You are good at your job. You know you are. But the feedback from above keeps shifting. Your team needs more than you have to give. The work that actually matters keeps getting pushed to the bottom of a list that never gets shorter. You are competent, and yet somehow still not sure you’re doing it right.
That gap between how good you actually are and how it feels from the inside is what ERA is about. The ERA framework (Equip, Reflect, Act) is a coaching methodology built specifically for new and middle managers. The people in the middle, where organizational vision either lives or dies in practice.
Every Thursday, I send out a letter that explores the messy middle of management. We talk about:
Emotional Intelligence (EQ): Why you feel the way you do, and how to stop absorbing your team’s stress.
Sustainable Productivity: How to get things done when the world feels heavy.
Boundaries: The art of saying “no” so your “yes” actually means something.
Think of this newsletter as a quiet room in a noisy office. A place to drop your shoulders and get honest about the work.
Why subscribe?
Subscribers get the weekly help delivered straight to their inbox. Deep dives into leadership, personal development, and the occasional book review.
If that’s what you’re looking for, I’d love to have you.
Who writes this?
I’m Cate Burnett Fierbaugh. I spent my career in international nonprofit development, usually the only woman in the room, always somewhere in the middle, managing up to leaders making decisions I had to implement, and down to teams counting on me to translate those decisions into something workable. I navigated leadership collapses, values violations, and the dissolution of teams I had built.
ERA is the coach I wished I’d had during all of it.
I’m an ICF-credentialed coach and an EQ-i 2.0 practitioner: science-backed tools, not guesswork. More than that, I pay attention. I write about the space between who you are and who you’re trying to become as a leader.
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