Operator Coaching
The Trellis Leadership Diagnostic
A scored map of how you actually lead, both the operating decisions you make and the internal patterns driving them, converted into one concrete 90-day development focus. Free to take, with your scored profile returned immediately.
Mutual NDA before the debrief · Not sure yet? Take the free two-minute pulse check →
Most founder assessments measure you, then leave you to guess what Monday looks like
Inner-work firms measure your psychology and leave you to work out what it means on Monday morning. Framework operators score you against their playbook and prescribe everyone the same fixes. This one is built and delivered by an operator instead of a career coach: the person reading your results has run product at acquired startups, managed a $150M P&L at Microsoft, and made the specific mistakes it is designed to catch.
Who it is for
Founders and founding executives, typically pre-seed through Series B, past the point where raw effort covers for leadership gaps. The usual trigger moments:
- A first management layer is forming under you.
- The board relationship is getting harder.
- Revenue is plateauing while activity increases.
- You suspect the company's biggest bottleneck might be you.
What you get
A scored profile, free
Six dimensions, showing where structure is holding and where growth is outrunning it. Returned immediately when you finish.
A written report
Four to six pages reading the profile against your stage, ending on a single 90-day priority. One, deliberately. Founders do not need another list.
A 90-minute debrief
Pressure-test the findings with Erick, confirm or reject the priority, decide what comes next.
How it works
Intake, 10 minutes
Stage, team size, funding, and the leadership question keeping you up. A "3" on delegation means something different at 4 people than at 40.
Questionnaire, 25 to 30 minutes
24 scored items and 6 open prompts, written to resist flattering answers: they describe the last 30 days, not aspirations.
Perspective check, included
Two or three of your reports or co-founders answer a short version about you. The gap between the two views is usually the most valuable number in the exercise.
Report and debrief
Report within five business days of completion, then the 90-minute call.
The six dimensions
Every scored item is anchored to observable behavior in a bounded window, because "I delegate well" invites aspiration while "I redid a report's work this month" invites the truth. Two sample items per dimension below.
1. Focus
Whether you have a defensibly narrow definition of who you serve, and whether your calendar reflects it.
"In the last 30 days I have said no to a real revenue opportunity because it was outside our ICP." · "I can state, in one sentence, who we do not sell to."
2. Decision architecture
How decisions get made, how reversible ones are distinguished from irreversible ones, and whether the company knows which decisions are yours.
"My team can name which decision types require me and which do not." · "In the last 30 days, a significant decision stalled for more than a week because it was waiting on me."
3. Team leverage
Delegation, hiring bar, and whether you are the bottleneck.
"There is at least one full function I have handed off completely, including accountability for its outcomes." · "In the last 30 days I have redone a report's work myself rather than coaching them through it."
4. Commercial ownership
Your relationship to revenue: pipeline rhythm, pricing courage, and willingness to sell personally.
"I know our current pipeline coverage ratio without looking it up." · "We have raised prices, or defended them under direct pressure, within the last two quarters."
5. Self-regulation
Energy, stress response, and the degree to which your identity is fused with the company's performance.
"A bad week for the company is automatically a bad week for me personally." · "I have a recovery practice, and I actually kept it over the last 30 days."
6. Feedback metabolism
How you take in hard information from your board, customers, and team, and what you do with it.
"In the last 30 days, someone on my team told me something I did not want to hear." · "I changed a position in the last quarter because of evidence, and my team saw me do it."
How scoring works
Four items per dimension, scored 1 to 5, so each dimension lands between 4 and 20 and falls in one of three bands.
Anchored
Structure is holding; this dimension can support more weight.
Climbing
Functional but strained; likely to crack at the next stage of scale.
Exposed
Actively costing the company now.
There is no composite score. The output is a profile shape, and the debrief starts where your lowest dimension meets your stage: Exposed on Commercial Ownership means something very different pre-revenue than after a Series A.
The recommendation is honest
Sometimes it is a coaching engagement. Sometimes it is a fractional executive, a key hire, or one hard conversation you have been putting off. If you do not need a coach, the report says so in writing, and the 90-day priority is scoped so you can pursue it alone.
The assessment is free. The written report and debrief are $2,500, one time.
Includes the perspective check. Credited in full toward the first month of coaching if you continue within 30 days. Mutual NDA signed before the debrief.