About Meera
Eleven years in industry, five promotions without once feeling ready, one retraining, six hundred coaching hours. Here’s the honest version of how I got here – and exactly how I work when you’re in the room.
Meera Shah · MSc, PCC · London
The story
I spent eleven years leading product teams – two fintechs, one very large consultancy – and I was promoted five times without once feeling ready. I know the Sunday-night dread, the “maybe next cycle”, the meeting where you said nothing and then rehearsed it brilliantly on the bus home. I was good at my job and quietly convinced I was getting away with something. Nobody ever asked me about that. Everyone was too busy, or too polite.
The turn came in 2019, during an appraisal cycle I was running rather than sitting in. The best analyst I’ve ever managed was passed over – again – because her promotion case read like a confession. I spent an hour helping her rewrite it and another hour making her say it out loud until she stopped flinching. She was promoted the next cycle. I remember thinking: that hour was the most useful thing I did all quarter – more useful than the roadmap, the steering group, any of it.
So I did the unglamorous thing: kept my day job and retrained properly at night. An MSc in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck – the university built for people who work – then accredited coach training, then hundreds of supervised hours before I ever charged full price. In 2022 I left product for good and opened this practice. I’ve never once missed the roadmap.
What I brought with me from those eleven years matters, though. I’ve run promotion rounds, so I know how the case actually gets argued when you’re not in the room. I’ve inherited teams, restructured them, and been restructured. When you tell me about your VP, your matrix, your appraisal calibration – I don’t need a glossary. That’s not coaching technique. It’s just mileage, and it saves us weeks.
The best hour of my working week was always the one where someone stopped performing and started thinking.Meera Shah
How I coach
Every coach says they’re “challenging but supportive”. Here’s what mine actually means in the room, so you can decide if it suits you before we ever speak.
Most people come to me asking for confidence. I don’t coach confidence directly – it’s weather. We work on clarity: what you want, what it costs, what you’ll do first. Confidence turns out to be what clarity feels like once it has a plan attached.
I don’t give career advice, and I won’t tell you whether to quit. What I will do is refuse to let you leave a session with a vague plan, a borrowed goal, or a decision you’ve delegated to your circumstances. The thinking is yours; the rigour is mine.
Insight is lovely and changes almost nothing on its own. The conversations that change careers – the ask, the pushback, the resignation – get rehearsed in my sessions out loud, with me playing the difficult part. You will find this awkward for about four minutes. Then you’ll find it invaluable.
If coaching isn’t the right tool for you, I’ll say so – on the free call, before any money moves. If the work isn’t landing by session two, I refund the rest. And if what you need is a therapist, I’ll help you find a good one. Around a quarter of enquiries end this way, and I consider every one of them a success.
What shaped it
Learned how large organisations actually decide who rises – and how rarely it’s about the work alone.
Promoted to manager on a Friday, panicking by the Wednesday. Nobody handed me a plan; I’ve since written that plan several hundred times for other people.
The least ready I have ever felt, and the most I have ever grown. Ran my first promotion rounds and saw the machinery from the inside.
Helped my best analyst rebuild a promotion case that read like a confession. She was promoted next cycle; I started noticing which hours of my week actually mattered.
MSc Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck by night, accredited coach training, supervised practice hours. Kept the day job until the craft was real.
Left product for good. First full year: eighteen clients, two refunds honoured, one lesson learned about saying no early.
The credential that requires 500+ documented hours and a recorded exam of actual coaching, not a weekend certificate. I’m supervised monthly and intend to stay that way.
A deliberately small practice: a dozen 1:1 clients at a time, a handful of workshops a quarter, and a waiting list I’d rather keep short by being honest on discovery calls.
Heard on · seen at
I speak at away-days and conferences a few times a year – current talks: “The plateau is a signal” and “Your first 90 days without the panic”. For speaking enquiries, use the contact form and mention the date early; my diary fills a quarter ahead.
Meet me properly
Thirty minutes on video. You’ll know by the end whether my way of working suits you – and I’ll tell you honestly if it doesn’t.