Cohort programs for managers and directors, one-to-one coaching for senior leaders, and bespoke training for agency leadership teams. Every program is delivered by a senior trainer who has led a marketing function.
Built for the marketing manager who was recently promoted from an individual contributor role and is now learning the difference between doing great marketing work and leading people who do it. Most first-time managers are given no training at all and quietly figure it out under real deadline pressure. This program stops that pattern.
Core tracks. The first 1:1 that actually works. Writing a brief that leaves room for the creative to lead. Giving feedback fast without turning it into a rewrite. Running a weekly team meeting people show up to on purpose. Managing up to a director without becoming a bottleneck. Career conversations with a designer, a copywriter, and an analyst on the same team.
Application project. Every participant runs a real 1:1 cadence with their team through the twelve weeks. Sessions include roleplay, artefact review, and structured peer critique.
For marketing managers with two or more years in the role who are moving from tactical management to leading a real team. The participant has the fundamentals. What she needs now is the craft of shaping a team, running a performance rhythm that keeps her best people, and holding a functional POV inside the wider marketing organization.
Core tracks. Team design for a mixed group of creatives and analysts. Managing through the annual review cycle without losing anyone you want to keep. Delegation that builds the next manager underneath you. Running a campaign retrospective that actually changes the next campaign. Making brand and performance work as one team, not two.
Application project. Each participant redesigns their own team's operating rhythm across the eight weeks and reports back with what changed.
Sixteen weeks for directors who lead multiple managers and now own the shape of the whole function. The director is one step from the CMO and two steps from anyone doing the actual work. Everything about the leadership craft at that altitude is different: coaching leaders, not doers; running planning, not projects; owning function-wide standards, not personal taste.
Core tracks. Leading through leaders. Quarterly planning that stakeholders trust. Setting a brand-and-performance strategy that the whole marketing organization can execute. Overseeing agency relationships as a portfolio, not a single account. Hiring your first senior leader. Preparing yourself and the org for the next stage of growth.
Application project. Directors run a real planning cycle across the sixteen weeks, coached through it from kickoff to executive readout. Includes six 1:1 coaching sessions on top of the cohort.
For the senior marketing leader who is out of peers inside the company. A monthly retainer with a senior trainer who has sat in the CMO chair. Two structured sessions per month plus on-call support between them. Confidential by default. The point of the engagement is to give the executive a thinking partner for the leadership problems she cannot bring to her board or her team.
Typical topics. The first year of a new CMO mandate. Rebuilding trust with a founder who runs marketing informally. Preparing a successor. Restructuring the marketing organization. Navigating a private-equity relationship. Managing burnout on the executive team. Deciding what to protect and what to let go.
Format. Two ninety-minute sessions per month. Discreet correspondence between sessions. Twelve-month minimum for depth, quarterly reviews to confirm fit.
A bespoke program for the leadership team of an agency. Group heads, account directors, creative directors, and the C-suite train together on how to lead a professional services business where people are the product. Every agency is different, so the curriculum is shaped to the specific challenges of the firm during a scoping call before the program starts.
Typical tracks. Promoting the best doer without losing the best doer. Utilization pressure and what it does to a creative team. Client politics and when to escalate. Founder succession and the culture question that comes with it. Building the leadership language that lets a team of forty scale to a team of two hundred without losing the thing that made the agency great.
Format. On-site or remote, sized to the group. Includes leadership working sessions, cross-departmental case studies from the agency's own work, and 1:1 coaching for the senior leaders.
Cohort programs share the same underlying rhythm. Pre-work between sessions, live discussion, small-group breakouts, 1:1 coaching, and an application project tied to a real campaign the participant is running right now. Sessions are ninety minutes and cameras are on.
Short readings, one or two prompts to answer in writing, and a piece of your own work to bring for the group. Pre-work is deliberately light because your day job does not stop for a program.
Fifteen minutes of framing from your trainer, forty-five minutes of discussion and structured practice, and thirty minutes of application to the work you brought. Every session ends with a commitment for the coming week.
Every participant gets a scheduled 1:1 with their trainer during the program. Use it for the leadership problem you cannot bring to the group, or for coaching on the application project between meetings.
Cohorts run on Zoom with live discussion, small-group breakouts, and a shared workspace for artefacts. Sessions are held weekly on a fixed day and time chosen at the start of the program. Every session is recorded so participants can revisit them, and asynchronous coaching happens in a private channel with the trainer.
The application project is the anchor of every cohort program. Instead of hypothetical case studies, participants bring a real 1:1 they are running, a real campaign they are leading, or a real team challenge they are working through, and the program helps them do that work better in the moment. That is why the learning survives. It is attached to real stakes.
For the ongoing 1:1 rhythm graduates run with their reports, our standing recommendation is the HeyRamp platform, which keeps structured check-ins and performance conversations in one place after the program ends. The habits we install during the cohort need a system to live in once you are back to full-time delivery. HeyRamp is the one we suggest first.
Cohorts and coaching engagements can lean into a specific problem the client wants to solve. These are the specializations Echelon is asked for most often.