THE FRACTIONAL DIPLOMAT · 6-MONTH MINIMUM
Someone in your corner
who already knows the full story.
Most leadership communication problems don’t announce themselves all at once. They accumulate.
A message that used to land starts slipping. Leadership meetings feel productive but somehow nothing changes. The board presentation goes fine, but funders are asking harder questions. A communications director turns over, and the muscle memory they carried leaves with them. Nobody names it as a crisis — but everyone can feel it: things are drifting in the wrong direction.
By the time a leader calls it a problem, the drift has usually been happening for a while.
This is not a retainer for someone to review your newsletter. It’s not a PR relationship or a content strategy subscription. It’s executive-level guidance, oversight, and stewardship of how your organization communicates — internally, externally, and at the leadership level — with someone who will tell you the truth, provide valuable support and feedback, help navigate necessary changes, and stay until it’s working.
AT A GLANCE
Who it's for: Mission-driven executive leaders who need sustained senior-level communications stewardship without a full-time hire
Duration: 6-month minimum
Entry point: Diplomat Reset or direct inquiry
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE
Embedded. Ongoing. Already in it with you.
Each month includes structured touchpoints — not open-ended retainer access, but a rhythm designed to keep narrative consistent and leadership out of reactive mode.
WEEKLY
CEO/ED Sync
45-minute working session. Strategic counsel, real-time advisory, preparation for high-stakes moments. This is where you say what you can't say in staff meetings.
BI-WEEKLY
Alignment
Catch narrative drift before it compounds. Keep the leadership team working from the same story. Prevent the quiet misalignments that become visible at the worst possible moment.
MONTHLY
Planning
Forward-looking narrative and positioning work. What's coming up, what needs to shift, what needs to be built. Plus structured async access for feedback on live work between calls.
THE SHIFT
What changes when someone's actually holding the narrative.
At the end of the 6-month engagement, here are the outcomes and transformations that we’ll have accomplished:
Leadership speaks the same language. Not as a talking-point exercise. As a genuine realignment of how the team understands and communicates what you're building, internally and in the rooms that count.
You have a trusted partner who will tell you the truth fast, with compassion. Clients describe working with me as radically different: less friction, more honesty, and a faster path to what actually matters.
Messaging drift stops. Message inconsistency across the leadership team, between internal and external communications, between what the organization says and what it does — identified, named, and corrected before it becomes a public problem.
Culture improves across the organization. When leadership communication stabilizes, it doesn’t stay at the top. It moves through the organization. Less friction, less quiet checking-out, more of the culture actually matching what the organization says it is.
Sustainable solutions — no more starting and restarting from scratch. The infrastructure is there: the message spine, the communication rhythm, the leadership alignment protocols. When something unexpected happens, and it always does, the organization can now react and respond from a position of maturity, confidence, and trust that has been built into the system.
CHOOSING YOUR PATH
The Relationship With the Diplomat Reset
Some leaders come to the Fractional Diplomat relationship directly. They’re not in breakdown, but they can feel the drift starting — or they’ve just been through something hard and want sustained support for what comes next.
Others complete a Diplomat Reset engagement first. The Reset is a 90-day intensive: stabilize, clarify, embed. When it ends, some organizations are ready to operate independently. Others want to keep the momentum going. The Fractional Diplomat is a natural continuation for those leaders.
Either path works. The entry point depends on where you are, not on any prescribed sequence.
ALSO WORTH EXPLORING
If you're a senior communications leader — not the CEO, but the person carrying the comms load — the Diplomat Circle was built for you.
The Fractional Diplomat is for leaders who don’t want to wait for communication and culture breakdowns to get the critical support they need. And for those who’ve already been through communication and culture breakdowns and know they need someone in their corner to prevent further drift, avoid high-stake risks, and enable the mission-critical changes for what comes next.
Not a sales call. A diagnostic conversation.
If you're the person in your organization who holds the full picture — and you're holding it alone — I'd be glad to talk about what it would look like to have someone in your corner who can actually handle the full weight of it.
Book a free 30-minute conversation
Confidential. No agenda on my side. Just a candid read on whether this is the right fit.
Or email me directly: christine@christinekoh.com