I Live at the Intersection of Code and Humanity

There’s a version of my story that looks neat on a resume. Two decades in software engineering. Senior engineering leader. Teams of up to 45 engineers across some of the most complex hybrid cloud environments in the world. Real-time data platforms. Global organizations. Results.

That version is true. But it’s not the whole picture.

The engineer who realized the hardest problems aren’t technical

I spent years believing that if I could just architect the right system, optimize the right pipeline, hire the right people — everything would work. And technically, it often did.

But the failures that haunted me weren’t architecture failures. They were human ones. A team that stopped trusting each other. A brilliant engineer who burned out quietly before anyone noticed. A leader — sometimes me — who confused being right with being effective.

That’s when I started to understand something: the most important technology in any organization is the people. And most of us never get trained to work with them.

The coach who was hiding inside the engineer

I became a Co-Active life coach and founded Alpha Bravo Professional Coaching not as a pivot — but as an integration. The Co-Active methodology I trained in is built on a radical premise: that people are creative, resourceful, and whole. They don’t need to be fixed. They need space to think, someone who believes in them, and the right questions.

I work with professionals in engineering, defense, finance, and healthcare. High achievers who are excellent at what they do, but hungry to grow into who they’re becoming. There’s a difference. Most people spend their careers climbing ladders without ever asking whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Coaching taught me to ask better questions. Engineering taught me to think in systems. Together, they make me more useful to the people I serve than either could alone.

The father of twins who learned humility fast

Nothing recalibrates your priorities like twins.

I could give you the poetic version — and it is poetic — but the honest version is that fatherhood is the role that humbles me most, stretches me farthest, and reminds me daily why all of this matters. The leadership principles I teach, I have to live. The values I hold, I have to model. Twice over, simultaneously, on no sleep.

Raising children in this world — with its complexity, its inequity, its breathtaking possibility — makes justice feel urgent in a way no conference keynote ever has.

The writer who reads to think

I write to make sense of things. Before I put an idea out into the world, I have to write it. Whether it’s a technical architecture decision, a coaching framework, or an essay like this one , writing is how I discover what I actually believe.

And I read obsessively.

Leadership theory. Cognitive science. History. Organizational behavior. But nothing — nothing — feeds my imagination quite like science fiction.

Hugh Howey’s Wool trilogy showed me what it looks like when ordinary people are kept deliberately small by systems designed to contain them — and what it costs to finally tell the truth. Andy Weir’s The Martian is a love letter to problem-solving under pressure, to the idea that intelligence and resourcefulness are, at their core, survival tools.

These aren’t escapist reads for me. They’re how I think about organizations, about systems, about what it means to be human in the middle of forces larger than yourself.

The champion of justice who takes it personally

I care about who gets a seat at the table.

In tech. In boardrooms. In society. I care because I’ve seen what happens when the people building systems don’t reflect the people those systems are built to serve. I care because I’ve been the only one in the room who looked like me, and I know what that costs — not just personally, but organizationally.

Justice isn’t a hobby or a hashtag for me. It’s a lens I apply to every team I build, every leader I coach, every article I write.

What Co-Active Coaching Taught Me About Leading Others (and Myself)

I've spent more than twenty years leading engineering teams. I believed I understood how to lead people. Then I began training as a coach — and I realized how much I was missing.

When I enrolled in my Co-Active coaching certification through CTI, I expected to learn a methodology I could use with clients. What I didn't expect was how deeply the Four Cornerstones of Co-Active Coaching would begin to transform the way I lead, manage, and navigate my own life.

These principles didn't stay confined to my coaching practice. They spread into my engineering organization and my one-on-ones, shaping how I view my own ambition and the distance between who I am and whom I am becoming.

Here's what I've been noticing.

People Are Naturally Creative, Resourceful, and Whole

For most of my career, I equated strong leadership with quickly having the right answer. Expertise as authority. That model produces results — until you start questioning what it costs.

The first Co-Active Cornerstone — that people are Naturally Creative, Resourceful, and Whole (NCRW) — asked me to try something different. What if I genuinely believed that before I opened my mouth?

I've been testing it with my team of twenty engineers. Asking more questions. Directing less. Keeping the question open longer than feels comfortable. What comes back is consistently richer than what I would have come up with on my own.

The same principle applies to every coaching session I conduct. When I get the urge to jump in with a solution, that urge acts as data — it shows me I've momentarily stopped trusting the person in front of me. The practice is to recognize that and choose to trust instead.

"Creative. Resourceful. Whole." No longer feels like just a framework to me. It has become a core belief — one I might even name my coaching podcast after because it perfectly expresses why I do this work.

The Whole Person Is Always in the Room

Engineering leadership is inherently transactional. Tickets, sprints, velocity, delivery. There's nothing wrong with that — until it becomes your only perspective.

The Whole Person Cornerstone has been an essential counterbalance. When someone on my team was underperforming, my first question used to be, "What's wrong with the process?" Now it's more often what's going on with this person? That's a small change in wording. It's a completely different approach to leadership underneath.

This also personally challenged me. I'm building a coaching practice, leading a technology organization, pursuing ICF certification, and exploring board service — all at once. For years, I treated these as separate paths that should never intersect. The Whole Person Cornerstone revealed how costly that illusion was.

The ambition, health, relationships, financial situation, and creative life — they all belong to one person. I can't see my clients as complete people if I don't do the same for myself.

Presence Is a Leadership Skill Nobody Talks About

Of the four Cornerstones, Dance in This Moment still demands the most active effort from me. I'm a long-term thinker, always carrying the roadmap.

The Co-Active invitation to let go of the plan and trust what's alive in the conversation right now doesn’t come naturally to me — and I suspect it doesn't come naturally to most leaders who have reached their position by being exceptionally good at anticipating what’s next.

What I'm learning is that this isn't about abandoning strategy. It's about having enough presence to recognize when the strategy needs to yield to what is actually happening. In coaching sessions, the most meaningful exchanges often come from the pause I almost skipped past. In leadership, the most important information I've received has come from one-on-ones where I stopped driving the agenda long enough to really listen.

Presence, it turns out, is a key leadership skill. It just doesn't appear on most performance frameworks.

Transformation Is the Standard — Not the Stretch Goal

The fourth Cornerstone — Evoke Transformation —directly explains why I founded Alpha Bravo Professional Coaching.

I didn't start this practice to help technical leaders optimize their calendars. I work with people who sense something larger is available to them and haven't yet figured out how to fully embrace it. Transformation is the core purpose.

What Co-Active training has shown me is that evocation isn't a technique I use. It's a quality of presence I either bring to a conversation or I don't. When I'm genuinely holding someone as capable of more than they currently see in themselves, something in the room changes. When I'm going through the motions — technically competent but not fully present — that's noticeable too.

The same dynamic exists in engineering leadership. When I truly believe my team can do innovative work — not just execute but create — that belief raises the limits of what we collectively aim for. Belief is powerful. Doubt is too.

What I'm Taking Away

The most honest thing I can say about these Cornerstones is this: they are not four separate things I practice. They are a single integrated stance — and I'm either in it, or I'm not.

NCRW and the Whole Person shape how I view people. Dancing in This Moment decides whether I'm with them. Evoke Transformation is why any of it matters.

Some days I live this well. Some days I catch myself halfway back to old patterns — defaulting to the expert, driving the agenda, solving instead of listening. But the awareness is different now. And in coaching, as in leadership, awareness is always the starting point.

If you're a leader who has never engaged with coaching frameworks — not as a tool you use on others, but as a practice you apply to yourself — I encourage you to begin. In my experience, the return on that investment has been profound.

Antoine E. Burrell, Sr., is the founder of Alpha Bravo Professional Coaching, a Co-Active coaching practice that serves professionals in technology, finance, healthcare, and defense. Learn more at alphabravocoaching.com.