A season just for you
Six calls across three months. Deep listening, clear insight, aligned action, for the founder or owner, met now by a season that's changing.
The Wā Programme. Founded by Cleo Shortland.
A season just for you
Six calls across three months. Deep listening, clear insight, aligned action, for the founder or owner, met now by a season that's changing.
The Wā Programme. Founded by Cleo Shortland.
A change of season
Wā means season: time, a period of change.
Life can move in seasons that look different to our environment. This work meets what’s changing for three focused months, for the founder or owner sensing a change already underway, ready to understand what it's asking of them, and of the business alongside it.
How it works
Running a business calls on a rational, logical mind, strategy, decisions, execution. This work adds the intuitive and emotional. Blending both is what turns a decision from correct on paper into genuinely right for you.
A change of season often asks for exactly this. Family responsibilities can shift, sometimes gradually and sometimes overnight, asking for a new kind of presence in the business and at home. If health becomes a problem, this is brought to the center of every decision. Sometimes nothing external shifts at all, and the change is simply in how you see things, everything you've lived and learned arriving as something new, trying to find its way into the world through you. All three are real seasons, and each invites a different way of sharing your gifts, from the way you've always shared them.
In a call, we will name what your instincts already know about a decision, then testing it against what the business genuinely needs from you. A pull to finally bring in real support, someone who can carry weight you've been holding alone, becomes a clear decision about what to hand over and what to keep close. A growing wish to step back from the business you built becomes an honest look at what stepping back actually means, rather than staying vague about it indefinitely. A sense that something new is trying to come through you becomes a real look at what shape that could take, in the business and beyond it, rather than a feeling you keep setting aside.
I call this practice ritual intelligence, applied to the moments that actually shape a career. Once a position can be heard as a need instead of a demand, what's actually being asked for becomes clear, in yourself as much as anyone else. Most of what surfaces in a call, you've already said yourself. My work is reflecting it back clearly enough to use.
Each call builds on the last. Themes and insights carry forward and are woven across the season.
"Your positivity wasn't just uplifting, it was empowering. You have a way of helping people see what's possible rather than focusing on limitations, and helping them recognise their own strengths and potential. That gave me greater confidence in my own abilities, and I always left interactions with you feeling energised, capable, and more willing to back myself and take the next step forward. The lasting impact for me was a stronger belief in what I could achieve and the confidence to go after it."
— Aime Carter, South Island Super Yacht Services
What you receive
Six video calls across three months, timed around a season. Scheduling can be fortnightly or scheduled around the realities of a full schedule. Between calls, an open line stays available, so momentum holds throughout. The practice draws on naming the needs a person might be carrying into a decision, each with its own signals and its own questions.
Your investment
US$2,000 a month across the three month season, US$6,000 in total. This is priced as a full season of continuity: six calls and the open line between them, held together as one container.
Kia ora, I’m Cleo Shortland
Life is always moving, and so is a business. That's why I like to look at these shifts as seasons, from high summer, full, vibrant and demanding, through to the winter of pause and rest, when it's time to bring someone else in to help carry the work. I work as a weaver, listening closely and deepening my understanding of you, weaving what matters to you into the larger picture.
The Wā Programme invites you to follow that curiosity, and stepping into what’s most alive.
Step into the experience
Book a curiosity call with Cleo to learn how to step into the experience.
"My time working with Cleo was alchemical. I had never felt so deeply held and understood, a natural gift she holds. What stayed with me was a connection that transcended the surface and the ordinary. You could always tell that holding space energised her as much as it uplifted us both.
Through ritual, contemplation, deep enquiry and a focus on creating the future, Cleo sped up my personal evolution in a way only very few people can. Blending the rational and the creative, her structures and frameworks create a safe container for deeper magic to come through.
There is a true element of belief and magic in working with Cleo that goes far deeper than the mind, and you have to experience it to understand what can be created together. I made so much progress in those years, having Cleo hold my visions with unwavering faith. Cleo is the real deal.”
— Rhea James Fox, Writer
Frequently Asked Questions
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You arrive with whatever's most alive: a decision, a doubt, a pull you're still finding words for. I listen for what's underneath it, and we work to understand it deeper and whether anything needs to shift.
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This is coaching built around deep listening and aligned action. It draws on a real, structured method rather than open conversation alone.
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This work suits a genuine change of season as much as a hard moment: a shift in capacity, a decision on the horizon, a pull toward something new.
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Wā, karakia (Māori incantation), and whakapapa (a sense of place in the world) shape how each session is held. A relational, cyclical worldview, rooted in place, learned over a lifetime.
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This work is built around the particular weight of being the person a business ultimately answers to. That weight has a shape I know well from almost two decades inside that world.
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It keeps this work reachable across time zones and travel, and keeps a full season possible regardless of where you're based.
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Everything shared stays between us. This is a private container for thinking something through, held with the same discretion you'd expect from your own profession.
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Threading works best with enough space between sessions for a theme to settle, and enough structure that momentum holds. Six sessions across a season, scheduled around your calendar, holds both.
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I receive clients in and around spring and autumn seasons only, wherever you're based. Book a curiosity call to talk about timing.
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This work is built on individual attention and discretion, better suited to conversation than broadcast. Find more through the podcast, or start with a curiosity call.