Find the step forward on difficult challenges — out there, as well as inside.
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Powerful questions and deep listening to help you see clearly what’s in the way.
I work with people who are navigating something difficult: a leadership challenge in their work or community, a professional transition, or a moment where what used to work doesn’t anymore.
When we get stuck, we're often at a learning edge. Part of the challenge may live out there, but part of it lives in how we're meeting the situation: a habit, a story, a place where something tightens. My work is to sit with you so we can look at this directly. What we can see clearly, we can begin to work with — and what we can work with loses its grip on us, freeing up new ways of responding, new capacity, new choices. This is what developmental growth feels like.
Leadership Coaching
For people navigating something complex — a recurring pattern, a transition, a leadership challenge, or a moment where you sense that moving forward requires more than a new strategy.
Maybe you’ve tried to move an something forward, but keep hitting the same wall.
Maybe you're in transition and can't quite see the path ahead.
Maybe you’re caught in complex team dynamics, or facing resistance from people whose support you need.
Or maybe you sense that the obstacle isn’t just “out there,” but has something to do with how you’re showing up.
I work with clients to explore both dimensions: the situation in front of them, and the inner patterns shaping how they’re meeting it. My approach is grounded in Adaptive Leadership – a methodology developed over forty years at the Harvard Kennedy School — alongside frameworks from adult development theory that help illuminate how we grow, and what gets in the way.
In practice, this means looking at your challenge from two directions:
From the outside in — we diagnose what's happening in your team, organization, or situation: the dynamics, the relationships, the unspoken loyalties that keep things stuck.
Things we might explore:
Your relationship to authority: How do you react to others’ authority, and how do you allow yourself to carry your own?
Group dynamics: How are relationships and roles on your team shaping the challenge you’re facing?
From the inside out — we explore what's happening in you: the habits, the stories, the emotional reactions that shape how you're meeting the challenge.
Often, the most important work lives at the intersection of these two.
Identity and culture: How has your background (family, culture, gender, race, etc) shaped the way you relate to others? How do dynamics of power and belonging show up in your work?
Hidden commitments: What fears or needs might be keeping you, or others, from acting differently?
Teaching & Facilitation
I design and teach learning experiences that help participants see their systems more clearly and act more effectively within them. My pedagogy develops skills in systems thinking, reflective practice, and the capacity to intervene for meaningful change.
This includes one-off workshops, short-term intensives, and semester-long university courses. I’ve taught policy students at the Harvard Kennedy School, design and planning students at MIT and Wentworth Institute of Technology, and healthcare professionals through the Global Fund and St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
I also train changemakers and activists to deepen their effectiveness by exploring identity, belonging, and how to learn from conflict.
Consulting
I help organizations see and address the root causes of their toughest challenges. Using the Adaptive Leadership framework, I work with teams to uncover the cultural, relational, and structural dynamics that hold problems in place — from organizational identity and authority patterns to questions of trust, belonging, and resistance to change. We build the capacity to face complexity, hold tension, and move forward together.
My work often begins with a diagnostic deep dive: interviews and system mapping to clarify what’s really happening beneath the surface. From there, we design tailored interventions — assembling cross-level steering groups, facilitating team dialogues, or integrating targeted coaching and training — to help the organization learn its way forward.
In past consulting work, I’ve helped city governments (Boston, MA; Everett, MA; Aubervilliers, France) and nonprofits (Friends of Waterfront Seattle; Welcoming America) make progress on complex, human-centered challenges.
What this work looks like:
Diagnosis & Framing: Uncover the hidden dynamics — relationships, incentives, and unspoken loyalties — that sustain challenges, and clarify your shared purpose or theory of change.
Leadership & Team Workshops: Facilitate Adaptive Leadership sessions that strengthen teams’ capacity to navigate uncertainty, hold tension, and build common purpose.
Civic Engagement & Stakeholder Dialogue: Partner with cities and nonprofits to design participatory processes that foster trust, inclusion, and collaborative action.
About Géraud
I help people pay attention — without judgment — to their own presence, to the quality of their relationships, and to the underlying dynamics of the groups they’re part of that signal something is ready to shift. My role is to create the container, with both support and challenge, in which individuals and groups can grow their capacity to navigate complexity.
I trained and taught at the Harvard Kennedy School and MIT, working with hundreds of graduate students and mid-career professionals on leadership and transformation. Earlier in my career, I spent eight years working on place-based change: consulting with the United Nations in India and with local governments and civil-sector organizations in France and the United States.
Now based in Paris, France, but raised across three continents, I carry a deep curiosity for how people and systems grow — and how cultures learn to hold conflict and live together.
“Géraud’s poignant questioning draws forward what is most true and courageous. He helped me see myself through new eyes — and embody a more grounded, expressive leadership presence.”
-Milly Roberts, Educator, Coaching Client
“I was struggling with how to lead from my core values in a high-pressure context. Géraud helped me find a way to make decisions that are truly authentic, which has profoundly improved me as both a person and a leader.”
-Meera Ravi, Executive Director, Coaching Client
Get in Touch
If you’re curious about working together, or wondering how coaching or facilitation might support your next step, please reach out. Send a message, or schedule a free 30-minute exploratory conversation below.