Work With Phil
The behavior changes.
Or the engagement doesn’t continue.
Phil Lower works with leaders and organizations using the Rule of 15 — a structured, accountability-based formation system built around verifiable targets, weekly progress, and honest measurement. Every engagement is selective. Every outcome is trackable. There is no version of this that works without the work.
What working with Phil actually is
Not motivation. Not therapy. Formation with accountability.
Most leadership engagements produce awareness. Phil’s produce behavior change — and there is a structural reason for that difference. The Rule of 15 is not a curriculum to be learned. It is a formation system to be practiced, tracked, and verified. Every engagement is built around the same architecture.
A behavioral assessment with a coaching report built in
Every organizational engagement begins with the Wise Nest Leadership Assessment — a 360-degree instrument that produces a personalized 13-page coaching report for each leader. The report does not tell you what the gap is and leave the rest to a coach. It tells you exactly what to do differently for each of the 15 behaviors, calibrated to your specific score, your gap direction, and your leadership profile. The coaching is in the document.
Weekly accountability with verifiable targets
Every individual coaching engagement includes a weekly structured check-in built around specific behavioral commitments made in the prior session. Not “how are you feeling about your progress.” Specific targets. Specific outcomes. Did you do it or did you not. Phil does not accept vague self-reporting as evidence of growth — and the leaders who thrive in this environment are the ones who don’t need him to.
A leadership journal as the primary development instrument
Journaling is not optional. It is the mechanism by which the reflection that follows practice becomes permanent. Every leader Phil coaches maintains a structured leadership journal — weekly entries tied to specific Rule of 15 behaviors, tracking what happened, what the response was, and what the same situation would look like handled differently. Over time the journal becomes an honest record of who you are becoming.
Metrics that make progress undeniable
Behavior change is measurable. Gap scores move. Team perception shifts. Reassessment data tells the story without interpretation. Phil builds every engagement around the expectation that results will be visible — to the leader, to their team, and to the organizational sponsor. If the numbers are not moving, the conversation changes.
Who Phil works with
Selective by design. Not every engagement is the right fit.
Phil does not work with everyone who applies. The engagements that produce results share a common profile: the leader came in willing to be wrong, willing to do the work, and willing to own their part. If you are certain the problem is everyone else, this is not the right fit — and Phil will tell you that in the first conversation.
Individual leaders
Executives, managers, entrepreneurs, and emerging leaders who want a personal development engagement built around the Rule of 15. Weekly accountability, structured journaling, verifiable behavioral targets, and honest measurement. 1:1 coaching designed for the leader who is ready to stop knowing what they need to work on and start actually working on it.
Organizations
Companies, nonprofits, faith communities, and youth-serving organizations that want the Rule of 15 deployed across their leadership layer — with the Wise Nest assessment, personalized coaching reports, facilitated debriefs, and a transfer model that leaves the program in your hands. The organizational program is built for mid-size organizations of 10 to 500 people where leadership behavior is the difference between good and great.
Leadership teams
Intact teams who need a shared behavioral language and a formation system that accounts for the different wiring around the table. The assessment surfaces the gaps. The debrief creates the shared vocabulary. The 90-day follow-up holds the commitments. Teams that go through this together do not come out the same — and that is measurable.
Leaders in transition
Leaders moving into new roles, navigating succession, rebuilding after a setback, or preparing for the next level of impact. Transition is the highest-leverage moment for behavioral formation — the old patterns have been disrupted and the new ones are not yet set. Phil builds the development plan around the specific behaviors the transition demands.
What gets accomplished
This is what Phil loves talking about.
The work Phil does with leaders and organizations is not abstract. It produces specific, observable outcomes — in the data, in the team’s experience, and in the culture. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Gap scores move — and teams notice before the leader does
The reassessment data from 90-day follow-ups consistently shows meaningful gap reduction on the behaviors leaders committed to. More importantly, team perception shifts before the leader’s self-rating catches up — which means the behavior change is real, not reported.
Leaders stop avoiding the conversations they have been avoiding
The single most common outcome Phil hears from individual coaching clients is that they finally had the conversation they had been postponing for months or years. Not because they felt ready. Because the formation work made the behavior automatic enough that the discomfort was no longer the deciding factor.
Culture shifts from what people say to what people do
Organizations that go through the Rule of 15 program develop a shared behavioral vocabulary that makes culture conversations specific rather than aspirational. “We value transparency” becomes a conversation about Be Transparent gap scores and what specific leaders are doing differently. The language changes how accountability works.
The program belongs to the organization — not to Phil
Every organizational engagement is designed to end with the client needing Phil less. Certified internal facilitators, documented protocols, and an assessment infrastructure that runs independently. The goal is your self-sufficiency. That is what transfer means — and it is the outcome Phil is most proud of.
How every engagement begins
Discovery first. Proposal second. Work third.
Phil does not quote fees before he understands your situation. He does not propose a program before he knows what you actually need. Every engagement follows the same opening — because the quality of the outcome depends entirely on the quality of the diagnosis.
The Survey
Five questions. Three minutes. Tells Phil who you are, what you are trying to solve, and whether this is the right fit — before anyone spends an hour on a call.
Discovery Conversation
A focused 45 to 60 minute conversation to understand your leadership challenge at depth. Phil listens first. He will ask questions that go beneath the presenting problem — and he will tell you honestly if this is not the right fit.
Custom Proposal
A written proposal built around your specific situation — engagement type, timeline, format, and expected outcomes. No templates. No packages that do not fit. If the proposal does not match your situation exactly, it goes back.
The Work
Formation takes time. The engagements that produce the results described on this page are built for the long arc — weekly, accountable, measurable, and honest. The leader you want to be is built one behavior at a time.
Ready to find out if this is the right fit?
Five questions. Three minutes.
Phil will take it from there.
Tell Phil about your situation — who you are, what you are trying to solve, and what success would look like. He reviews every submission personally and responds within 2 business days to schedule your Discovery Conversation.
Common Questions
The questions worth asking before you decide.
The reason leadership development does not hold is not the content — it is the architecture. Information without formation produces knowledge, not change. The Rule of 15 is built on weekly practice cycles, structured reflection, and verifiable behavioral targets. The results do not fade because the behaviors become automatic — and the reassessment data makes that visible. If you have been through programs that felt meaningful in the room and disappeared in three months, the question is not whether you are coachable. The question is whether the program was built to last.
Phil is direct about this in every discovery conversation. The leaders who get results from this work are not the ones who feel most motivated at the start. They are the ones who show up every week whether they feel like it or not, do the journaling when it is inconvenient, and bring honest data to every check-in. If that sounds like more than you are willing to commit to, the survey is still worth completing — because the right answer might be a different engagement type, a different timeline, or a different starting point. Phil will tell you what he sees.
No organization feels ready for honest data about its leadership gaps. The assessment surfaces things people have sensed but never quantified — and that is uncomfortable before it is useful. What Phil has found is that organizations do not need to be ready. They need one sponsor who is willing to start, one cohort that goes through the process honestly, and ninety days of data that makes the conversation undeniable. The readiness comes from the results. If you have a sponsor who is willing to go first, that is enough to begin.
The first conversation costs nothing.
If this is the right fit, you will know it in 45 minutes.
Phil’s discovery conversation is a diagnostic, not a sales call. He will ask direct questions about your situation, tell you honestly what he sees, and tell you just as honestly if this is not the right fit. That clarity is free — and it is the first thing Phil delivers in every engagement.
