Before I started working with executives, I sat with people at the edge of what a person can carry.
And I still do.
The special operations and intelligence communities. First responders. Leaders serving in four presidential administrations.
01 / Where this comes from
That work shapes how I see leadership.
The thing limiting most senior leaders isn’t strategy. You have an entire executive team for that. It’s the inner machinery — the way your system learned to respond to pressure. It shows up in whether you avoid conflict or steamroll through it, and in how steady you stay when a board meeting turns tense. And it follows you home, to the version of yourself your family gets at the end of the day. Most coaches can’t work at that level.
I’ve been working there for twenty years.
02 / A different kind of trainer
I once had a friend who was a pitcher for a professional baseball team. His trainer helped him add 3 mph to his fastball.
That might not sound like much. But at the highest level, it can be the difference between a spot in the rotation and another season in the minors.
The trainer couldn’t throw 98 himself. His talent was in something else. He understood the biomechanics of how the body produces power, and where it leaks. That’s how he helped an athlete already at the top of his game get even better.
That’s my work. I’ve never run a Fortune 500 company, and I don’t pretend otherwise. My expertise is the inner machinery.
The leaders I work with are already exceptional. What holds them back is usually hard to see. It’s buried under years of success, and under the very strategies that got them there. Those strategies worked. Some still do. But somewhere along the way, their effectiveness started to give.
I’m trained to look there.
03 / Your world
Insight that stays in my office doesn’t help you. A session can bring relief, even inspiration — but that isn’t the point. The point is what changes after you leave.
My job is to translate the work into your world: the decisions you make, the meetings you run, the people you lead.
That means I have to understand it. I studied finance at Tulane, and I’ve built a business of my own. I know what it’s like to make payroll, and to sit with a decision that has no good option.
I’ve worked with CEOs of private equity–backed companies, partners at major law firms, and senior leaders of multinational corporations. Each runs on different rules.
What’s underneath is the same.
04 / The path
My route here wasn’t typical. I spent years in the music industry, producing and tour-managing, which meant getting talented, high-ego people to do their best work under pressure, every night. Then creative leadership in the nonprofit space. Then clinical training, and a decade of the deepest work there is.
Most coaches come to this work from one direction. I came from several. For a long time, I was self-conscious about that. My résumé read like someone who couldn’t decide what he wanted to do.
Each of those rooms taught me to see a different part of what a leader is carrying.
A client once told me the range is what makes the work different. I think it’s also what makes it work.
05 / Why I do this
When work is toxic, we don’t leave it at the office. We carry it home, to our spouses, our kids, our friends, our communities.
A healthy organization ripples outward the same way.
Work can be a place where we find meaning and purpose, not just a paycheck or something to survive.
I believe internal clarity improves external leadership. I believe healthier leaders build healthier organizations.
Profitability often improves too. That matters. But the impact I care about most goes home with your people.
Helping set that cascade in motion is my way of making the world a little better, one leader and one organization at a time.
06 / Outside the work
I'm married to Sarah. We started The McClerren Group together in 2019, and she's still my sharpest colleague.
We live in Northern Virginia with our two daughters. When I'm not working, I'm usually running on the W&OD Trail, swinging kettlebells in my basement, or exploring DC with my three girls.
— Eric
Speak freely. Think clearly.
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