Coaching

I’ve been be so fortunate in my life and career to be guided by some absolutely superb people. Over time, I’ve distilled what I’ve learned and been successful in refining and applying it.

In a practical sense, this translates into my offering a few services:

1. Mentorship: This can take several forms, from guiding recent high school and university grads to working with new teachers and school administrators.

2. Coaching: My work here has been almost exclusively with Heads of Schools, nonprofit C-level executives, and founders of startups. Sometimes, the most important thing is the timely counsel of someone who has lived what you’re going through. I’ve been particularly proud of the value I’ve been able to bring in this area.

3. Work with Boards of Directors: Establishing functional boundaries in the relationship between a chief executive and the Board is a delicate process but, done well, the long-term benefits to the parties and the organization are of fundamental importance. I’ve been on both ends of the equation and am particularly engaged in finding meaningful rules of engagement.

4. Administering Doses of Common Sense: If you’re looking for someone to tell you that everything is fine when it’s not, you have the wrong person. Equally so if you’re looking for a perfectly functional status quo to be imploded just to create new work. I am never shy about telling it the way I see it. I’ve had superb feedback from people and organizations to whom I’ve just “given it to straight.” Sometimes, that uncommon dose of common sense does the trick.

5. Work-Life Balance: Kind of ironic that I advise in this area as I fundamentally don’t believe in work-life balance. Instead, I believe that we should create lives in which we take joy in everything we do. So our work should be as awesome as our play. And everyone who knows me knows three fundamental things about me: I work very hard, I never hesitate to play (even in the middle of “work”), and I don’t believe that success is about sleeping two hours a night and literally working ourselves to death. I also don’t believe that success is working like a sled dog until we’re 65 then setting out to enjoy things we thought we might want but no longer have the appetite for. I believe in feeding our appetites and I’ll show you how.