For Talent Leaders

Sharpen the craft.
Lead the function.

Built to help you rethink how your talent function can evolve from reactive recruiting into a more strategic, future-ready business capability. A coaching track for talent leaders, the people leading executive recruiting and talent acquisition functions, not individual contributor recruiters. Leadership coaching on how you lead your team, mentoring in the craft itself, and your own career, at the altitude of someone setting strategy and standards. Led by someone who built and ran Zalando's global executive recruiting function, not someone who studied it from the outside.

Most people in recruiting are coached on process. Almost no one coaches the people leading it.

On why this track exists

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The Programme

Four months.
Leadership, craft and career.

Eight sessions over four months, moving through four deliberate phases: an honest baseline on where you stand as a leader, real work on how you lead your team and the craft itself, how you're positioned and seen, and a concrete plan you're held accountable to.

01
Discovery
An honest baseline: where you are now in your career, and the strengths and gaps you bring as a talent leader. Sessions: Where You Are Now · Your Strengths & Gaps.
Month One
02
Craft & Team
The mentoring core, and how you lead: search strategy and assessment design, the judgement calls that only come from having actually led the function, plus a real look at how you manage, develop and get the best out of your own team. Sessions: Search & Assessment Craft · Leading Your Team.
Month Two
03
Positioning
How you're actually seen inside your organisation, strategic partner or order-taker, and the direction you want your own career to take: deeper into talent leadership, into broader People leadership, or somewhere else entirely. Sessions: Your Own Narrative · Your Vision.
Month Three
04
Action
Managing up: real influence with the stakeholders and executives who decide how your function and your team are perceived, then a 90-day plan with accountability built in. Sessions: Stakeholders & Influence · Your Plan & Next Steps.
Month Four
What's Included

High-touch.
Grounded in the real job.

90-Minute Discovery Session
An in-depth session before the programme begins, mapping your goals, your current searches and where the craft or the career feels stuck. This shapes everything that follows.
Before month one
Eight Coaching & Mentoring Sessions
Two structured 60-minute sessions each month, moving between coaching on how you lead your team, mentoring on the searches and decisions you're actually working through, and your own career. Prepared in advance, documented afterwards.
2 × 60 min / month
Session Reviews & Homework
A written review after every session, anchored in your own words, plus practical work between sessions. A record of your thinking that accumulates across the programme.
After every session
Between-Session Access
When a real decision lands, a difficult conversation with someone on your team, a tricky stakeholder situation or a candidate call you want a second opinion on, you don't wait. Voice note, message, or a quick call.
24-hour response · WhatsApp or voice
Live Leadership & Search Mentoring
Real, live case-based mentoring on what you're actually dealing with right now, whether that's a team member who isn't performing, a stakeholder relationship that's not working, or a senior search you're running. Not theory. Drawn from 15 years running that process from the inside, including leading Zalando's entire executive recruiting function.
Woven throughout
Two Integration Sessions
Two 30-minute sessions in the months after the programme ends, to check the changes hold, both in the craft and in how you're now positioned, and adjust the plan against reality.
2 × 30 min · post-programme
Who This Is For

Built for
talent leaders.

This track is for talent leaders, whether your background is executive recruiting or broader talent acquisition, who want two things at once: to genuinely sharpen the craft, and to be more deliberate about their own career, the way they help candidates be deliberate about theirs.

It is not generic career coaching, and it is not a training course. I work with a small number of clients at any one time and only take on engagements where I believe the fit is right.

  • i Heads of Talent, TA Directors and executive recruiting leaders who want to rethink how their function evolves from reactive recruiting into a more strategic, future-ready business capability, not just be seen as an order-taker.
  • ii Talent leaders managing a team, scaling a function through real growth or complexity, and wanting to lead their people with more confidence.
  • iii Leaders responsible for how their organisation runs senior and executive-level searches, wanting real command of the craft, not just a process to sign off on.
  • iv Talent leaders unsure how to grow their own career the way they help others grow theirs.
  • v Any talent leader who wants a thinking partner who has actually run the function they're in, not just coached around it.

"I coach my team on how to present themselves to the business. No one's ever coached me."

"I lead the function that runs searches for the business, but no one's investing in my own growth."

"I can run a search brilliantly. I'm not sure I'm actually leading my team well."

"I want a seat at the leadership table, not just a headcount report to give."

"AI is reshaping how my whole function works, and I want to lead that shift, not just react to it."

"I run the process well. I want to be seen as a strategic leader, not just someone who executes."

If any of this sounds familiar, keep reading.

The Investment

A serious commitment.
Discussed openly.

The Structure
One fee
agreed upfront · four-month programme
Shared in the first conversation

The programme runs for four consecutive months from an agreed start date and a commitment to the full programme is required. That is how the work delivers results. The investment is discussed openly on the first call, before you decide anything.

Invoiced monthly · German VAT applicable where relevant · Employer invoicing available

This is not an hourly engagement
You are not buying sessions. You are buying a committed four-month partnership: real mentoring on the craft, plus the accountability and thinking space to be deliberate about your own career.
Practical, not just reflective
This is grounded in how you're actually leading your team and the live searches and stakeholder situations you're in, not abstract theory. You leave sessions with something you can use in your next one-to-one, brief or debrief.
Small roster by design
I work with a maximum of eight clients at any time, across all tracks. This is what makes the depth of engagement possible and why I am selective about who I take on.
How I Work

Four things
that stay constant.

Whatever the client or the challenge, this is what the work is built on.

01
Empathy-led
The work starts with genuinely understanding where you are, not where you should be. No judgement about how you got here.
02
Direct questioning
I ask the question that's actually in the room, not the comfortable one. Clarity comes from being willing to look at the real thing.
03
Grounded in the work
We use your real team, your real searches and your real stakeholders as the material, not hypotheticals.
04
Accountability
Insight without follow-through is just an interesting conversation. Every session ends with something concrete and I check whether it happened.

Ready to talk
craft and career?

Free, uncommitted and genuinely useful on its own. Bring whatever's actually live for you right now, a team situation or a search, not a pitch, a real 30 minutes of thinking.

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A small number of places open for autumn 2026