Rising Director
LEADERSHIP COACHING

Most first-time directors don’t feel explicitly “ready.” That’s often the point. This career transition moves fast, the expectations for the role are high, and many leaders wait until they feel overwhelmed before asking for support. Coaching is most effective when you’re still shaping how you want to lead — not after reactive habits have already hardened years into this role. The complimentary (and required) consultation we offer helps us determine whether this is the right moment for you based on several factors — it's a great way as well to begin to experience what working with Tiffany Meyer is like.

You don’t need a perfectly functioning team to begin. In fact, if your team feels reactive, unclear, or overly dependent on you, that’s often a sign that stabilizing your leadership foundation is the right next step. We focus first on grounding you — installing the rhythms, clarity, and delegation habits that allow your team to perform differently. Structural redesign or deeper team performance work can follow if needed. But it starts with you.

Yes. Our one-on-one coaching conversations are confidential. The purpose is to give you a safe space to think, reflect, and grow without political pressure. If your organization is sponsoring the coaching, we can align on high-level growth goals at the start — and we offer a 6-month follow-up assessment to measure progress — but the coaching conversations themselves remain private.

Traditional executive coaching is often broad and industry-agnostic. ​This coaching is built specifically for first-time nonprofit marketing and communications directors navigating the shift from individual contributor to full function leader. ​We address the leader-doer reality, the consultative mindset shift, creative team dynamics, and the unique pressure of leading a function many executives have never led themselves. That specificity makes the work faster, more practical, and immediately relevant.

Yes. Many organizations choose to invest directly in their leaders, and more and more are recognizing the unique challenges first-time marcom directors face — and their own limitations in providing function-specific coaching in-house. We can provide a clear program overview, investment details, and measurable outcomes to support your request. I’m also happy to join a brief call with you and your supervisor to ensure alignment before we begin. We also invite you to share this article with your CEO/Executive Director or supervisor — From burnout to breakthrough: Why investing in your first-time marketing communications director pays off

How to make the case for leadership coaching If you’re preparing to ask your CEO or Executive Director to invest in coaching, here are a few points you can use or adapt: Leadership coaching consistently shows strong ROI. Multiple studies (including ICF and Harvard Business Review) show organizations see returns of 5–7x their investment through improved performance, productivity, and retention. Retention alone can justify the investment. Replacing a director-level role often costs 1.5–2x salary when you factor in recruiting, onboarding, and lost momentum. Coaching helps leaders stabilize faster and stay longer. This role has an unusually steep learning curve. First-time marketing and communications directors are expected to lead a full function, advise executives, and develop a team — often without prior training or internal mentorship. Coaching shortens that ramp significantly. This is targeted, function-specific coaching — not generic leadership advice. The work is grounded in the realities of leading a nonprofit marcom function: setting high-value priorities, balancing strategy and execution, optimizing small team capacity, and increasing the function’s direct contribution to organizational goals. The investment is in line with market rates for director-level coaching. Comparable 90-day one-on-one coaching engagements for director or head-of-function roles typically range from $3,000–$10,000+ depending on scope and duration. This approach is designed to deliver practical, near-term gains. Leaders are building clearer team focus, more effective 1:1s, and stronger alignment with cross-functional partners, and other measurable outcomes. It directly supports organizational priorities. Stronger marcom leadership means better team focus, more efficient use of limited team capacity and resources, improved cross-functional collaboration, and clearer visibility into team results.

The mindset and leadership shifts you'll learn and begin to put into practice don't always lead to immediate results in you and your team's performance — they can take several months to get real traction. However, we work hard to ensure our time together gets you to tangible improvements that offer value to you, your team of direct reports, and your organization as a whole. We start each coaching engagement with a self- and peer- assessment to set some measurable benchmarks, and this is used to establish 1-3 tangible growth results that we'll focus on. Your specific goals will be unique to you, but explore the Rising Director Coaching overview page for examples A close-out evaluation is completed at the end of each 90-day coaching engagement, and we repeat your self- and peer-assessments 6 months following our start date to provide you and your supervisor tangible proof of your growth and it's resulting value.