Three leader profiles I coach

And why I focus on start-ups now

I’ve been writing The Pivotal Leader weekly for more than three months now*, and haven’t shared with you yet how I work with leaders to help them embody pivotal leadership.

Pivotal leadership (n.):
a form of guiding oneself and others to fulfill a purpose that’s centered on truth.

While “truth-seeking” has been common across my coaching engagements for more than five years, I’ve evolved to focus on helping three specific profiles of start-up leaders that I’ll share with you today. These include early and growth stage leaders.

But first, why start-ups as opposed to established companies?

• Coaching delivers a significant impact relatively quickly because start-up culture prioritizes action, plus there isn’t too much process, history, and politics in the way

• Few of my start-up clients have experience operating at big company scale. I love bringing that value to them in a way that makes sense for their environment.

• Start-up leaders don’t often have built-in support. Having an outsider to help them move through uncertainty can get them farther than they believe they can.

---

Here are the three leader profiles I focus on coaching today:

Founder-CEOs who yearn for space to THINK.

When you’re building and growing a business, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day tasks — even when those tasks aren’t all critical for your business stage. You might be inconsistent in stepping back to make sure you’re being intentional about where and how you invest your energy. Are you clear on what’s most important?

Maybe you’re noticing that it’s hard to be present and observant, see things from different perspectives, and drown out internal and external noise to make clear choices.

Coaching with me is a container for doing all three of these things. You learn to manage your reactive tendencies (we all have them), reduce bias (we all have that, too), and focus unapologetically on your goals. We do that by building your foundation for authentic and aspirational leadership, and translating that into how you lead each day.

---

First-time executives navigating their newfound authority.

As a first-time exec at a start-up, you may face a common scenario you haven’t had to navigate before: you were hired to be an authority, but you find yourself hesitating to step into the spotlight fully when the founder is your boss and the vision is theirs.

To do your job well, you might have to tell hard truths. You may have to counter existing points of view on what you’re doing or how you’re doing it. How can you lead with truth in a way that will work in the environment, and still be authentic to you?

Through coaching, we build your confidence in holding the spotlight, guide you to focus your leadership on outcomes, and help you identify and execute what really matters to set the team and business up for success.

---

High-performing leaders whose teams need a culture reset.

You’ve always hit your numbers, but feedback is trickling in that your leadership approach isn’t working any more. Maybe the business has evolved and you haven’t adjusted your leadership style to meet current needs. Maybe you have a tendency to micromanage, play it safe, or be a perfectionist.

You may not always be aware of how you need to evolve as your context evolves. External feedback is a helpful signal, and building the muscle to observe yourself is critical to lead in a way that centers truth.

Coaching will help you to see yourself as a leader in a broader context. We work together to understand your default behaviors, which of them to keep versus outgrow, and identify any alternatives you want to start to implement. Coaching with me isn’t punitive; it’s about self discovery and growing into the next version of you as a leader.

---

If you or your team members fit any of these profiles, schedule a free impact session with me to work through a topic you’ve been tackling on your own. I’ve coached pre-seed through Series D founders and their teams.

Photo by Tasha Kostyuk on Unsplash

You can learn more about my specific 1:1 coaching offerings on my website.

*After its first 90 days, The Pivotal Leader has moved from being a weekly to a bi-weekly publication. Why? In the larger context of my business, bi-weekly still fulfills its purpose and gives me back time to focus on new activities - more direct sales, and building a new program to expand my services for start-ups.