Building Trust, from Navy SEALs to Engineering - Joint Q&A with David Silverman & James Birchler

Leadership expert and best-selling author David Silverman has paved the way in transforming groups into high-performing, agile, and adaptive teams that drive success. David continues to bring out the best in people as CEO and Founder of CrossLead. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, David served in the US Navy as a SEAL Officer for 12 years. Building off of his collective leadership experiences, David created CrossLead as a holistic performance management solution for today’s environment. CrossLead is designed to empower leaders, teams, and organizations to scale the adaptability of elite small teams to the entire enterprise. David previously co-founded the McChrystal Group and led the company as CEO from 2011 through 2015. During his time at McChrystal Group, David laid out the framework for CrossLead as a co-author in the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World.

James Birchler is an executive leadership coach and technical advisor who specializes in helping engineering leaders and founders develop greater self-awareness and build high-performing teams. He combines deep technical expertise with practical leadership development, making him particularly valuable for technical leaders scaling their organizations.

As both a founder and engineering leader, James has more than 20 years of experience leading teams at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Amazon, where his current role is Technical Advisor to the VP of Amazon Delivery Routing and Planning. Most recently, he founded NICER, a premium natural personal care company, and Actuate Partners, his executive coaching and technical advisory practice. He also held VP of Engineering roles at companies including Caffeine (backed by Greylock and Andreessen Horowitz), SmugMug (where his team acquired Flickr), and IMVU.

At IMVU, James implemented the Lean Startup methodologies alongside Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and creator of the methodology, literally the first company to apply these principles. His team helped pioneer the DevOps movement by building infrastructure to ship code to production 50 times per day and coining the term "continuous deployment." This experience in systematic experimentation and continuous improvement now informs his coaching approach through frameworks like CAMS (Coaching, Advising, Mentoring, Supporting) and the Think-Do-Learn Loop.

James completed his executive coaching certification at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Executive Coaching Institute. His coaching practice focuses on self-awareness, integrity, accountability, and fostering growth mindsets that support continuous learning and high performance. He writes the Continuous Growth newsletter and offers both individual executive coaching and peer learning circles for technical leaders.

Through his advisory work with growth-stage startups in the US and Europe, James helps leaders navigate common scaling challenges including hiring and interviewing, implementing development methodologies, establishing operational cadences, and developing other leaders. His approach treats leadership development like product development—with systematic feedback loops, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.

You can find James at jamesbirchler.com, LinkedIn, and Substack.