Leadership & Professional Transition Programs
The Pivot: Your Next Chapter™
Leadership transitions rarely happen on a leader’s timeline. A merger reshapes the executive team. A restructuring eliminates a role. A board or council decides to go in a new direction. Whatever the cause, the leader is often expected to stay composed, protect their team, and plan their future, all while absorbing a significant professional and personal loss.
The Anchor & Ascend Institute’s Leadership Transition Support program is designed for exactly this moment. We work with the whole leader, recognizing that identity, wellbeing, finances, family, and professional reputation are all in play at once.
Who it’s for
- Executives and senior leaders who have experienced involuntary termination or a negotiated departure
- Leaders whose roles have been changed, reduced, or eliminated through a merger, acquisition, or amalgamation
- Leaders managing downsizing who are simultaneously facing uncertainty about their own position
- Organizations seeking a dignified, high-quality transition offering for departing or affected leaders
What’s included
- Stabilization and reflection: Structured early support to process the transition, manage the immediate stress response, and make sound decisions in the first critical weeks
- Executive coaching: One-on-one coaching to clarify values, strengths, and direction, and to rebuild confidence and professional identity
- Integrated clinical care: Access to our Integrated Clinical Practice, including a health and wellbeing assessment, bloodwork, and referrals, so leaders can address the physical and emotional toll of transition
- Narrative and reputation strategy: Support in shaping how the leader tells the story of their departure, in interviews, in their network, and to themselves
- Career and next-chapter planning: Guidance on next roles, consulting, board work, or a different path entirely, paced to the leader’s readiness
- Peer connection (cohort option): Confidential small-group sessions with leaders facing similar transitions
Outcomes leaders can expect
- Greater emotional steadiness and clearer decision-making
- A confident, credible account of their transition
- A defined direction and practical plan for what comes next
- Attention to health and wellbeing as part of the process, not an afterthought
Delivery options
Available as individual engagements, small cohorts, or organization-sponsored packages offered as part of a separation, restructuring, or integration plan. Sessions are delivered virtually or in person.
The Next Term™
Transition Supports for CAOs and Senior Municipal Leaders
You served council, staff, and your community faithfully. In municipal government, a CAO can be terminated without cause after years of strong performance, often right after an election or in the middle of a political shift. We understand the environment you work in. Your exit may be announced at a public meeting and reported in the local paper before you've told your family. You probably live in the community you served. Your separation agreement may limit what you can say. And the peers who understand what you're going through are often the same colleagues you'll be competing with for your next role.
The Next Term™ is a 6-month, confidential program designed for CAO and Municipal Leader Realities.
What's Included
- Stabilize. Get clear on your immediate priorities, how you'll talk about the exit publicly and privately, and when to bring in employment counsel.
- Make sense of it. Work through the loss of role and identity, separate the political from the personal, and close the chapter with integrity.
- Reposition. Shape the narrative for recruiters, panels, and your network; build language for the departure.
- Relaunch. Choose your next term, whether that's another CAO appointment, a turnaround role, consulting, or a board, and negotiate the next contract with clear eyes.
Optional wellbeing support is available through our Integrated Clinic, because leadership transitions take a toll on your health as well as your career.
For councils and boards: The Next Term™ can be included in a separation agreement as a transition benefit. It supports a respectful exit and reduces reputational risk for everyone involved. Coaching content stays confidential to the participant.
Confidential Psychotherapy for CAOs and High-Accountability Roles
The Anchor & Ascend Institute provides access to confidential clinical supports well-versed in the realities faced by CAOs and the multifactorial challenges of operating in complex governance environments
Senior executives, CAOs, and public leaders encounter unique psychological demands:
- Political volatility and reputational pressure
- Terminations and contract uncertainty
- Chronic exposure to public scrutiny
- Ethical tension and high-stakes decision fatigue
- Isolation at the top of organizational structures
Our clinicians are trained in governance complexities and offer services specifically designed to address the realities faced by CAO's and high-accountability leaders.
Our clinical services are provided by licensed psychotherapists who have experience supporting leaders in high-accountability environments.