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Practice the Hard Meetings

Before You're In Them

A live bootcamp for Program Managers and TPMs who want to learn to handle the dominators, the silent rooms, and the gridlock… by actually doing it, not just reading about it.

Built from 7 years running this training inside Google, Uber, and Netflix. Unlimited lecture attendance and each cohort is capped at 6 people so everyone gets real practice time.

I'd like more info

You know the frameworks. The room doesn't care.

You've read the books. You know what good facilitation looks like. Then you're in a real meeting and an engineer goes deep into the weeds, a stakeholder drops a surprise requirement, two execs start arguing, and three conversations are happening at once.

Knowing what to do and doing it under pressure are different skills. This bootcamp is where you build the second one.

Five 1-hour Sessions. Practical tools. Real practice.

In Sessions 1 and 2, we explore and practice the essentials: clear communication, confident presence, stakeholder trust and accountability, and techniques for facilitating meetings and handling challenging behaviors. In Sessions 3 through 5 each cohort participant will run a live 12-minute meeting role-play with the group, using their own meeting doc or template.

The scenarios are fictional (a Hogwarts wand launch, a Starfleet starship delay) so you can focus on the mechanics of running the room, not on whether you know the "right" business answer.

  • Five 1-hour sessions

  • 2x 12-minute live role-plays each cohort session in Sessions 3 through 5, rotating roles

  • Real-time feedback from me and your cohort

  • Cohorts capped at 6 people

  • A script for naming when a meeting has split into multiple side conversations and pulling it back together

  • A way to park a tangent on screen so people feel heard without losing the agenda

  • How to draw a quiet stakeholder into the conversation without putting them on the spot

  • Real-time note-taking that tracks blockers and assigns action items as they happen, not at the end

  • Practice handling a stakeholder who won't stop explaining, and one who's checked out entirely

What you'll actually walk away with:

The Five Days

  • Session 1 — Communicate with clarity, confidence, and influence

  • Session 2 — Build accountability and facilitate challenging meetings

  • Session 3 — Live role-plays: the dependency trap, the compliance hijack

  • Session 4 — Live role-plays: the impossible deadline, the executive standoff

  • Session 5 — Live role-plays: the tangent-prone friends, the duplicate-effort fight

  • "I walked away with a practical toolkit I could use in real meetings right away, and a lot more confidence managing chaos on a tight clock."

    Sandeep Chakraborty, Technical Program Manager, Google

  • "Don's sessions gave us immediate, actionable strategies for executive communication. And it was genuinely fun."

    Nir Erez, Technical Program Manager, Google Cloud

Who’s Teaching This

I've spent 7 years teaching business communication and team facilitation at Google, Netflix, and Uber, including co-developing Google Cloud's TPM bootcamp. Before that, I performed with Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group, so I know a thing or two about staying steady when a room goes sideways.

I built this bootcamp because the gap I kept seeing wasn't knowledge. It was practice.

The Details

  • Five 1-hour sessions

  • Sessions 1–2: Interactive training and discussion- unlimited attendance

  • Sessions 3–5: Live practice- up to 6 participants per cohort

  • Format: Live virtual

I'd like more info