The dysfunctional patterns that come out in conflict are defense mechanisms meant to avoid the feelings we most want to avoid. And it is those exact feelings we need to welcome in order to reach meaningful resolution.
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This is a guide for you, the fundraising founder, on how to get through a difficult fundraise. It’s split across three sections: taking care of yourself, working with investors, and leading the team. My hope is that this guide helps make your fundraise more likely to succeed while staying healthy throughout the process.
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This created an insight: moving toward the source of our discomfort is what leads to freedom. As many wisdom traditions tell us, it’s resistance that creates our suffering. Coming from this stance casts a new light on much of the standard advice on working with the Inner Critic. Reframe the statements! Practice self-compassion! Question the assumptions! Make no mistake, these are all wonderful practices. But they fall short when their intent is to avoid the Critic. Paradoxically, moving fully toward what’s there is the key to internal spaciousness.
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There are numerous reasons to hire a coach, particularly if you are an ambitious person with lofty goals. Working with a good coach provides structure, accountability, emotional support, and a safe place to grow. But there’s a difference between good coaching and great coaching: great coaching is deeply confronting.
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How often does my unwillingness to tolerate messiness get in the way of learning?
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One of the hardest things about leadership is creating the conditions for your team to produce positive outcomes. First you have to define what success looks like. Then you have to develop the roadmap and resources necessary for people to execute. Yet even with all this in place, you might find that the people around you are not giving their best effort. Or worse, they might be checked out and looking for the exits.
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Through running several founder groups, I am constantly reminded of how powerful coaching can be to help someone grow and simultaneously, how challenging it can be to be an effective coach. I specifically center coaching as the primary form of support in these groups, so there’s a fair amount of teaching and practice that goes on, especially in the early sessions. As I prepare for a new group starting this month, I put together this crash course to help members learn a high level framework and usable practices. Quite a few people on Twitter seemed interested in me sharing it publicly, so here it is.
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I'm excited to introduce a new offering called Leadership Transformation Groups. In short, LTG is a facilitated peer group that helps leaders discover their unconscious patterns and invites them to experiment with new behaviors to push their own growth. Being in a group means you get…
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The foundation of a fruitful coaching relationship is clear agreement. Here is a set of agreements I make with my clients as we work together. If you are not 100% on these, then we may not be a good fit for each other.
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So you've decided to work with a coach. How do you maximize the benefits of this partnership? Let's start by getting clear on what coaching is and isn't. Once you have a clear mental model of coaching, we'll go through the mindset and tactics that will help you get the most out of the engagement.
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Out of all the books I recommend to people, one stands out among the rest: Crucial Conversations by Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny, and Ron McMillan. It offers a powerful framework for handling high-stakes interpersonal communication that ultimately leads to greater trust, healthier relationships, and more positive action.
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About two weeks ago, I injured myself while lifting a weight I shouldn't have been lifting. Shortly after, I felt that familiar feeling of pain in my lower back and hips. There was a moderate level of discomfort punctuated by sharp lightning bolts that registered about a 7 out of 10 on the pain scale whenever I found myself in the wrong position. I should know better by now because I've been through this before.
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People turn to coaching when they are looking to make a meaningful shift somewhere in their life. In these conversations, a client occupies a special place where they unpack their external circumstances and internal experiences so they can choose how they want to evolve. It can create deep, important change. But in a 1 to 1 setting, it is inherently unscalable.
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Earlier today I sent this email to my clients, both past and present, to help them find ways to cope with the fear we’re all facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m posting it here in the hopes that those who read it can benefit.
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As heroes of their own story, they view their efforts as valiant and noble, setting an example for others to follow. But when they see their teammates working fewer hours than they do, they start to fret. Questions start to appear: "Why aren't the others around me working as hard as I am? Do they not care as much as I do? How do I get my team to work harder?"
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Over the last few weeks, several founders have told me about a common challenge: how does one transition from building and selling to leading a team?
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