About Bearing
Hi, I’m Nadia. I help capable people become confident leaders.
I spent fourteen years leading product and operations teams before I became a coach. I know what it’s like to be promoted on a Friday and handed a team on Monday, because it happened to me.
Leading teams
14 yrs
Coaching hours
3,800
Based in
Pittsburgh
Nadia WhitcombeFounder and leadership coach
My story
The manager I needed at 29.
My first management job came with a bigger title, nine direct reports and no training at all. For a year I did my old job and my new one, badly, mostly after 9pm. I thought that was what leading looked like.
A coach my company hired for the leadership team changed that in about four sessions. She didn’t tell me what to do. She asked what I was still holding on to, and why. By the end of that year I was home for dinner and my team was doing the best work of their careers.
I went on to run operations at a logistics software company through its growth from 60 to 400 people, then trained as a coach and opened Bearing in 2017. The studio is in the Strip District, five minutes from the river.
“Most leadership problems aren’t about knowing what to do. They’re about permission, practice and someone in your corner while you try.”
Nadia, on why she coaches
The path here
From the work to the people
-
2008
Product analyst
Good at spreadsheets, better at asking why.
-
2012
First-time manager
Nine reports, no training, a lot of late nights.
-
2015
Director of Operations
Scaled a team of 14 to 70 across three cities.
-
2017
Founded Bearing
Coach training complete, first studio on Penn Avenue.
-
2021
First 90 Days cohort
Twenty-two cohorts and 170 managers since.
Credentials
Trained, accredited and supervised.
Coaching is an unregulated field, so it’s worth asking any coach what stands behind their title. Here’s what stands behind mine.
-
Professional-level coaching credential
Accredited by an international coaching federation, with 500+ logged client hours and a recorded, assessed session.
-
MSc, Organizational Psychology
Dissertation on how first-time managers learn to delegate.
-
Certified 360° and strengths practitioner
Qualified to run two widely used leadership assessments.
-
Monthly supervision
I review my own practice with a senior coach every month, and follow a professional code of ethics.
How I work
Four promises to every client
-
01
Candour, with care
I’ll tell you what I see, kindly and clearly. You’re paying for honesty, not applause.
-
02
Practical over profound
Every session ends with something you’ll do differently this week.
-
03
Your answers, not mine
I bring tools and questions. You decide what kind of leader you want to be.
-
04
Confidential, always
What you say stays between us, even when your employer is paying.
Outside the studio
A few things about me
-
I row on the Allegheny most mornings from April to October, slowly.
-
Two teenagers, one retired greyhound called Biscuit, zero free weekends.
-
I host The First Hundred Days, a podcast for new managers.
-
I mentor two first-time founders a year through a local accelerator, unpaid.
If this sounds like the kind of coach you need, let’s talk.