From doing the work to leading the team.

I’m Francis Madison. I coach new and middle managers in and around Sparta, Wisconsin. Most of the people I work with got promoted because they were good at the job, then found out that running a crew is a different job and nobody handed them a manual for it.

How we work together

Three formats, one idea behind all of them. Management is a set of habits you can practice, not a personality you either have or you do not.

One on one

An hour every couple of weeks, in person or over the phone. You bring whatever is sitting on your plate that week, we work through it, and you leave with something to try before we talk again.

Group workshops

Half a day with four to ten managers from the same company. Feedback, delegation, hard conversations, running a shift meeting people do not dread. Practice, not slides.

Team sessions

I come to you. A full day with your leadership group, usually off site, working on something you already know is broken. Shift handovers, scheduling, the way decisions get made.

Not sure where to start?

Tell me what is going on with your crew. Forty-five minutes on the phone, no charge, and an honest answer about whether coaching is the right thing for it.

Promoted more than one person this year?

A half day on site with all of them together usually does more than three separate coaching tracks, and costs less. Workshops run at your place, around your shift pattern.

My story

I spent eleven years in production, the last six as a plant supervisor at a food processing operation in Monroe County. I got promoted the way most people do, which is to say suddenly and without much of a briefing.

I got plenty of it wrong. I hid in the work, I sat on feedback until it came out sideways, and I nearly lost two good people over it. What turned things around was an older manager down the road who was willing to sit with me every couple of weeks and ask questions. That is the job I do now.