Founder
Eric Dulong, ICF MCC
Executive Coach & Founder
Helping leaders navigate complexity with greater clarity, judgment, and intention.
Eric Dulong is the founder of VitalAction Coaching and the creator of Leadership Under Pressure: Restoring the Position of Choice™. It is the VitalAction Coaching framework for restoring clarity, choice, and intentional leadership under pressure. Based in Calgary, Canada, Eric coaches leaders across Canada and internationally in English and French.
ICF Master Certified Coach
More than 5,000 coaching hours
More than 400 leaders coached
25+ years inside organizations
Professional perspective
Experience shaped inside organizations
Before becoming an executive coach, I spent more than 25 years inside organizations, in professional, leadership, and consulting roles, navigating the realities of complex corporate environments.
Much of that work took place in matrix organizations, where progress depended on building alignment, influencing across functions, and navigating competing priorities and stakeholder expectations.
That experience continues to shape how I coach today. I understand the realities of organizational life not only from supporting leaders as a coach, but from having lived them myself.
The work remains grounded in the real decisions, conversations, relationships, and organizational complexity leaders are carrying now.
Professional foundation
Professional depth built through coaching mastery, organizational leadership experience, and the ability to work effectively in sensitive, high-accountability environments.
Master-level coaching practice
Eric holds the ICF Master Certified Coach (MCC) credential, the highest level awarded by the International Coaching Federation. It represents advanced coaching mastery, extensive experience, and demonstrated competence assessed against rigorous professional standards.
Depth built through practice
More than 5,000 coaching hours with more than 400 leaders have built experience across a wide range of leadership situations, personalities, and organizational contexts. That depth helps Eric establish trust quickly and focus the conversation on what matters most.
Organizational credibility
Having worked inside complex organizations before coaching full time, Eric understands the tension between individual leadership choices and the systems, stakeholders, and constraints around them. This helps keep the coaching practical and grounded in what leaders can actually influence.
Trusted in sensitive environments
Eric holds Government of Canada Reliability Status and an Enhanced Police Security Clearance issued by the Edmonton Police Service, supporting work where confidentiality, professional discretion, and security requirements matter.
Why I developed the Leadership Under Pressure: Restoring the Position of Choice™ framework
The Leadership Under Pressure: Restoring the Position of Choice™ framework did not begin with the goal of creating a theoretical model.
It emerged gradually through years of coaching senior leaders and noticing situations that continued to repeat themselves.
Different leaders. Different organizations. Different industries. Yet similar patterns kept appearing.
Leaders often understood what a situation required. Looking back, they could describe the conversation they wanted to have, the decision they wanted to make, or the approach they believed would have been more effective.
Rather than accepting my first interpretation, I found myself slowing down, stepping back, and looking more closely at what I was observing across coaching engagements.
I wanted to understand whether I was seeing isolated situations or recurring patterns that extended across organizations, industries, and leadership contexts.
Principles that guide the practice
The work is designed to be useful within the leader’s actual environment, not separate from it.
Real situations first
Real situations make it possible to explore the conditions, triggers, and emotions at play, then recognize the patterns influencing how a leader interprets the situation and responds.
Coaching is not more work
Senior leaders already carry significant demands. Coaching should help them work with what is already present rather than create another set of assignments, obligations, or disconnected activities.
Complexity becomes more manageable
The objective is not to oversimplify difficult situations. It is to help leaders separate what matters, see the situation more clearly, and determine how to move forward.
Trust is built quickly
Valuable coaching requires enough trust for leaders to speak openly about uncertainty, competing perspectives, difficult relationships, and situations where they do not yet have an answer.
Context before models
Frameworks and assessments support the conversation. They never replace attention to the leader, the situation, and the organizational environment in which the issue is occurring.
Confidentiality supports candour
Executive coaching depends on trust. Individual coaching conversations and confidential organizational information are handled with care and professional discretion.
Professional certifications
Eric has built expertise across personality, leadership behaviour, team effectiveness, and executive assessment. Different tools are integrated when they meaningfully support the engagement.
Hogan Assessments
Examines personality strengths, derailment risks, values, and motives that can influence leadership effectiveness.
iEQ9 Enneagram
Explores underlying motivations, behavioural patterns, and protective strategies that influence how leaders approach situations and relationships.
Leadership Navigator 360
Provides confidential multi-rater feedback on how leadership behaviour is experienced by others and where perception may differ from intention.
Everything DiSC
Builds awareness of behavioural and communication preferences that influence collaboration, conflict, and leadership impact.
The Five Behaviors®
Supports leadership teams in strengthening trust, productive conflict, commitment, accountability, and collective results.
No single assessment explains a leader.
Each offers a different perspective.
The tool should always serve the coaching, not the other way around.
Professional philosophy
Restoring access to a range of responses
I believe effective leadership is not about having one right way to lead. It is about being able to see the situation clearly, maintain access to a range of possible responses, and choose the response that best fits what the situation requires.
Under pressure, that access can narrow. My work is about helping leaders restore it. This is what I mean by restoring the position of choice.