KATA
together
2026
Tired of having all the answers?
Five days of practice that change how you lead, coach, and develop the people around you — starting your first Monday back.
Grab your spot →Five days of practice that change how you lead, coach, and develop the people around you — starting your first Monday back.
Grab your spot →
Most leadership programs send you home with frameworks and an action list. This one sends you home different.
You spend five days on real conversations — coaching a hesitant team member, setting a meaningful target, leading without authority — alongside experienced coaches giving feedback in real time. You try. You miss. You try again.
Fifth year running. Not a conference. A working week designed to make you better at the work that matters most: yours.
Mindset check. Shared learning input. Whole group in one room, building common ground.
You pick a track for the first half of the week and a different one for the second. Real coaching scenarios. Real feedback. Try, miss, try again.
Same track, deeper work. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we run short learning experiments — pick up a new skill in an hour while practicing the coaching reflexes you've been building. You're the learner and the coach at the same time.
Story circles, integration, and a few traditions: a welcome happy hour, a mid-week ferry ride, a Thursday bonfire.
Learn. Practice. Test. Reflect.
That rhythm is what makes the week stick.
A vibrant mix of curious minds, generous coaches, and hands-on learners, all practicing scientific thinking together. Come feel the energy, the generosity, and the spirit of this unique community!
Sylvain LandryProfessor & Author, HEC Montréal
One of the things I came away with this week — a coach needs a coach.
David CarlsonOperations Director, Westside Manufacturing
One of the great learnings was being able to translate your challenge into something operational — something people can understand, grasp onto, and feel they can actually affect.
Sarah MitchellPlant Manager, Northern Foods
You choose one track for Monday–Wednesday and a different one for Wednesday–Friday. Two immersive blocks, one shared rhythm.
Execution focus
Build fluency in the conversations that develop people — coaching a hesitant team member, sharpening a vague target, handling resistance you didn't see coming. You practice a clear coaching model as a navigation tool, then take it out of the dojo and into your everyday leadership.
Planning focus
Good targets don't come from meeting rooms. They come from going to the work. This track sharpens the planning phase of improvement — coaching for better target conditions, target deployment, grounding targets in real current-condition observation. You build the internal compass that helps you recognize good direction-setting and guide others toward it.
Leaders & change agents
Change holds when leadership shifts with it. This track is for the people doing that shifting — leaders driving transformation in their own teams, and change agents helping them. You practice the conversations that move things up, sideways, and down — the ones that work when you can't simply mandate. The same scientific thinking you apply to a broken process, applied to the process of leading.
Ops directors, plant managers, team leads — anyone running a real operation. You've got a capable team, problems that keep coming back, and not enough hours to solve everything yourself. There's a different way to lead — not softer, sharper. Better questions, fewer fires, a team that thinks for itself.
CI managers, internal consultants, transformation leaders. You've spent years helping organizations improve, and you know — the hard way — that the bottleneck is rarely the process. It's the conversations around it. This week sharpens those: coaching the planning phase, engaging upward without authority, helping leaders make change actually stick.
You know what a week in Mukilteo does to your thinking. This year, two new moves: a planning-phase dojo we've never run before, and a deeper leadership track that takes the work upward and across. Same group, deeper waters.
Past attendees from
Five facilitators with decades of practice. We learn alongside you all week — that's the point.
Co-founder of Kata School Cascadia, Adult Educator, Lifelong Learner.
Lean Practitioner, Leadership Coach, Two Decades In.
Problem-Solving Facilitator, Coach, Eighteen Years In.
Engineer Turned Coach, Lean Trainer, People Builder.
Founder of Kata Coaching Dojo, Author, Former Plant Manager.
Kata Together 2026 · July 13–17 · Mukilteo, Washington
Hosted at Kaas Tailored. Run by Kata School Cascadia — fifth year.
Pick two tracks across the week — or begin with the Starter Kata if you're new to the practice. Thirty-two hours of practice. Around 40 people in the room. Program sessions, weekday lunches, and evening traditions — happy hour, ferry ride, bonfire — all included.
Kaas Tailored, 12928B Beverly Park Rd, Mukilteo, WA. We meet next door at The Treehouse (Design on Stock). Ample free parking.
Closest major airport: SEA (Seattle-Tacoma). Smaller option: PAE (Paine Field, Everett — Alaska Airlines only).
We don't hold a room block — book your own. Past attendees have stayed at Silver Cloud Mukilteo and Hilton Garden Inn Seattle North / Everett. Want to share a rental and split costs? Email Tracy and we'll connect you with others doing the same.
Casual clothes, a layer for evenings (bonfires and ferries get cool), and your preferred way to take notes. Dietary needs are handled via a food survey we send closer to the date. There's a door-prize tradition — bring something small if you'd like, totally optional.
Five days. Real practice. People who get it.
Register →Need to make the case to a sponsor? Download the one-pager (PDF).
Community rate available — email Tracy at info@kata-school-cascadia.org if cost is a barrier.
See you in Mukilteo.