“I began to see there was a lot of negativity in the way I viewed my performance in my role: ‘Am I worth it? Am I going to be able to do it?’ And it manifested in the way I carried myself and conducted myself at work.”
A few years ago, Mohamed “Moe” Abdalla landed his dream job as software engineer at Apple. Within 18 months he was promoted into a management role for the first time in his career and given a team of two developers to manage. Though small, this critical dev team worked on all of the communication apps at Apple—Facetime, Messages and Mail.
Like many people with coveted positions at Apple, Moe was serious about his career. Although this was his first time in a managerial role, he was no stranger to leadership, having founded and headed up various associations while at university.
His deep desire was to reach his peak potential and expand his responsibility at Apple. He wanted to help his team grow, and at the same time be intentional about cultivating his own career.
“There are multiple different routes you can take as a manager, multiple ways you can grow. You can have a small team and become very technical. Or, you can be more specialized in terms of the organizational structure, growing a team into an organization and setting up the mission. And that’s the challenge I’m most interested in.”
So, as a first step on his career journey, Moe set himself the goal of managing a larger team.
Unfortunately, Moe hit a roadblock right away—he had little confidence that he could achieve his target. “I felt like I was doing really well managing a team of two, but I was thinking, ‘How do I manage a team of seven? How can I build a team from scratch?’”
He couldn’t have put a name to it, but like so many rising stars, Moe had imposter syndrome—that nagging feeling of self-doubt that you’re not quite up to the job. He found himself questioning his goal. “I’m still new—who am I to have a large team reporting to me? Do I deserve that?”
Everyday life managing his team just reinforced his self-doubt. Even though he was able to expand the size of the team for a while, it didn’t flourish, and eventually shrank back down to two. Although he hadn’t yet realized it, Moe lacked the skills, strategies and self-awareness effective leaders need to create and retain high-performing teams.
One source of frustration was that he had lots of great ideas, but almost no success getting upper management interested in them. When he pitched an idea, no one seemed to care. Sometimes a colleague would come along two months later with an idea that Moe had already proposed and had just fizzled. But somehow that person would make it happen. “I had a graveyard of failed ideas,” he says. “I was like, ‘Am I saying the wrong thing? Is it my timing? What’s going on?’”
He was spinning his wheels and getting nowhere. He knew things weren’t working. He just didn’t know why.
For inspiration and education, Moe turned to YouTube SMEs. He watched hours of content on hiring, pitching and other management tasks. He also read articles, and looked to more formal online education as well (“I tried Coursera, but I would sign up for a course and then forget about it”).
All of this helped, up to a point. Moe found that he gained some momentum, “but it wasn’t concentrated or focused.” While some of the content was useful in providing a general philosophy of leadership, it didn’t speak to Moe’s specific needs. There was a vast ocean of content available, but his “school of YouTube” was disorganized, not tailored to his unique challenges.
The DIY approach left him floundering. Moe knew it was time to make an investment in himself and his career with professional coaching.
Moe happened to be a personal friend of Fahd Alhattab, founder and CEO of Unicorn Labs, so he had always been aware of Unicorn Labs’s offerings, including one-on-one leadership coaching. But he had never signed up, because even though Apple has an internal education team, and a budget for some kinds of professional development, coaching or mentoring wasn’t covered.
Covered or not, Moe was thinking it might be the answer to his predicament. He began toying with the idea of reaching out to Fahd in August 2021. Within a few months, the pain of knowing he wasn’t reaching his potential as a manager had outweighed the price tag of the coaching. He made the call to Unicorn Labs in November.
Moe knew and trusted Fahd, but it wasn’t just their friendship that tipped the scale. “I’ve seen his leadership in action. Fahd implements what he teaches, which is really good. I had confidence that he knows what he’s talking about, based on results. Because $10,000 is a lot. I love Fahd, but I have even closer friends—would I give them $10,000? Probably not.” With Fahd, “I’ve seen results and I was willing to take that bet.”
As humans, we have the curious ability to hold two conflicting ideas in our mind at once. On one hand, the little voice in the back of Moe’s head was whispering that he was not up to the job.
On the other hand, at the time, he would have rated his managerial performance an 8 or 9 out of 10. (Looking back now, he now says it was actually about a 6). Sometimes, you don’t know what it is you don’t know. He was simply not aware of the gaps in his approach.
Both of these issues had to be dealt with.
Unicorn Labs’ one-on-one coaching and mentoring for leadership development teaches managers the science behind the critical skills they need to create high-performing teams that scale, and the practical steps for applying them. Every person is unique, and Unicorn Labs’ one-on-one coaching programs focus on the individual’s particular strengths and needs.
Each coaching program begins with in-depth assessment. Once the issues are identified, clear objectives and goals are set each month. The sessions happen via monthly coaching calls, and in between, biweekly virtual check-ins let managers raise issues and ask questions, and see how they’ve been progressing with the objectives. All sessions are an opportunity for managers to get practical help with the real-life situations they are encountering.
For Moe, the one-on-ones were “the best experience” because they were custom-tailored to his needs. “The first three sessions were mainly Fahd asking questions, and getting a deep understanding of the problem space and where I was coming from—my goals, my concerns, what I was thinking.”
From those initial assessment sessions, Fahd formed a custom coaching strategy for Moe, beginning with a fundamental course correction in the way he was thinking about his ability to do his job.
“I used to say, ‘We should do this.’ Now it’s like, ‘I’ve identified a problem, here’s my analysis, my evidence. Here’s how it’s linked to the common goal. Here’s what I think we should do, here are the options, here are the trade-offs. Let’s have a discussion.’”
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They spent the next few sessions working on Moe’s internal attitudes. “I’m by nature a very positive person,” Moe says. “But I began to see there was a lot of negativity in the way I viewed my performance in my role: ‘Am I worth it? Am I going to be able to do it?’ And it manifested in the way I carried myself and conducted myself at work.”
Fahd and Moe worked together to break out of this mindset. Fahd was able to show him that imposter syndrome is a sign of self-awareness and willingness to grow, not a sign that you’re unfit for the job. Fahd also pointed out that the little voice in Moe’s head didn’t have the correct facts—that there were a lot of things that Moe had done that proved he was more than capable of doing this job.
As he began to internalize a more positive view of himself and his abilities, he began to carry and conduct himself more confidently.
Moe describes his skills as a leader before coaching as “junior.” He realized that about two months into the sessions. However, if he was a 6 out of 10 before coaching, these days he says, “I’m about a 7.7, so I’m getting there! It’s all about the mindset. I’ve improved significantly.”
Unicorn Labs’ mission is to create leaders with increased capacity for authenticity, self-awareness, influencing others, mentoring, and effective performance. Once the imposter syndrome had been dealt with, the coaching focused on levelling up Moe’s leadership and managerial skills.
One of the things his experience with Unicorn Labs taught Moe was how to set up a pitch so that it’s consumable and sellable, framing it to link his ideas to his bosses’ goals or the problems they were trying to solve. “I used to say, ‘We should do this.’ Now I say, ‘I’ve identified a problem, here’s my analysis, my evidence. Here’s how it’s linked to the common goal. Here’s what I think we should do, here are the options, here are the trade-offs. Let’s have a discussion.’”
He’s still an ideas guy, only now he’s able to translate those ideas into realities. Recently, he realized that his team and another they worked with closely were trying to solve the same problems. They would arrive at solutions independently, which was a waste of company resources. Moe made a successful pitch to the other team leader, and together they came up with a platform where both teams could collaborate, share leads and decide on different areas to tackle instead of duplicating effort.
Moe learned that motivating and retaining a team of good people requires building trust, and a huge part of that is effective listening. He and Fahd worked on involving the team in decision-making and brainstorming, and implementing their feedback where possible, making sure they felt heard. Moe says he now listens rather than dictates.
Leading by example may sound cliché, but Moe has learned its value. “Sometimes I forget and think, why are [the team] not doing ... whatever. Then I remember to lead by example. I go do the thing, and then it’s easier to get the buy-in from them.” It’s not uncommon for him to roll up his sleeves and dig in to take on some of the team’s work himself.
Moe has also made a conscious shift from judging to empathy. In the past, he might have been critical of an underperforming team member. Now, he’s learned to be caring and to try to understand where they’re coming from and what they’re going through. At the same time, he’s learned not to take things personally himself.
Having greater empathy means that he now recognizes that part of his responsibility as a leader is to mentor those who report to him, to help them develop professionally, for example, by crafting a path for team members who want to become managers. He also takes time to do some one-on-one coaching himself, using the knowledge Fahd taught him.
Fahd’s coaching equipped Moe with an outstanding management skillset. Moe now makes a practice of consistently working within an OKR framework, has initiated daily standup meetings to unify staff before the workday begins, consciously sets priorities for the team, allocates time for working on next-step strategies and the overall roadmap, and has invaluable insights into hiring and handling conflict. He has learned to sell his ideas effectively and “manage up.”
And—he met his first goal! He got the promotion he was looking for and is now managing a larger team. So he can check off that box on his career to-do list and take on the next challenge.
Ultimately, Unicorn Labs gave Moe the ability to lead and manage better. “It’s as simple as that,” he says. “The coaching resulted in a mindset shift that dramatically increased my chances of being successful as a leader and a manager.” In Moe’s opinion, what Unicorn Labs coaching does brilliantly is customize the information and tailor it to the specific set of circumstances a leader is facing. “Everyone’s situation is unique. Mine was unique.”
When he thinks about how coaching has helped him in his career, Moe reflects that it has also empowered him in his personal life, “because we’re leaders and managers in lots of areas of our lives. First and foremost, leading and managing ourselves—I think that’s the most important thing to come out of Unicorn Labs coaching. There are a lot of teachings there that are life-changing, not just career-changing.”
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“I began to see there was a lot of negativity in the way I viewed my performance in my role: ‘Am I worth it? Am I going to be able to do it?’ And it manifested in the way I carried myself and conducted myself at work.”
A few years ago, Mohamed “Moe” Abdalla landed his dream job as software engineer at Apple. Within 18 months he was promoted into a management role for the first time in his career and given a team of two developers to manage. Though small, this critical dev team worked on all of the communication apps at Apple—Facetime, Messages and Mail.
Like many people with coveted positions at Apple, Moe was serious about his career. Although this was his first time in a managerial role, he was no stranger to leadership, having founded and headed up various associations while at university.
His deep desire was to reach his peak potential and expand his responsibility at Apple. He wanted to help his team grow, and at the same time be intentional about cultivating his own career.
“There are multiple different routes you can take as a manager, multiple ways you can grow. You can have a small team and become very technical. Or, you can be more specialized in terms of the organizational structure, growing a team into an organization and setting up the mission. And that’s the challenge I’m most interested in.”
So, as a first step on his career journey, Moe set himself the goal of managing a larger team.
Unfortunately, Moe hit a roadblock right away—he had little confidence that he could achieve his target. “I felt like I was doing really well managing a team of two, but I was thinking, ‘How do I manage a team of seven? How can I build a team from scratch?’”
He couldn’t have put a name to it, but like so many rising stars, Moe had imposter syndrome—that nagging feeling of self-doubt that you’re not quite up to the job. He found himself questioning his goal. “I’m still new—who am I to have a large team reporting to me? Do I deserve that?”
Everyday life managing his team just reinforced his self-doubt. Even though he was able to expand the size of the team for a while, it didn’t flourish, and eventually shrank back down to two. Although he hadn’t yet realized it, Moe lacked the skills, strategies and self-awareness effective leaders need to create and retain high-performing teams.
One source of frustration was that he had lots of great ideas, but almost no success getting upper management interested in them. When he pitched an idea, no one seemed to care. Sometimes a colleague would come along two months later with an idea that Moe had already proposed and had just fizzled. But somehow that person would make it happen. “I had a graveyard of failed ideas,” he says. “I was like, ‘Am I saying the wrong thing? Is it my timing? What’s going on?’”
He was spinning his wheels and getting nowhere. He knew things weren’t working. He just didn’t know why.
For inspiration and education, Moe turned to YouTube SMEs. He watched hours of content on hiring, pitching and other management tasks. He also read articles, and looked to more formal online education as well (“I tried Coursera, but I would sign up for a course and then forget about it”).
All of this helped, up to a point. Moe found that he gained some momentum, “but it wasn’t concentrated or focused.” While some of the content was useful in providing a general philosophy of leadership, it didn’t speak to Moe’s specific needs. There was a vast ocean of content available, but his “school of YouTube” was disorganized, not tailored to his unique challenges.
The DIY approach left him floundering. Moe knew it was time to make an investment in himself and his career with professional coaching.
Moe happened to be a personal friend of Fahd Alhattab, founder and CEO of Unicorn Labs, so he had always been aware of Unicorn Labs’s offerings, including one-on-one leadership coaching. But he had never signed up, because even though Apple has an internal education team, and a budget for some kinds of professional development, coaching or mentoring wasn’t covered.
Covered or not, Moe was thinking it might be the answer to his predicament. He began toying with the idea of reaching out to Fahd in August 2021. Within a few months, the pain of knowing he wasn’t reaching his potential as a manager had outweighed the price tag of the coaching. He made the call to Unicorn Labs in November.
Moe knew and trusted Fahd, but it wasn’t just their friendship that tipped the scale. “I’ve seen his leadership in action. Fahd implements what he teaches, which is really good. I had confidence that he knows what he’s talking about, based on results. Because $10,000 is a lot. I love Fahd, but I have even closer friends—would I give them $10,000? Probably not.” With Fahd, “I’ve seen results and I was willing to take that bet.”
As humans, we have the curious ability to hold two conflicting ideas in our mind at once. On one hand, the little voice in the back of Moe’s head was whispering that he was not up to the job.
On the other hand, at the time, he would have rated his managerial performance an 8 or 9 out of 10. (Looking back now, he now says it was actually about a 6). Sometimes, you don’t know what it is you don’t know. He was simply not aware of the gaps in his approach.
Both of these issues had to be dealt with.
Unicorn Labs’ one-on-one coaching and mentoring for leadership development teaches managers the science behind the critical skills they need to create high-performing teams that scale, and the practical steps for applying them. Every person is unique, and Unicorn Labs’ one-on-one coaching programs focus on the individual’s particular strengths and needs.
Each coaching program begins with in-depth assessment. Once the issues are identified, clear objectives and goals are set each month. The sessions happen via monthly coaching calls, and in between, biweekly virtual check-ins let managers raise issues and ask questions, and see how they’ve been progressing with the objectives. All sessions are an opportunity for managers to get practical help with the real-life situations they are encountering.
For Moe, the one-on-ones were “the best experience” because they were custom-tailored to his needs. “The first three sessions were mainly Fahd asking questions, and getting a deep understanding of the problem space and where I was coming from—my goals, my concerns, what I was thinking.”
From those initial assessment sessions, Fahd formed a custom coaching strategy for Moe, beginning with a fundamental course correction in the way he was thinking about his ability to do his job.
They spent the next few sessions working on Moe’s internal attitudes. “I’m by nature a very positive person,” Moe says. “But I began to see there was a lot of negativity in the way I viewed my performance in my role: ‘Am I worth it? Am I going to be able to do it?’ And it manifested in the way I carried myself and conducted myself at work.”
Fahd and Moe worked together to break out of this mindset. Fahd was able to show him that imposter syndrome is a sign of self-awareness and willingness to grow, not a sign that you’re unfit for the job. Fahd also pointed out that the little voice in Moe’s head didn’t have the correct facts—that there were a lot of things that Moe had done that proved he was more than capable of doing this job.
As he began to internalize a more positive view of himself and his abilities, he began to carry and conduct himself more confidently.
