Working with Startups and Entrepreneurial CEOs

Our roles in life have been a little bit different. You've worked a lot in big companies, yet you've also done a lot of work with startup people and smaller companies. My experience there is much more limited than yours. What are some of the experience that you've had working with startup CEOs and startup companies?

Well, I think you're exactly right that coaching's come out of the closet. And so this is a generation of people who've lived with coaching out of the closet already. So actually having a coach for them is definitely like. I wouldn't say it's a badge of honor, but I will say they recognize that they're first time founders, they're first time leaders, and so they recognize they need that kind of help. Also, the VCs and their boards are interested and engaged and like helpful with their coaching process. So altogether the culture is such that it really accepts coaching and it really kind of values and appreciates coaching. So the people I work with, they talk all the time, oh, my coach said, or my coach said. And then so that they're really comfortable with the concept of that kind of mentoring and growing, by the way. I think that also translates into the organization as a whole, like this idea that there's an environment where people recognize that we're all here to learn. So when people say, oh, it's a startup, you know how it is, it's a startup. Part of that is about creating a learning organization, which I think coaching really supports.