The Curriculum

The program is deliberately sequenced: managers start with who they are as a leader, build the core operating skills, navigate the human complexity of managing people, and finish with a module on AI leadership before integrating everything into a 90-day plan they walk away with and immediately use.

The focus of every module is the same: not what a good manager looks like in theory, but how they operate day to day with their actual team.

Weekly Modules

Module 1: Identity and Team Mission

Learn about values, behaviors, and the mindset shift from individual contributor to manager. Define the team's mission and organizational value.

Module 2: Goal Setting, Metrics, and Business Acumen

Set meaningful goals aligned with real engineering work. Use metrics responsibly, connect technical decisions to business outcomes, and communicate them clearly.

Module 3: Communication, Conflict, and Cross-Functional Leadership

Productive 1:1s, clear executive updates, confident conflict resolution, and credible representation of engineering across the organization.

Module 4: Personal and Team Accountability

Build reliable follow-through and hold teams accountable without micromanaging. Design a weekly leadership cadence that creates predictability.

Module 5: Delegation, Trust-Building, and Hiring

Delegate based on readiness, build genuine trust, develop autonomous engineers, and hire for team fit beyond technical skill.

Module 6: Driving Execution and Cross-Functional Delivery

Maintain delivery momentum, detect blockers early, escalate appropriately, and coordinate across teams without losing ownership.

Module 7: Motivation, Resilience, Burnout, and Performance

Sustain high performance without sacrificing team health or your own. Recognize burnout signals before they become crises, and give meaningful feedback that leads to growth.

Module 8: AI Leadership and Team Governance

Assess AI risks in team workflows. Set proactive AI norms before policy forces the issue. Lead the transition thoughtfully and defend a clear point of view.

Module 9: Practical AI Workflows for You and Your Team

Use AI to improve your own effectiveness as a manager and help your team do the same, responsibly, without eroding the skills that matter.

Module 10: Building Your Leadership Roadmap

Integrate all program skills into a 90-day plan and capstone presentation. Build the habits and operating rhythm that sustain great leadership over the long haul.

Included During the Program

Weekly Modules (90 Minutes - Live Virtual Sessions)

  • 60 minutes of interactive instruction and discussion

  • 30 minutes of optional Q&A to allow participants to address specific questions or scenarios together

1:1 Coaching Session

  • One hour of private coaching with Jonathan, scheduled at the point in the program most useful for each participant

  • Additional sessions available for purchase

Between Sessions

  • Curated learning from management books, articles, and videos

  • Personal writing assignment to promote reflection, not graded/submitted, just yours

Capstone Project

  • A complete, personal Leadership Roadmap completed in the final session

  • A 90-day plan built from everything learned

After the Program

The cohort experience ends at module 10. The development does not.

Every Manager Atlas graduate receives six months of free access to Jonathan's weekly group coaching calls. These are live working sessions where graduates bring real situations, real decisions, and real challenges from their teams and work through them together with Jonathan as coach.

This is where the transformation cements. The 90-day plan meets reality. The skills get tested. The habits either stick or they get refined.

It is also where the real work on AI leadership continues. The pace of change in capability, productivity, and how teams actually use these tools is moving faster than any program can fully anticipate. Modules 8 and 9 build the foundation, but the weekly calls are where that foundation gets stress-tested against what is actually happening in your organization right now. Managers in the same industry, facing the same pressures, working through what is landing and what is not, facilitated by someone who has led software teams through significant change.

No one has a perfect playbook for this transition. The weekly calls are where managers stop pretending they do and start doing the harder work of figuring it out together.

Included after graduation:

  • Six months of free access to Jonathan's group coaching calls

  • Lifetime access to all session recordings and course materials

  • Option to continue as a monthly membership after the initial six months

  • Additional 1:1 coaching sessions with Jonathan available for purchase at any time

About the group coaching calls:

The group coaching call runs twice a month on a consistent schedule, with additional sessions added as the community grows. Members receive advance notice of the schedule each month. The commitment is consistent access to Jonathan and a peer group of managers navigating the same challenges, not a fixed number of calls per calendar month. Membership is billed monthly. There are no per-call credits or refunds for scheduled breaks, consistent with how any professional membership or retainer is structured.