Dashing Leadership 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.
Important to emphasize, this is aimed at beginners. There are plenty of great resources out there on how to coach with depth and mastery, which I recommend you check out if you’re interested. I’ll aim to share a list of those in a future update.
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.
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.
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.
