MANAGER EDGE

You were great at the job. Now the job is leading people.

Strong individual contributors don’t automatically become strong managers the moment the title changes. The work is different. The pressure is different. The relationships are different. Now the work, the decisions, and the accountability keep landing on you, and you’re managing up, across, and down without a playbook.

Add the rest of it: more scope, more ambiguity, hybrid teams, change fatigue, and the human side of AI disruption piling up on your desk.

The issue is rarely a talent ceiling. More often, you’ve hit a complexity ceiling. You have the potential and the work ethic. You’ve been handed bigger scope without enough scaffolding underneath you.

ManagerEDGE gives you the scaffolding.

What this is:

WHAT WE WORK ON

Every engagement is tailored to your role, goals, and context. The work is organized around seven areas of management and leadership:

Managing Self. Show up with more self-awareness, steadiness, and intention.
Managing Work. Create clarity, ownership, and movement. Stop being the bottleneck.
Managing People. Lead one conversation at a time: 1:1s, feedback, coaching, difficult conversations.
Managing Teams. Shape the conditions for better team performance: purpose, norms, trust, meetings, accountability.
Managing Up, Across, and Through Influence. Influence beyond your direct authority.
Leading Change and Growth. Help people adapt, learn, and move forward.
Career, Growth, and Leadership Development. Own your growth instead of waiting to be discovered.

Common focus areas: leadership identity and confidence, delegation and accountability, feedback and difficult conversations, coaching and developing others, prioritization and execution, managing up, team effectiveness, leading through change.

ManagerEDGE is Saber’s one-on-one coaching program for managers and emerging leaders. It’s coaching with a Saber associate coach who works with managers every day.

You bring your challenges: the conversation you’re avoiding, the employee who needs clearer expectations, the project that keeps slipping, the stakeholder you need to influence, the team meeting that no longer works, or the change you’re being asked to lead. Then we coach, practice, plan, apply, and follow up.

Senior-level coaching quality, in a format built for managers.

Who It's For:

First-time managers and new people leaders
Mid-level managers and team leads
High-potential individual contributors stepping into leadership
Managers navigating expanded scope, pressure, ambiguity, or change

It’s especially useful when you’re smart, capable, and committed, and nobody has given you the structure, tools, or coaching to lead consistently through people.

NOT THE RIGHT FIT IF:

You’re looking for a one-time training event
Coaching is being used as punishment
The goal is quick inspiration rather than behavior change
You’re not ready to reflect, practice, and apply

ManagerEDGE works best when the manager, sponsor, and coach are aligned around growth, practice, and real application.

Your Coaches

ManagerEDGE engagements are led by Saber associate coaches Patrick J. Healy and Sydney Cannon.

Pat Healy

Pat coaches current and aspiring managers on the habits, skills, and mindsets it takes to lead well. He’s an ICF-credentialed coach (ACC) and an ATD Certified Professional in Talent Development, with a master’s in educational psychology and neuroscience from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and doctoral work in instructional systems and technology at Indiana University. His coaching draws on positive psychology, behavior change, cognitive behavioral coaching, learning science, and human-centered learning design, which means the work is practical and it sticks.

Sydney Cannon

Sydney is a Co-Active Coaching Practitioner (CAP) working toward her ICF credential (ACC), and holds an ATD certificate in change management. She earned a B.S.B.A. in International Business and a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Missouri. Her coaching draws on whole-person coaching, change management, social psychology, and leadership and teaming, and she has worked with professionals from organizations including Bain, Kearney, PepsiCo, and Airbnb.

Every ManagerEDGE engagement runs on the Saber coaching model and accountability structure.

How It Works: 6-Month Program Overview

We structure ManagerEDGE to fit into a busy manager’s schedule while providing steady momentum. Here’s how the 6-month journey breaks down:

Fit Conversation:

We start by understanding your role, context, goals, and pressures, and whether ManagerEDGE is the right fit.

Kickoff Conversation:

A 90-minute session to design the engagement: goals, confidentiality, success measures, and how we’ll track progress.

Biweekly Coaching Sessions:

Biweekly focused coaching sessions. Each session is anchored in real situations: conversations, decisions, projects, team dynamics, stakeholder challenges, or moments of pressure.

The work is reflective and practical. Managers leave with clearer thinking, sharper language, specific actions, and something to practice.

Between-Session Application:

Development happens between sessions, not just during them.

Managers may use prep forms, reflection prompts, worksheets, tools, short exercises, action plans, experiments, and follow-up support. The goal is to translate insight into behavior while the work is actually happening.

Accountability & Progress Tracking:

ManagerEDGE includes accountability without breaking confidentiality.

Depending on the engagement, progress may be supported through a client dashboard, skill self-assessment, goal tracker, action/reflection forms, midpoint review, and optional sponsor updates focused on themes and progress rather than private session content.

Midpoint / Closing Reflection:

At key points in the engagement, we review progress, lessons, outcomes, remaining gaps, and next steps. Managers leave not only with better skills, but with a clearer understanding of how they grow.