The wonderful two way street: Getting what you give (and more): Reflections on my growth as an executive and leadership coach for entrepreneurs by Charlotte Murray
We all have something to teach and something to learn. This reciprocity has been a theme for me, and somewhat of a mantra in my ongoing professional development - it is possible to both contribute and learn simultaneously, and using coaching skills has become my way of showing up. To me, this mindset equates to being an empathetic and life-long learner.
As a young adult, I became aware that I already had insights and experiences that I could share with others, and that I always had more to learn. This awareness stemmed from some of my early experiences that drew me to explore more around creating an environment of curiosity and mutual learning. For example, as a freshman in university, I helped high school students decide their field of study after graduation, and as a young manager I worked with University students in choosing their career path.
I was also someone who loved the creative fields like art, dance, theatre, culinary arts, and music, and I remember several teachers and mentors I had growing up who were inspiring and who taught me lessons I carry with me today. Lessons like being comfortable to be creative in the kitchen means you give yourself the freedom to create, and work with the ingredients you have on hand, which opens up the possibility to create a new dish (instead of making the same one over and over). For me that lesson is about being resourceful and creative while problem solving. Another example is from my theatre arts teacher, who helped me learn how to best prepare my focus and mindset before performing on stage - getting into that same mindset and preparation was instrumental in how pitched my tech startup years later at various demo days, including at Google.
What I did not know at the time, was how to distinguish between teaching, mentoring and coaching. These were the things I was experiencing and it took probably another decade before I learned the definitions and nuances of each of these terms. There is great value in teaching, mentoring and coaching, but the definitions and approaches are distinct and not interchangeable.
Organic learning with focused intention
My intentional coaching journey began at Procter and Gamble, where I had the opportunity to do some peer coaching as part of my roles in Strategic Procurement and later Brand Management. Peer coaching by definition involves mutually sharing and learning from colleagues who are in a similar role in terms of seniority and experience. Together with my colleague Michael Needham, we pulled together a group of like-minded young managers, and led regular group discussions that encouraged peer sharing and learning. I found it motivating to see how everyone in the group applied their insights and actions from these sessions to their work, almost immediately. I discovered the importance of creating a trusting space for these conversations, and how open ended questions elicited more engagement and group discussion. This was an example of bringing to life the concept of mutual learning in a constructive environment, where we all had something to contribute and something to learn. At about the same time, I first became familiar with the term corporate or executive coaching, and I wanted to learn more.
I proceeded to take any and every internal workshop that P&G had to offer around training, facilitation and coaching, and even took the ‘train-the-trainer’ session to become better at facilitating and developing workshops. These workshops helped me become more self-aware and effective as a person, as a manager and as a leader. I was trained in the GROW coaching process (developed by Sir John Whitmore), which is an acronym for Goals-Reality-Options-Will. This is a coaching process that can be applied to any coaching session, that is easy to remember, and encourages the coaching conversation to have a clear beginning, middle and end.
So after, I had the opportunity to begin coaching younger managers as part of my role, which let me put theory into practice. I began honing key coaching skills, including active listening, paraphrasing and asking open questions. Yes, these skills sound simple, but they require consistent practice (and I still practice them today). I also learned that managing time during a coaching session is extremely important; to be sure to not skip over or rush the next steps and commitment to the action items (the Will part of GROW). Setting next steps from every session is key to accountability and action. I have a lot to thank my first ever manager - Marc Pascoe - and an internal coach and facilitator - Alex Haitiglou - who were supportive and encouraging of my learning journey into coaching.
Formal learning with structured intention
Several years later, I spent six months at the P&G office in New York City, working with a prestige skin care brand. During this period I was introduced to Executive Coaching programs, including one at Columbia University. After more research, I decided to take the plunge and enrolled in the program.
What interested me in the Columbia Coaching Certification Program was the process and mindset of their coaching approach, and how it aligned with and built upon what I had learned and practised at P&G. Each step of the GROW coaching process that I knew became more granular with the Columbia program, which included a more refined coaching process, more specific coaching competencies and fine-tuned active listening. I also liked that it was practical and facilitated actionable learning, and was aligned with the process, ethics and guidelines set out by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
Through the program, I gained confidence in pacing the coaching conversation, so that there was a clear beginning, middle and end. I began finding my own coaching style and voice, and being intentional with balancing empathy and structure with accountability. I became better versed in uncovering other’s (and my own) blindspots which are reflected in everyone’s unique view of the world. Fundamentally, the program helped to reconfirm for myself that I truly enjoyed working with people in a way that facilitates ownership, action, and growth.
Over the course of the Columbia program I met many inspiring professionals, some of whom I am grateful to call friends today. I was invited to join the founding team of the-goodcoach.com which has been contributing to the academic advancement and professional practice of Executive Coaching in five continents since 2012. We have since published several books, and expanded the impact and Executive Coaching community exponentially through Yvonne Thackray’s leadership.
Applying coaching skills in a start-up
After seven years, I found the right time to move on from P&G, and I embarked on several years of constant change. I left Switzerland which had been my home for seven years, and co-founded and launched a cross-Canada scuba expedition aimed at mobilizing local communities to clean up the underwater environment from coast to coast. This was an unexpectedly important time for me professionally, personally and as a coach. The expedition helped me get some distance from my corporate life, and I grew to trust my own judgement more - in terms of strategy, budgeting, planning, coaching and even building meaningful working relationships. Over 25,000+ km and almost a year later, I found myself taking on the role of co-founder and CEO of a tech startup in Cape Breton and Halifax, Nova Scotia. I quickly learned and was reminded, yet again, that I had a lot to contribute, and a lot to learn. The idea that I could simultaneously contribute to something and learn from something was evident for me yet again.
I was amazed by the openness and welcoming environment of the tech startup community in Atlantic Canada. The founders were learning, failing, iterating, supporting, sharing and contributing. I learned that what I thought I knew about business had to be re-learned in the startup world. Big corporations have many things figured out, and yet they take ages to move, whereas startups have very little figured out, but can learn and act on a dime. And my advice is always that the data you act upon as a startup is customer validated.
Fast forward three years, I gained experience as a tech founder with all the stereotypical rollercoaster ups and downs that are intrinsically part of a founder’s journey. I discovered a new way to apply my coaching skills - whether it was asking open ended questions and empathising during customer discovery interviews or actively listening while motivating a team - coaching skills were an important part of the mix. Those years were like learning through the entrepreneur firehose - interviewing customers, closing sales, raising capital, and growing a team - this intensity is something I will purport only other founders will truly understand.
Pitching to Montreal and Silicon Valley Investors, closing prominent media companies as clients and growing an awesome team all contributed to this worthwhile experience as a founder. However, still with all this in our favour, timing was unfortunately not on our side, and I also realized in hindsight that I had not done enough customer discovery. My blindspot was that I had assumed that I understood the problem I was solving because I had experienced it myself. I ended up as one of the 90% of founders whose startups fail, and it was a hard blow. I’m grateful for the mentors, advisors, peers, friends who were there for me during that time.
Applying structured coaching programs with experience
As a founder, I was resident in the Volta incubator, and I participated in accelerator startup programs Launch 36, Propel, Founderfuel and Google for startups. After my startup folded I ended up joining the Propel team as a Startup Coach to help other early stage founders avoid the same mistakes I had made.
Enter the next phase of my coaching journey. As a Startup Coach and Chief Coaching Officer at Propel, I get to work directly with founders to better validate and understand the problems they are solving in the market, who their customers are, and how to go to market. We help founders validate their business model, grow their team, develop investment and HR strategies and grow a sustainable and worldclass culture of innovation. Together with my four other Startup coaches, we support founders through two structured programs, which includes dedicated coaching and peer coaching - all delivered virtually. While we have structured programming, we curate the experience to meet the founder where they are, and provide the support that they need to make meaningful and measurable progress. The coaching that we provide is what keeps the founders accountable and focused.
I have had the privilege of working with around 300 founders so far, and have spent 2,000+ hours coaching them. In my role I also have had the opportunity to build a coaching team and develop a coaching methodology that we use to work with the next generation of entrepreneurs. This methodology draws on the coaching competencies and methodologies from P&G, Columbia University and the ICF principles. Our coaches have all been founders themselves, and I draw on my own founder experience to relate to the founders I work with; to reflect empathy, and also to challenge their blindspots and assumptions. Our founders might come to us for help in validating a market, but they stay for the accountability that we provide them.
In conclusion
Coaching skills can be useful and important in many professional capacities and are skills that are fundamental for every leader to work on. My next step in advancing the coaching approach to leadership and growth as a Startup Coach, is to provide coaching training to our entrepreneurs so that they in turn can begin applying those coaching skills with their teams (first training was this week!).
Coaching has a beautiful way of creating reciprocal learning opportunities. I am grateful to simultaneously contribute to and learn from something each day.
To read other blogs written by Charlotte, and you can follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Charlotte Murray (MBA) is an international Fortune 500 executive turned technology entrepreneur, and most recently Chief Coaching Officer at the virtual startup accelerator Propel based in Atlantic Canada. She has been coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs for almost 20 years, offering expertise on topics ranging from career path and leadership to entrepreneurship and scaling a business. With a passion to build capacity and empower others, her coaching focus ison enabling transition, driving change and ensuring accountability. She believes coaching is fundamental in the future of meaningful leadership. Trained in Executive Coaching at Columbia University, she is driving innovation in the coaching space by leading a team of Startup Coaches, developing a coaching process to work with entrepreneurs and applying a coaching approach directly with hundreds of tech founders to validate and develop their market.
Charlotte has published and co-authored Much Ado about Coaching, Translating Coaching Codes of Practice as well as authored the e-book Tell Me About Yourself.
