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About the practice

The Coach For The Gap Between Good Manager And Sure Leader.

Lantern & Ledger is a one-person coaching practice in Billerica, built for the odd, disorienting stretch right after a promotion — when the job you were great at is suddenly not the job you have.

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How this started

It Began With A Very Bad First Week.

For fifteen years, Marta Ellison’s job was spotting the people worth promoting and moving them up. She got good at it. What she got wrong — for a long, sheepish while — was assuming the hard part ended once someone got the title.

It didn’t. Again and again she watched sharp, capable managers hit the same wall: the skills that earned the promotion (doing the work brilliantly) are almost the opposite of the skills the promotion demands (getting other people to do it, having the awkward conversation, deciding with half the information).

Nobody was coaching that exact moment. The big firms wanted year-long retainers and a cohort of strangers. The quick-fix crowd wanted to sell a framework. So in 2021, Marta built the thing she kept wishing existed — a small, honest practice for one manager and their actual, messy week.

“The promotion is a certificate. The confidence is the coaching.”

An open ledger and a lit lantern on a warm wooden desk, in the brand's sunset palette
What the practice runs on

Four Stubborn Principles, Stamped And Non-Negotiable.

These aren’t wall-poster values. They’re the actual rules the work follows, even when it would be easier to fold.

Honesty over comfort

If your blind spot is the problem, you’ll hear about it — kindly, once, and clearly. A coach who only nods is an expensive mirror. You’re paying for the parts that are hard to say.

Your desk, not a textbook

We work on the situations actually on your plate this fortnight — the tense hire, the board deck, the report who won’t delegate. No generic case studies borrowed from someone else’s company.

Same two ears, start to finish

You’re never passed to a junior associate halfway through. The person on your free fit call is the person in your last session — no handoffs, no “let me loop in my team.”

A real ending, not a subscription

Every engagement is designed to finish. You leave with a written playbook for your role — because the goal is a leader who doesn’t need a coach, not a standing invoice.

Illustrated portrait of Marta Ellison, founder and coach at Lantern & Ledger
Meet your coach

Marta Ellison — Fifteen Years Of Watching People Get Promoted, Then Wobble.

Marta spent her career inside HR and talent teams, sitting in the rooms where careers turned. She’s coached first-time directors through their first layoff, helped VPs learn to stop doing everyone’s job, and talked more than one brilliant introvert off the ledge before a town hall.

She works out of a small, unfussy office on Bellflower Rd in Billerica — coffee always on, the trust falls permanently cancelled. If you want someone who’s seen your exact pattern before and won’t sugar-coat the read, that’s the job.

  • ICF-credentialed coach with a background in talent development, not a rebranded consultant.
  • Trained in leadership assessment and 360 feedback — so the coaching starts from the real terrain, not a hunch.
  • Works with a deliberately small roster, so nobody becomes a calendar slot.
The honest bit

Who This Is For — And Who It Really Isn’t.

Coaching only works when it’s aimed right. Here’s a straight read so you don’t book a fit call to find out we’re not a fit.

You, if…

  • You just got the bigger seat — new team, new scope, and a nagging sense the old playbook won’t stretch.
  • You’re a great doer learning that leading is a different sport entirely.
  • You’d rather hear the truth than a comfortable nod, even when it stings a little.
  • You want a real ending — a defined engagement, not a coach you pay forever.

Probably not, if…

  • You want a magic framework to skim on a Sunday and skip the actual reflecting.
  • You’re after group workshops — this is fully 1:1, no cohorts, no shared workbook.
  • You need a therapist, not a coach. Different work; I’ll happily point you to one.
  • You want ropes courses and trust falls at the offsite. We make decisions instead.
Let’s see if we click

Book The Fit Call. Free, Thirty Minutes, Zero Pressure.

Tell me the situation you’re walking into. I’ll tell you honestly whether coaching helps and which program fits — even if the answer is “not yet.”

Hours
Tue–Sat 11am–7pm · Sun noon–5pm · Mon closed
Direct line
(607) 751-1744
Lantern & Ledger
31 Bellflower Rd, Billerica, MA 01821
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