There are differences between filtered CEOs who find themselves in the role through traditional routes, and unfiltered CEOs, who find themselves in the role through founding their organization.
All challenges mentioned under CEO Coaching apply.
In addition, passionate founders often struggle with an urge to micromanage, burn themselves out, and raise anxiety. The oversimplified, false dichotomy of founder mode versus manager mode needs to be balanced with wisdom, an understanding of polarities, knowledge of where you are truly helpful, and an eye for morale and sustainability.
Growing companies require founders and cofounders to also inhabit managerial roles, many of whom struggle when faced with responsibilities like 1:1s, providing constructive feedback, hiring experts, and leading mature talent.
Founder Coaching will help you develop best practices and solidify your leadership.
Whilst some coaching engagements are limited due to organizational constraints, the ideal engagement is 9 months for founders and 9-12 months for founder CEOs. This is sufficient for us to understand you, your organization, your needs, and also your co-founder dynamics. We will diagnose core areas for growth, establish new approaches, and recover from inevitable regression in ways that strengthen progress. My motive is that you sustain your growth for the long-term, with or without me.
Our work together may be only with you. It may also include shadowing where I observe your leadership in real-time, 360 feedback, and stakeholder interviews. Many founders find it immensely valuable to have me spend 1-2 hours with each of their co-founders and/or C-Suite to understand motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. This increases shared context and our ability to strengthen the system.
Founder Coaching is most effective when you trust me enough to share where you are confident and where you are out of your depth. The highest performing founders I work with are true “humble talent”.
By understanding you and diagnosing your current leadership, we will glean where you’re nailing things and what needs work. You don’t need to be strong at everything to be a great founder. What does work is knowing yourself deeply and becoming resourceful with what you find.
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