Francis Lacoste - The VPE Coach

As a VP of Engineering expanding your team beyond 20, you'll find immense value in Francis's coaching. His approach integrates compassionate leadership with practical business understanding, helping you navigate complex challenges while preserving your values. My experiences with Francis have led to significant personal growth and better outcomes at Heroku, Manifold, and Snyk. His workshops, which I've emulated, brought improved communication and connection within my teams. I confidently recommend Francis to any engineering leader seeking a trustworthy guide for fostering a strong, authentic culture in their organization.

Leading a group of intelligent, passionate, and creative engineers from all walks of life comes with a tremendous amount of ambiguity. You have a lot of people with a lot of emotions and priorities that often don't align and don't have clear motivations. Despite that, you need to rally these folks around common goals and initiatives. Francis has coached me through many things over the years but one of the most impactful ways he has helped is by helping me see through all that ambiguity When I talk to Francis about something I'm trying to work through he listens intently and asks a bunch of probing questions. He is able to expand my perspective to uncover new paths and new opportunities that I was otherwise overlooking. He doesn't give me any answers, but after our conversations I routinely leave with a kind of clarity and confidence in my decisions I otherwise would not have reached on my own. His wisdom and thoughtfulness has helped me help my organization achieve even greater heights.

I have had the privilege of working with Francis for nearly a decade, and I can confidently say that he is the most impactful mentor and coach I have ever had. His approach to leadership and culture work is not only wise and insightful, but also grounded in practical and learnable processes that have helped me and my team navigate some of our biggest challenges.

Francis has a unique ability to help leaders build a strong and healthy team culture that is essential for the future of any organization. What I find most distinctive is his ability to balance strategic thinking with empathy and understanding. He truly understands the complex dynamics of leadership and team culture, and his insights have been instrumental in helping me navigate the challenges of building and scaling a team.

I highly recommend Francis to any leader who is looking to build a strong and productive team culture. His impact on my growth as a leader and my team's success has been immeasurable.

One of an engineering leader’s greatest strengths is building a culture that allows people to thrive and deliver. Francis has been instrumental in helping me and my teams cultivate that strength.

Francis understands that the best teams are made up of people who understand how necessary deep interpersonal relationships are to enable creative, passionate people to produce beautiful outcomes together.

He understands the needs of people, organizations, and businesses from both an intellectual level but more importantly, an emotional level. Francis' coaching style of patient listening, discussion, and exploration has provided me with immense growth along many different human axes.

Francis is adept at coaching and training not just leaders, but the teams as well. I continue to emulate and use his workshops with my teams to strengthen trust, empathy, and emotional intelligence of my teams.

I wholeheartedly recommend Francis as a coach who will support, grow, and be a big part of you and your team’s success.