HIGH PERFORMING NEW DAD
Helping companies unlock the performance of New Dads returning to work.
Men in their 30s and 40s are often your current or future leaders. When they become Dads, their internal world shifts dramatically but external and internal expectations at work stay exactly the same.
Without deliberate support, many default into reactive behaviour, over-commitment, and quiet drift from the standards that made them high performers in the first place.
This isn't a wellbeing issue. It's a leadership stability and retention issue.
The High Performing New Dad is a time-bound, evidence-informed coaching designed to stabilise self-leadership, decision-making, and performance during the return-to-work transition and early years of fatherhood.
Why this Team?
The High Performing New Dad brings together two worlds that rarely meet.
Rigorous fatherhood science from Dr. Anna Machin, one of the world's leading researchers on what actually happens to men when they become fathers.
Practical, battle-tested frameworks from Steve Cardwell, a high-performance coach for dads with young kids, right in the thick of it himself with two toddlers at home.
Anna brings the science. Steve brings the implementation. Theory and practice. Research and reality.
HPND Private Podcast
We've created a seven-part bitesize podcast series for HR, DEI, and family leads who want to understand the full picture.
Short, focused episodes you can listen to whenever it suits.
Inside the series:
The science of what happens to men when they become fathers
Why new dads are a blind spot in most organisations
The real business cost of unsupported fathers
What high-performing dads actually need (and what they don't)
How to build a culture that retains working fathers
The Deliberate Performance system and how it drives results
Packed full of insights, talking points and actionable takeaways.
Listen to a sneak peek and request access to the full series below and I’ll send it through direct to your email.
Get in Touch
If you’d like to find out how we could work together to support and unlock the performance and leadership potential of new Dads fill in the form.
Or else book in an initial informal chat with Steve below.
About Steve
Steve is a high-performance coach for dads with young kids and founder of Deliberate Dad.
He works with ambitious dads to perform at work while prioritising themselves and their family, and helping companies unlock the leadership potential of their working fathers.
He spent over a decade building and scaling businesses, including a 7-figure company he chose to shut down when he realised it didn't match up with his version of success as a dad.
Now he coaches driven dads to reclaim their time, set standards and actually execute on what matters.
Steve's delivered talks, workshops and coaching to dads at companies including Mars, Google, Movember, Androlabs, Warner Bros and Havas.
He volunteers for Parenting Out Loud and built a 150-strong local dad community from scratch.
And he was named in the 2026 Top 100 Champions for Men and Boys by the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys.
Steve lives in Berkshire with his wife, 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son so he’s in the thick of it alongside his clients.
Anna is a world-renowned expert and pioneer in fatherhood science, and author of The Life of Dad.
She's spent years researching what happens to men when they become fathers biologically, psychologically, and behaviourally and how that plays out at home and at work.
Anna spent over a decade at the University of Oxford researching fatherhood and close human relationships.
She's delivered a TEDx Clapham talk, been consulted by the UK government on paternity leave policy, and worked with New Scientist, Match, PepsiCo, Royal Caribbean and other leading global brands.
She's spoken on some of the world's biggest podcasts, including Diary of a CEO and Modern Wisdom.
And she was recently named in the Top 100 Champions for Men and Boys by the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys.
Anna lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband, teenage children and three adorable dogs.