How I Approach Coaching

Coaches help leaders grow and learn, so they can be more effective. You’ll find two main styles of leadership coaching.

One approach is focused on developing specific leadership skills and competencies that are already well understood by experts. The other approach focuses on helping you drive your own personal transformation as you confront internal and external challenges where there are no clear answers.

For startup leaders, a blended approach is usually necessary because most founder CEOs and startup executives are thrust into roles that go beyond their technical leadership skills and also require deep changes in mindset and behavior. Startup leaders often face challenges that are unique to their specific leadership and business context, so there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

My focus as a coach is to skillfully blend these styles in a way that best helps people grow and transform themselves into more effective and masterful leaders.

Transforming Personal Performance

I work with leaders who are driving change because they want to grow their companies dramatically or adapt to new conditions. As a result, these leaders are going through personal transformations at the same time they change their companies.

Underneath coaching is a core assumption: humans are self-generative. They have the innate capacity to author themselves. People can refactor to improve themselves while retaining their authentic core.

Great leaders are constantly learning, growing, and changing. As they mature, they become more versatile — capable of handling a wider range of challenges and leading a broader spectrum of people. Leaders are made, not born.

Transformative growth happens when a leader engages in four activities: gaining insight, learning competencies, practicing intentionally, and getting feedback. These form a positive feedback loop that enables continuous growth.

A Leadership Growth Equation

Gaining insights into yourself and your situation enables transformation. Self awareness opens the possibility to learn new competencies including specific skills, behaviors, habits, and techniques, that allow you to act differently.

However, learning about a new competency is insufficient. Turning the competency into a core ability requires practicing intentionally. Finally, getting feedback, makes it possible to practice effectively and improve continuously.

Growth is a cycle that never ends, so the formula is iterative. When you take all these steps in concert, you can rewrite and refactor who you are as a leader and what you’re capable of achieving. My goal is to accelerate that process.

To help you gain insight, I use inquiry-based, adaptive coaching practices. To advance your learning, I use technical coaching techniques and teach specific competencies. I support your practice and serve as a source of accountability. Finally, I can help you gather and interpret feedback.

Ultimately, as a result of working together, you should be better able to continue your process of continuous growth and transformation independently.

What Happens During Coaching

The typical coaching engagement is organized into 3-6 months cycles. Each cycle has five basic elements:

1. Assessment - There are a range of ways to scope this, but it’s always helpful to gather perspective through formal or informal means. That process starts with self inquiry.

2. Planning - A good coaching cycle begins with identifying goals for the work. Of course, these can change over time.

3. Sessions - The heart of a coaching is a series of 1:1 dialog sessions. These can include both adaptive and technical coaching.

4. Work - Between sessions, you do the work to learn and change. I help by providing tools and materials and supporting accountability from session to session.

5. Feedback and Evaluation - Along the way and at the end of a cycle, it’s important to evaluate the progress toward goals and the coaching relationship.

In addition to working toward goals, in every session we can take time to work through pressing issues in the moment. Every coaching engagement is unique, and the work can evolve and adapt as the circumstances change or you gain greater insight into yourself and your needs.

Your Responsibilities as a Coachee

You will get the most out of coaching if you:

Pursue change motivated by your own desire to grow.
Take responsibility and ownership for your growth and development.
Engage fully in the process of coaching and development with openness and honesty.
Be present in the sessions, free from distractions such as Slack.
Do the difficult internal and external work to realize lasting change.
Periodically provide candid feedback to me about the coaching.

My Responsibilities as a Coach

As your coach, I’ll be responsible for:

Organizing the overall engagement so you discover and achieve your goals.
Guiding the structure and process of our sessions so you realize your agenda.
Being fully present and available on the terms we’ve agreed to.
Providing information and training on leadership when appropriate.
Always maintaining our confidentiality agreement.
Soliciting and being open to feedback on my performance as a coach.
Following the ICF Code of Ethics.

Competencies We Might Work On

I adapt my focus to your needs. Most founder CEOs have an array of competencies they are building.

These are some of the topics we might work on:

Leading Yourself

Understanding Yourself as a Leader
Building a Personal Foundation for Performance
Clarifying Your Leadership Charter
Establishing Your Unique Leadership Style
Coping with Imposter Syndrome and Fear
Time Management
Managing Stress and Avoiding Burnout
Letting Go of Early-Stage Leadership and Becoming a Growth Leader
Becoming a More Versatile Leader
Building Executive Presence

Building and Leading High Performance Executive Teams

Designing the Right Team for Your Company Now
Recruiting, Selecting, and Integrating New Executives
Delegation, Authority, and Accountability with Executives
Evaluating Executive Performance
Creating Mental Models of People to Manage Better
Masterful Listening and Assertive Communication
Leading High Quality Executive Team Meetings
Resolving Executive Conflicts and Politics
Getting the Most Out of Executive 1:1s
Leveling-Up the Team and Transitioning Underperforming Executives
Planning and Goal Setting
Data-Driven Management, Scorecards, and Dashboards

Leading the Whole Company Through Growth

Having Impact as CEO in a Growing Company
Designing and Using a Management Calendar
Multi-Stakeholder Leadership
Building and Managing the Board
Running Great Board Meetings
Scaling Hiring without Compromising Quality
Building Culture as a Company Scales
Implementing a Planning Process that Scales
Data-Driven Management and Achieving Data Maturity
Leading Through Crisis

This is not a complete list, other issues may arise as we work together, and we can tackle these as they come up.

Photo Credit: I took this photo trekking in China. I loved the way the path leads into the hills and light makes them glow as if the journey itself will be magical.