Didier Sylvain
Executive coach, facilitator and speaker. Los Angeles.
Leaders come to me when the old way of pushing harder stops working.
Usually something's changed. A bigger role. A reorganization. A team that's stopped telling each other the truth. The strategy is usually fine. What's missing is the capacity to carry it.
I'm an executive coach, facilitator and speaker. I coach CEOs, executive directors, founders and senior leaders one to one. I run leadership and manager development programs. And I work alongside CEOs and Chief People Officers on embedded leadership development, for organizations that need more than a workshop but aren't ready to hire a full-time head of learning and development.
Who I Work With
Honda/Pinterest/Workday/Verizon/Carta/Target/Puma/Humana/Yahoo/The New York Times/Lionsgate/WME/GLAAD/NBA Foundation/James Beard Foundation/National Center for Family Philanthropy/Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business/The Elevate Prize/Esalen Institute
I've worked with leaders in the US, the UK, Europe, South Asia, Africa and Australia.
Where This Came From
My leadership training started at Coro in St. Louis, where I was a Fellow. What I studied there was general semantics: how language shapes what a group is able to perceive, and therefore what it's able to do. Almost everything I've built since runs from that. It's why my work begins with naming what's actually happening in a room, and it's why my book is twenty-six words.
From there: Deloitte, in strategy and operations, working on organizational alignment for companies of five thousand to forty thousand people. Then Echoing Green, delivering leadership development to a global fellowship of more than 500 social entrepreneurs across 80 countries. Then graduate school at Columbia, where I earned an MPhil in Music and completed doctoral coursework in ethnomusicology.
I taught Leadership in Action as guest faculty in Carnegie Mellon's Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship Program, a national pipeline program for students underrepresented in public service. Since March 2025 I've been on faculty at the Esalen Institute, designing multi-day workshops that integrate leadership, embodied inquiry, relational practice, creativity and reflection.
How I Was Trained
Coach training at the Co-Active Training Institute. Somatics through the Strozzi Institute. An apprenticeship with Zander Grashow, one of the co-authors of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Certification in the Leadership Circle Profile 360 through the Full Circle Group, accreditation in the iEQ9 Enneagram, and facilitator training through GAP Community.
I mention all of it because none of it is decoration. Each one is a distinct way of seeing what's happening in a person or a room, and the work draws on all of them.
What I've Learned
Insight isn't the constraint. Most leaders already know what they'd do differently. What changes things is practice, the quality of the relationships around them, and whether they can stay present when it matters.
So the work is direct, and it's built to survive contact with a real Tuesday. I also build the unglamorous parts: capability models, manager foundations, learning pathways, and the evaluation systems that tell you whether behavior actually changed.
The Dopeness Within
Alongside the client work I'm building The Dopeness Within, a body of practice for people who lead and guide change in others. Its first piece is The Dopeness Dictionary, twenty-six words for self-leadership. The full field guide comes in 2027.
Beyond The Work
I study tai chi and calligraphy, and I make music as a multi-instrumentalist and producer. I live in Los Angeles with my family.
If you're carrying something consequential, at work or in your own leadership, I'd like to hear about it.
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