Leading Through Fire

The game changed. Your tools didn't.

Are you a high performer facing an expansion phase in your life and business?

The pace of your work and your life keeps climbing. Left unmanaged, that pace hardens into poor habits, dysfunctional teams and performance that stalls out right when you need it most.

The leadership models most of us were handed were built for a slower, more predictable world. They hold up in calm water. They come apart in a storm.

You can't just stay afloat and wait for the water to calm down. You have to keep moving toward where you're going, and train for the conditions before they hit. Leading Through Fire installs a new operating system built for exactly that.

Who this is for

This isn't for everyone. It might be for you.

We keep cohorts small and serious. You're a fit if all three of these are true.

You want embodied tools, not theory

You're done with leadership content you nod along to and forget. You want practices you can actually run when the heat's on.

You lead at least 3 people

You carry real organizational weight, and the calls you make land on other people's lives and work.

You know it's not going back to normal

You've stopped waiting for the world to settle down and you're ready to lead through what's actually in front of you.

Stop waiting. Train for it.

A two-year MBA,compressed into six weeks.

Stop waiting for your development to happen slowly, over time. Train for it on purpose.

Most executive education hands you 100% of the theory and about 20% of what you'll ever use. We flipped it. Leading Through Fire is the top 20% of leadership knowledge that drives 80% of the results, filler stripped out, built to put to work the same week you learn it.

These tools have been pressure-tested with executives running organizations from $10M to $50B in revenue, and refined on high-altitude mountaineering expeditions.

The frameworks are synthesized from the sharpest research and highest-stakes training grounds on earth:

Harvard Negotiation ProjectStanfordColumbia Navy SEALsNOLSU.S. Naval War College

Why listen to Jamie

The people at the frontier already have.

See what other leaders have shared about Jamie's books and work.

"A wonderful job of balancing the promises, perils, and how-to prescriptions of engineering peak states such as 'flow.'"

Tim Ferriss

Entrepreneur, investor, NYT bestselling author

"A user-manual for hacking your brain to drive high performance."

Peter Diamandis

Founder, XPRIZE · Co-chairman, Singularity University

"Blew us away. Our whole group has talked of nothing else this week."

Dane Holmes

Senior Partner, Goldman Sachs

"Jamie has amazing and fresh ideas on attaining higher performance states. When he talks, I listen."

Kristen Ulmer

Professional extreme skier

"An invaluable roadmap for transformational consciousness and culture."

Rick Doblin

Founder, MAPS

"Cracks the code of peak performance so ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results."

Mark Divine

Founder, SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind

"A savvy, intriguing and novel roadmap to self-renewal. You won't forget this gem, it's a fascinating read."

Helen Fisher

Senior Research Fellow, The Kinsey Institute

"They have placed themselves at the front lines of these practices and offer sage advice on how to engage with them for maximum benefit and minimum risk."

Aubrey Marcus

Founder of Onnit · NYT bestselling author

The install

Eight tools you'll actually keep.

Working models you'll run on your real relationships, teams and decisions, starting the week you learn them.

The mechanics of change

How personal and professional change actually happens, so you can drive it on purpose.

Full-spectrum resilience

Build intellectual, emotional and physical resilience that holds under real load.

Map tribal politics

See the hidden games in any room, and three questions that neutralize them.

Deepen and set boundaries

Go deeper in the relationships that matter while holding clean, firm lines.

Hold paradox and polarity

Stop forcing false either/or choices and lead from the opposable mind.

Disarm self-sabotage

Find the hidden commitments quietly working against your stated goals.

Radical hope and courage

Lead courageously toward a future worth building when the odds look long.

Catch unconscious bias

Recognize the biases shaping your calls before they cost you and your people.

How you'll learn it

See one. Do one. Teach one.

The fastest way to own a skill is to use it on Monday and teach it on Friday. Every week runs the same loop.

See one

Watch the week's video lesson and get the model, the research behind it, and exactly how it works.

Do one

Apply the tool directly to your own team, organization and life while it's still fresh.

Teach one

Review and iterate with your training partner, because teaching it is how you truly learn it.

What's included

An upgrade to your leadership OS.

Content alone doesn't change how you lead. This is built as a system: instruction, peers and live access.

Weekly video lessons

High-impact models drawn from academia and special operations, delivered in tight, usable lessons.

Your "boat team"

A cohort of 6–8 peers you practice, study and stay accountable with for the full six weeks.

Live office hours

Weekly Q&A with Jamie Wheal over Zoom, recorded so you never miss one.

The outcome

At the end of six weeks, how will you improve?

You won't just know more. You'll be able to do things in front of your team that you can't reliably do today.

Run the conversation you've been avoiding

Set a clean boundary, deliver the hard feedback, or make the call you've been sitting on, with a clear move for each.

Read the politics in any room

Spot the hidden games and quiet resentments early, and defuse them with a few well-placed questions before they derail the quarter.

Stay clear-headed under pressure

Think straight and lead well when it's volatile and loud, instead of freezing, overworking, or passing the stress down the line.

Build a team that doesn't need rescuing

Stop being the bottleneck. Grow real capacity in your people instead of dependence on you.

The curriculum

Six weeks, week by week.

Each week stacks a new tool onto the last. By the end you're running the full operating system.

Week 01

Learning to Learn: Meta ModelsBuild Your Leadership Foundation

Learn the mechanics behind personal and professional change and how to shift towards continual growth by default. You'll develop a rock solid understanding of how humans learn, so you're better equipped to lead, manage, inspire and develop your team.

Week 02

Transactional Analysis 2.0Mapping the Games People Play

An overview of human developmental models, plus how to map and neutralize tribal office politics once and for all with three simple questions. You'll learn how to minimize victimhood, maximize personal responsibility, and constantly steer people back to taking ownership over what's theirs to do.

Week 03

Accentuate the NegativeDrop Everything But Your #1 Task

Skillfully deepen (rather than mess up) relationships in establishing healthy boundaries with colleagues. You'll navigate conversations with your team to protect and preserve the space to do what is most essential to you.

Week 04

Wicked Solutions to Wicked ProblemsEmbrace Polarities to Reach Strategic Clarity

Manage conflicting paradoxes and the power of polarities to solve wicked problems. At a certain level of complexity, we need to go beyond binary solutions to reach clarity. You'll learn how to develop what Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, calls the "opposable mind": the ability to hold multiple opposing solutions and steer dynamically between them.

Week 05

Immunity to ChangeEliminate Self-Sabotage Once and For All

The most potent tool outside a therapy couch for understanding self-sabotage and your company's blind spots. You'll identify the hidden motivators and drivers anchoring you to your present state, and exactly how to eliminate them to reach true high performance as a leader.

Week 06

Heroic LeadershipBecome a Courageous, Impact-Driven Leader

Develop radical hope and lead from a deep sense of courage that extends out to your family, organization, community and the world. You'll learn how to spot the unintended consequences of high-impact leadership, so you're not knocked off balance when hits come your way.

Bonus Week

Surviving & Thriving in VUCA ConditionsHow SEALs Lead Through Conflict

Build intellectual, emotional and physical resilience for when things get unstable. A special-operations deep dive on how elite teams stay cohesive, calm and decisive when the stakes are highest.

From the graduates

What other leaders have to say.

"This course stands out as the single most important leadership course, because it not only gave me the tools to navigate the role, but helped me understand why I should embrace the role of leader in the first place. I feel ready, able and willing to show up for my family, employees, customers and community in a way I've never felt so clear about."

Nik Tarascio

CEO, Ventura Air Services

"Leading Through Fire has been a hugely powerful experience for me. Good leaders communicate well and build strong relationships, and this is a toolbox to level up both. What I've learnt in these six weeks will support me for the rest of my life."

Gareth Pickering

Co-Creator, Call to Courage Podcast

"The Leading Through Fire course was exactly the right course for this time. When the world seems to be falling apart around us, taking a moment to learn the tools to not only survive but thrive... I would recommend this course to anyone looking to be a force for change."

Stephen Hawkins

CEO & Co-Founder, CRS Group

"The sheer depth, not volume, depth of content was incredibly fascinating and would have been worth the price alone. The community that supports integration is invaluable. Together they create a platform I'll keep learning from for the rest of my life."

Jeff Engelhardt

Principal, Corporate Strategy, Boeing

"The course was great. Finding and challenging my Big Assumptions proved essential for my growth. The tools I was introduced to have been very useful."

John Clarke

Manager, Sunshine Prosthetics

"Leading Through Fire a year on is still giving. The course was eye opening and intense. It made me review so much about my business and personal relationships. It was exciting to go deeper, to be given more insightful practices with positive outcomes."

Holly Murray

Owner & Director, Pi Studio

"This class started where other leadership courses all fall short. It takes you to the places that keep you awake at night and invites you to face the uncertainties. By doing the work it helps you find your way and grow as a leader. It is now a part of me."

Brian Logue

Manager, University of Colorado School of Medicine

"Without a doubt one of the best leadership courses that I have taken. The format, the lessons, the resources, and the interaction have been tremendous. I will use everything I learned to make the world around me a better place."

Max Kerr, DDS

Co-Owner, Sleep Better Austin

"Buckle up and pay attention, there's a lot of content. Jamie's courses are really excellent and content rich. A great way to get all the essential leadership knowledge in one place, well packaged and well delivered."

John Brennan

Finance Executive

Included bonuses

Three more, on the house.

Bonus 01

Change-maker interviews

Private conversations with Deloitte principal Mike Juergens and former Airbnb global head of hospitality Chip Conley on leading organizational change.

Bonus 02

Performance Priming Practice

Four methods combining breathwork, nutrition, movement and music to prime yourself for peak performance on demand.

Bonus 03

The full toolkit library

Open-source access to the frameworks, worksheets and resources from every week, yours to keep and keep using.

The leverage

The human part is the whole game.

We've trained some of the biggest companies in the world, and you'd assume they already had it figured out. But they all showed up for the same thing. Not strategy. The human part: reading people, moving them, running the one conversation that decides the whole quarter. We have what they wanted.

Humans are more predictable than they feel. The same patterns show up, the same fail points break teams, and the moves that work keep working. So instead of a thousand ideas you'll use once, you drill the few that run every hard conversation, every tough call, every room you're trying to move. You practice them live, then you take them home to work and life.

Questions

Good to know.

How much time does it take each week?+

Plan for 3–5 hours a week: a focused video lesson, a real-world application of that week's tool, and time with your boat team and training partner. It's built for busy professionals, so the load is deliberately kept lean, and the live office hours are recorded if you can't make them.

Is it live or self-paced?+

Both. Lessons are on-demand so you can fit them around your schedule, while the weekly office hours with Jamie and your boat team keep it live, accountable and personal.

What does it cost, and why apply?+

We keep cohorts small and serious, so admission is by application rather than an open checkout. Once we've confirmed it's a good fit, we'll walk you through tuition, payment options, and group rates for teams. Apply and we'll be in touch.

Can my company pay for it?+

Often, yes. Many participants expense the program, and we'll give you a ready-to-send template to request reimbursement, plus group tuition rates if you want to enroll several leaders together.

Become a high-performing leader.Upgrade your leadership operating system.