous women who had spent many years inside the organization and cared deeply about its people and its future.
They believed strongly in the potential of the women around them — talented professionals who were influencing work, supporting teams, and driving results, yet rarely included in leadership development opportunities.
They described this layer of the organization as the “frozen middle.”
At the time, the phrase referred specifically to women whose leadership potential was visible to their peers but not yet fully recognized by traditional development pathways.
Rather than waiting for the organization to create something, these women began building it themselves. What started as informal conversations eventually evolved into a global initiative called Mentor Circles, where women across regions gathered to support one another, share experiences, and strengthen their confidence as leaders.
The circles created connection, encouragement, and a sense of possibility. Yet the women behind the initiative believed there was an opportunity to go deeper — to create a leadership development experience that could truly unlock the potential they were seeing around them.
So they reached out to Michelle Poole and Coaching 4 Good with a simple question:
“How can we build on this momentum and create something truly transformative?”
In many ways, what these women were noticing inside the organization was ahead of its time.
Today, as AI accelerates the pace of change, the need for leaders with self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the courage to lead through uncertainty has only grown.
Through that experience she saw a common pattern: leadership development often focuses heavily on the top of the organization, while a powerful layer of emerging leaders in the middle remains largely untapped.
Around the same time, Michelle had become certified in Brené Brown’s research-based work called The Daring Way (prior to the launch of Dare to Lead).
Brené Brown’s research taps directly into what often gets in the way of leaders becoming who they are capable of being — the human dynamics beneath leadership behavior.
Drawing on these insights, Michelle architected the foundation of the leadership development experience and partnered with talented coaching colleagues to further build out the program and bring it to life.
Rather than focusing only on leadership skills, the program created the psychological safe space to explore the internal barriers that shape how leaders show up every day, including:
Participants began to see how these internal dynamics influenced their leadership in subtle but meaningful ways.
As awareness grew, something equally important began to emerge: courage.
The leadership experiences we designed combined two research-based perspectives that complemented each other remarkably well. Brené Brown’s research helped leaders explore the human dynamics that often sit beneath leadership behavior — vulnerability, shame, courage, and the internal stories people carry about themselves.
The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) added another dimension by providing leaders with clear feedback data about how they were actually showing up to others. The assessment maps leadership behaviors across creative and reactive leadership patterns, helping leaders see where fear-based reactions may be limiting their effectiveness.
One of the most valuable aspects of the LCP is that it transforms personal insight into real data. Leaders often have a sense of how they believe they are showing up. The LCP reveals how others are actually experiencing them.
Michelle often describes this moment as the gap between intention and impact. When leaders see that gap clearly, it creates a meaningful opportunity for growth. Michelle, along with her coaching colleagues at Coaching 4 Good, partnered with leaders one-on-one to turn those insights into meaningful change.
Through executive coaching conversations, leaders translated their 360-degree feedback into personal development plans, identifying the patterns they wanted to shift and the leadership behaviors they wanted to strengthen.
The coaching relationship provided support, perspective, and accountability as leaders practiced new ways of thinking, communicating, and leading. Combined with the deeper identity work inspired by Brené Brown’s research, the experience helped leaders move beyond surface-level development and into something much more meaningful. Not just learning new leadership tools — but expanding their capacity to lead.
The original idea began with a program designed to support women leaders. However, when the first pilot was approved, the executive sponsor introduced one important condition: The program had to include both men and women.
What initially felt like a pivot quickly revealed an important insight. If organizations want to create inclusive and psychologically safe environments, leaders must develop together. Men and women need opportunities to build the same levels of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and leadership maturity if they are going to lead effectively together. With that insight, Michelle and her coaching colleagues launched the first mixed-gender leadership cohort.
As the early cohorts demonstrated impact, a Senior Vice President in the company’s IT organization saw the opportunity to expand the work. Originally from Puerto Rico, she credited a coach she worked with early in her career as a pivotal influence on her leadership development.
Because of that experience, she believed coaching should be a core development tool for leaders across the organization. Her vision was to create a strong pipeline of leaders — both men and women — across the organization.
To support that goal, Michelle and her colleagues expanded the cohort-based leadership program and delivered it across three global regions: United States, India and Brazil.
Leaders in each region participated in the NextGen Leaders cohort program, moving through the development experience together and building strong cross-regional leadership networks.
At the same time, Michelle partnered with the SVP to expand a book club she had started with women leaders in Brazil into a full year-long leadership development experience called Empowering Women Leaders.
The Empowering Leaders program launched in 2019 and ran through 2020, supporting women leaders in United States, Brazil, and India. Each region participated in monthly leadership workshops, creating local communities where women could build trust, confidence, and support.
The experience focused on:
For many participants, this program became the foundation for deeper leadership growth and continued participation in the broader cohort leadership programs.
Across both programs, leaders described meaningful shifts in how they saw themselves and how they led others.
Participants reported:
Many participants also experienced promotions, recognition awards, and expanded leadership opportunities. But perhaps the most meaningful outcome was the network of connection that formed.
Shared development experiences build trust, empathy, and a common leadership language.
Women benefit from environments where they can explore leadership identity and confidence within a supportive community.
When leaders do this work in cohorts, they draw courage not only from themselves but from one another.
The first cohort continued supporting one another long after the program ended — relationships that in many cases still exist today.
The strongest momentum occurred when senior leaders championed the work and modeled their own growth.
While the programs created meaningful impact, the initiative ultimately concluded when several key executive champions moved on from the organization.
The success of this program revealed something important.
When organizations create development experiences that combine self-awareness, courageous leadership conversations, coaching, and real feedback, leaders grow in ways that traditional training programs rarely achieve. Since this initial engagement, we have custom-designed and delivered versions of this foundational leadership program for multiple organizations.
As of today, we are preparing to launch our 10th cohort of this program with a leading global technology company. Every leadership experience we design is built in close partnership with our clients so the work feels fully integrated into the organization’s culture, leadership frameworks, and real business challenges.
When development is designed this intentionally, the impact extends far beyond individual growth — strengthening leadership teams and shaping the culture of the organization.
