Ashley Michael,
PCC, CHRL
Helping organizations turn their hardest workers into their strongest leaders.
About Me
I've seen leadership from nearly every angle.
I spent over a decade at McLean & Company, where I worked across HR research, consulting, and program design. A lot of that time was spent with executive teams and their engagement data, and I was often in the room when the numbers made it clear that something wasn't working at the top. What struck me, again and again, was how much the quality of leadership shaped how people actually felt about their work. More than pay, more than perks, more than almost anything. That's what pulled me toward coaching. I built and ran McLean's coaching practice, and then spent three and a half years as a Senior Coach at The Roundtable, a firm focused on cohort and team-based coaching. All in, I've delivered more than 1,250 coaching sessions with leaders from Manager to SVP, across almost every industry you can name, including financial services, retail, CPG, tech, and government.
Somewhere in all those sessions, a pattern became hard to ignore. The leaders who needed the most support were never the ones anyone would have flagged as struggling. They were the high performers. The reliable ones, the ones carrying more than their share, who had quietly hit a ceiling. And in almost every case, the fastest way through wasn't more work on the leader themselves. It was changing how they ran their team. When a leader starts coaching instead of rescuing, expecting more from their people, and building real accountability, everything else starts to move.
I understood that ceiling personally. Early in my career I was passed over for a high-potential program, even though the feedback on my work had always been excellent. I was doing everything right, except operating like a leader. Nobody could tell me what that actually meant in practice, so I had to figure it out through trial and error. That experience is a big part of why I don't coach from theory, and why I never assume a struggling leader is a weak one.
In 2025 I launched Causeway Coaching to work directly with senior leaders and the organizations that develop them.
My Approach
My style is calm, direct, and grounded. I create space for leaders to slow down, think clearly, and get to the heart of what's actually driving a situation. I listen for patterns, surface what may be going unsaid, and help people get practical about next steps that feel both honest and doable.
I work best with leaders who are thoughtful and self-aware, and ready to do something different. Not leaders in crisis, but leaders who sense there's a better way to operate and are ready to find it.
Credentials
Professional Certified Coach (PCC), International Coaching Federation
Certified Human Resources Leader (CHRL), HRPA
Assessment Certifications
Hogan Leadership Assessments
Everything DiSC®
LEA 360™
Individual Directions Inventory™ (IDI™)
Personal Directions®
Strong Interest Inventory