80% of the value for me has come from identifying hidden sources of fear and working through plans to overcome them. I'm naturally risk-averse and really had no real understanding of how much I was letting my own self-limiting belief system hold me back. A good coach can help you identify ways in which you're inadvertently sabotaging your own progress and help you to overcome them.
The other primary benefit (the remaining 20%) has come from having a completely new and fresh perspective on problem-solving. I can easily say that I've had more directly actionable "Aha" moments in the last three years of coaching than I had over the previous 20+ years of my career. For every "unique" problem you think you have, a good coach or counselor has probably seen some variation of it dozens of times and can probably offer you a half dozen useful ways of tackling the problem. It's the same thing that something like YC does for startups, but applied to you on an individual level.
The major caveat of course is that good coaches are often hard to find and you might have to search a bit to find one that works well for your specific needs. YMMV and all that.
I’d say coaching probably is a different framing, maybe some different techniques, but similar goals as therapy? Idk, just sort of speculating.
HBR has a good podcast that is run by Muriel Wilkins that is useful for those that can learn vicariously.
Perhaps you can see how my example is an over-reduction that eschews the actual value of a personal trainer, and then likewise for founder coaching.
The main value is overcoming your own bias and limitation by accessing an informed neutral perspective. A coach isn't there to provide you with all the right answers. He's there to help you see the right problems.
I feel like I really don't have any but as you said those are hidden, so maybe I have some but I just don't know that.
Securing a coach is both possible and critically important to career trajectory. Further, the FANG SVP that has climbed ladder without benefit of guidance and network such associations yield is rare indeed.
If desired I can make introduction to a couple of people that are well respected, lmk.
Happened with me, I made it happen to others.
Remember two things:
One, a mentorship need not be a lifelong relationship. Mentorship relationship might exist for three months, ten years, or might be lifelong. Different mentors are needed for different phases in your career.
Two, keep meeting people, keep talking about stuff that you are genuinely interested about. Not only professional interests, but also cultural, social, personal, and (in some little number of apt places) political interests, as well. When a mentor picks you, it's because you are interesting to them. A mentor is a person, and not an advice-bot.
Those channels are top accelerators like YC and top VCs. It's not worth their time to waste it on people they don't have a stake in, but it seriously changes the trajectory of founders who are exposed to it (and their employees - not going to doxx myself but it's not possible to understate what you get through osmosis at an early stage startup on the path to being a unicorn).
Basically you need to take that risk to be a founder of a killer idea that redefines or creates entire new markets (or has the potential to) and then exercise a network to get in with the "in" crowd of advisors who have a vested interest in your success.
At the end of the day, those who can't do teach. But there's only so much you can learn from those who haven't done anything.
She is normal (by your current definition!) in the sense that coaching is not about growing her business to a billion dollar endeavor nor about growth in the startup sense but more about living your potential because you will be more happy if you are successful in your own terms and in some of your current or future contexts.
Many of the friction, we, individuals experience are not connected with IQs or metrics that are fancy when you are in high school but recognizing resources to leverage or invent.
In a nutshell, IMHO, [western?] people tend to think that they need to hardly optimize at the individual level (very local optimization) where the potential is in The "tribe", the group(s), teams, clusters, etc you connect and/or built.
In another context, but linked, HN thread the article says "We should look to society, not to the brain" [1]. In this context we refer many times to coaching for improving the person but I would say the purpose is being a vector of change beyond your individuality but respecting it.
Here's our backstory. We needed coaching, did a bunch of research, found coaches everyone said were good, found them to be really really expensive ($750/session and up), tried them, they didn't really help much.... it was super frustrating.
My biggest issue was I needed help showing up every day and bringing my best effort to solve problems that seemed increasingly impossible. I knew I wasn't performing at my best, and very much wanted to -- but I didn't know what to do.
One of my batch mates introduced me to a friend from Stanford who had worked with a sports psychologist to help her train for the Olympics. After talking to her, I discovered an area of psychology called "performance psychology." It's the mental training pro athletes to reach goals.
It was both an aha moment... and also something that made me feel a little mad. I had worked in so many jobs where this type of coaching would have made a. huge. difference for me -- why wasn't it widely known and available?
My cofounder and I are now solving that problem with Coach. We'd love to talk to anyone looking for a coach. We're still in beta, but here's our demo: https://vimeo.com/680075985/cd193c0e7c
Sports psychology is probably related.
And general clinical psychotherapy might be worth considering.
I mean short of an industry mentor, you can only get general advice on mental changes and what you are trying to mitigate is dissatisfaction.
Good luck.
Coaching is about your present -> future
Therapy is about your past <- present
I wouldn't every touch career counselling via google search. Mostly finding recommendations on via known folks and referrals.
At a the most basic a therapist looks at your past- the emotions/feelings involved and helps you process and understand. Vs a coach that looks at the future, helps identifies goals- personal and/or professional keeps you accountable to those goals. Especially when you don't feel like doing them.
Therapist = healing past. Coach = creating future. I find using them both in parallel very worthwhile.
I am not even close to an executive and I had hired an executive coach that was beyond amazing. He helped me identifying where I wanted to go, but had a h ard time expressing. Then helped me over my roadblocks and doubts.
Coaches keep you accountable. He would probe to find exactly what I needed,tell me what to do and I would agree to that commitment. Where I therapist almost never tells you what to do- but through a slow sometimes painstakingly process, you figure out on your own.
I good coach will skyrocket you to your goals, a good therapist will help you heal. But they can be hard to find, and one that is good for one person won't be for the next. .
There is a whole subsection of coaches that write books and you can sometimes find their students who are also good coahes. I'd check out Rich Litvin, John Patrick Morgan, Steve Chandler, Steve Hardison, Tripp Lanier, Jamie Wheel- If they are out of your price range see if they have recommendations or referrals.
Interview with people, see how you get along and move to the next. But pull the trigger. They can be worth multiples of their sometimes extreme fees in the return you get back.
I am interested in building out a coaching and advising practice for technical leaders. It's something I've been doing professionally in the role of a manager and department leader, and am eager to expand it. Take a look at my HN profile for a bit more about me and to see how to get in touch.
1. Therapy: Tissues, tears, talking and thorazine.
2. Coaching: Most often asking questions to "lead you to the answer", though in some cases it has slowly evolved to providing some frameworks/models but still almost never resolving to ROI, payout models or physics.
If your computer crashed due to a corrupted file or OS issue would you call a shaman, stoic or therapist to talk about how to reframe the pain or anger of lost time or a coaching to ask questions of how you feel about it, and what resources do you have to fix it or have it fixed?
What about office politics? A toxic client, coworker or executive? A narcissist at home or in the family. And so on.
I find these approaches brittle, inefficient,incomplete, and often non-repeatable aka laden with heavy technical debt.
The paradigm shift is to understand that all of these issues relate to applied psychology bounded by economics (and ultimately by physics), and that psycheis the superpower with repeatable patterns that are computationally deterministic.And that they form a complex system comprised of modules, functions, algorithms, elements and primitives.
Then it is simply a matter of determining your goal/s or objectives, how you will move towards them or resolve them, such as pain killer, problem slayer, directed problem solving, etc. and while learning simple but very powerful psyche models & psyche functions/forensics that give repeatable results in anticipating, avoiding and/or resolving issues, and moving towards your goals.
Even if you are autistic af, it doesn't matter if you can read an error code or exit code.
The key is this is applicable across all industries, functional areas, and tasks, such hire, fire, promote, love, hate, divorce, stop divorce, sell, buy, negotiate or sue.
It's a leap of faith until the first time it is used and the effortless results come in. And then seen as transparent and repeatable.
PsycheOS --> Programmable Psyche --> Psyche Jujutsu, Malware, Firewall + Forensics
I recently graduated from an ICF-approved coach training program and I'm making the transition from tech to coaching. You can read more about me on my profile. If you think it's a good fit I'd be happy to offer you a few sessions pro bono.
Check shiftspace.com or DM me for more info. Cheers!
Full disclosure: I'm a startup founder with a profile on that site but there are other similar services out there I believe.
The longer and hopefully less useless answer is that "executive/startup coach" is too general regarding your desired outcome(s) so it would be difficult to identify prospects for your consideration. "Relevant price point" also needs to be nailed down.
I like Brad Ferris, Eric Maisel, and Alan Weiss.
I’ve also coached founders and execs in all size orgs.
Drop me an email if you’d like to talk through how I’ve used coaching and how I’ve coached.
It can help you more to figure out if this is for you.
Might make sense to think what more about what you want to build of yourself, before you actually invest your single life into it...
My email is in bio if you want to talk about it
Think 80-150/hr. Frequently you can find something in the benefits package that might help as well depending on who/where you work.
vpecoach.com
I haven't used it, myself, but I think they're the leading startup in the space.
"Steve Jobs had Bill Campbell as a mentor; Mark Zuckerberg had Steve Jobs; Bill Gates had Warren Buffett" - https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianrashid/2017/05/02/3-reason...
A quick search seems to confirm that both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had mentors at various points in their careers.