What Should You Actually Use a Coach For?

Most founders misunderstand what coaching is for.

And it costs them.

In this Post Bag episode, James Johnson and Freddie Birley unpack what coaching actually does - and why the best founders use it differently.

This isn’t about frameworks.
 It’s about decision-making, pressure, and telling the truth when it matters.

Listen to the end if you’ve ever asked:
 “Is coaching actually worth it?”

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Peer Effect Post Bag. I'm James Johnson, joined by Freddie Burley. We ask for your questions, and Freddie and I are going to tackle them together. These aren't theoretical case studies, it's the stuff keeping you up at 2 a.m. Let's get answering. Welcome to the Peer Effect post bag. I'm James Johnson.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

And I'm Freddie Burley. So how has your week been? What's been going on?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, I did a half marathon yesterday.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Oh, epic! That's amazing. How are you feeling?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

A little bit sore.

unknown 0:29

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Not that quiet.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Um it was it was it was fun. Like it was it was interesting. Like I used to do a lot of running. I ran a lot when I was in my twenties. I ran so much I I couldn't run then for about six years because I messed up my knees. Turns out like most things. Just blindly trying to grunt something out with bad technique is is and and you assume you know what you're doing and you don't. Uh then got back into my 30s a bit, uh, did some longer stuff, and then did pretty much nothing for the last four years with with a s with a small small child. Um, but getting back into it and trying to really sort of focus on technique.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

How amazing. That's epic.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah, it's good. It's also quite hard moving away from like I used to be able to do this, and actually just enjoying it for what it is and trying to find a new challenge. Yeah. And for me that's been technique. Although I did it the weekend and uh did it with two friends, one of whom uh we we all we all slightly try to sandbag what times we thought we were gonna get so we could try and win. And then uh one of the other guys smoked me and I was like I saw him Did he underplay it beforehand as well?

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Um he it was seven minutes faster than the time he said he was going for. And uh I was about halfway through and I saw him just pull away and I was like, I'm just not gonna be able to do this.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

I was like, I need to let go of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

It was a tough kilometer. I was like, should I chase him? Should I not? Shall I go after him? I was like, this is just just run your own race. Yeah. Um and enjoy it. It was it was really nice. It was really nice. Um but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:00

Will you do it again?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yes, yeah. So I'm I'm I'm toying with the idea to see if I can beat my PB. Bear in mind I did my PB probably like 15 years ago when I was when I was younger, and your your like uh VO2 max drops and a whole range of things happens. Yeah. Um but I reckon with like focus tech technique and stuff, I'd be curious to see if I could beat it. So that's that's my new challenge. So I think I might do another one in June as kind of like a tester, and then one in September, October when it's a bit cooler again, because June will be a bit hot, so you want to try and really push it. Um although it was quite interesting because I was talking to someone in uh a chair of forum at Helm, and one of my group was talking about r doing a marathon, and I think I know having done all this research, I think I know quite a bit about it, and I was giving him those helpful tips, and I thought, let me just check in. What time are you aiming for? And he's already running like significantly faster than I've ever run. So it's like I'm just gonna get back in my box.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

I would love tips from you. Yeah. Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Um so yeah, that's what I would do.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Okay, nice. That's cool, that's exciting. I guess a nice connection to our question today. Um so I mean, this is honestly a helpful question for lots of probably every single person I work with, but Andrew's asked, what should I use a coach for?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

So much. It's threefold. Like one of which is what's the difference between like a coach, a mentor, and a therapist? That comes up a lot.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

And then I see there kind of being like sort of a short-term and long-term benefit from a coach. And then I think there are some quite specific use cases. So I may kind of go through the the three. So I think having any form of one-to-one support is super valuable. I think peer groups are valuable, they give you one thing. I think having a person dedicated to you in a safe space is super helpful. But I do think mentor, coach, and therapist are different. So the way I see it is mentor is someone who's kind of done it before, and kind of like do it my way. It's kind of a sort of a I know more than you relationship. A coach is very much sort of a forward-looking, we're kind of side by side. Here's how to bring out the best of you, here's the future game plan, acknowledging some past stuff, but like let's really focus on the future. And then a therapist is about digging out that trauma and a bit more backward looking and going, let's okay, let's dive into X. And a coach should be staying away from that stuff. Yeah. And I and I and I work with people that work work with me and work with a uh therapist because it can be a very useful combo.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

And some people have all three.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

I think having at least two, I think, is helpful because you've got someone like the peer group, I think it's useful to get more practical what's happening now support. And I think either coach or therapist and or both gives you that one-to-one space to really focus on you. So I suppose that's how I see that part. But then I think you can look at it from a session perspective. So I think just having a single coaching session is valuable because it's almost like you get this time dilation effect where founders are so overwhelmed, they've got so much information coming in, they've got to make more decisions, they've got stuff like just having an hour where you can reflect in a safe space and pause just leads to better decisions, better impact. And you're not kind of distracting your team or your investors with like your first thoughts, you kind of have a chance to put them through. So I think even a standalone session has so many benefits, but where it really compounds is where you have a long-term relationship because you get to know each other, you can like you know the context a lot better, you can challenge you you build a relationship so you can challenge more deeply. And because there's no power game going on, you can really people really listen. I think it's a really lovely, unique relationship, uh, coach and client. Like I when I was a founder, I'd a coach, same coach for six years. Yeah and I and I loved it. Um I do think there's this kind of short-term and long-term sort of stuff going on. Um and then I I think some specific use cases, you've got kind of the loneliness problem of founders, it is tough at the top. You are isolated, no one really understands you're just kind of like, oh, you've got a successful business, poor you. It's like they don't see the pressure or anything else. I think that's an issue. But sort of having an outside perspective, like as coaches, we see we we get to see sort of the same patterns playing out hundreds of times over the years. And so actually be able to share that helps people avoid mistakes sometimes. Yes. That's quite valuable. Um that kind of accountability without politics. So you're you're able to hold people to account without feeling like, oh, your investors are gonna get frustrated about your or your team or your co-founder. It's quite it's quite a gentle accountability, but it's very powerful. Yes. Um and sometimes people don't aren't willing to hold us to account either because we can change the deadlines and people don't say anything. But as coaches we know. Um a big one for me is that decision quality under pressure. Because I often point this as kind of the single biggest ROI when you look at like short-term ROI. We've often been sitting on these big decisions like a key high that's not worked out or something. Like suddenly making that change a month earlier, two months later, has a there's a very clear financial saving there. But also there's the the bigger business impact of that is significant. You play that out across five, ten, twenty decisions over the course of a year, you can see how that benefit really compounds.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Yes, completely.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

And then I think the final big one for me is that performance edge in terms of just the work you do and improving yourself really does lead to better business performance because your team experience it, they they experience more consistent you, a more balanced you. And that that benefit plays out of your personal life as well, which is important. And I found as we try to think, oh, I'll sort this stuff out when I once I've exited. Yeah. But it probably helps you enjoy the journey and so I think there's I thought there's a lot of benefits.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

No, of course, of course. And it but I think you've made so many that it's it's there are so many different benefits, and for different people it it it serves them at different points in their life. And also I think what can be slightly confusing for people too is that coaching can be such a vague title, and like you say, with the difference between therapist, coach, and mentor, uh especially some coaches kind of wear all three hats in some ways when they've built a company and they're happy kind of diving into more trauma-informed style coaching, and they can kind of wear all three hats and then other coaches don't. So I think even people who are exploring coaching, it is really important to get a sense of that coach's style and what they are used for and what they're not used for, because it's not there's such a wide range of use cases.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

But I think if you like to say you're a therapist, I think you should have gone through therapy training. Yeah. I think to be a coach, ideally you have actually gone through people couldn't label themselves a coach without having gone through the training. And it's as we both know, like it's kind of six months, you're doing practical and you're assessed, like you are really learning skills and not let out to deploy them before you know what you're doing. Yes. And we've both go for like five. So by the time you get to this stage, like that six months training plus five experience, it's it's different. Yeah. So I think people can combine them, but I would certainly check whether people should be combining them.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

Com completely. And that's also up to the person sort of meet meeting them. And I always say to people that at the end of a kind of intro call, for me, I think the most important conditions are that they deeply trust the coach. They feel like they can exp to get the maximal benefits out of the experience, you need to feel like you'll explore parts of yourself that maybe in other contexts of your life you don't feel safe to. And I think that's that tension as a leader or as a founder or um as between like performance, because often in every context of their life, they're they're leading, and whether that's across their family, their team, their board, their investors, they they're and so there's a performative element often where they're kind of holding or needing to instill confidence in everyone that they've got everything covered, all's well on the home front. And actually, internally, especially at the kinds of companies that we work with, they're scaling so quickly that actually for them, if everything was well, it it would almost be odd for them to experience everything as well, because they're often so heavily leaning into that discomfort zone. They're tackling new markets, new terrains, new team members, new like there's so much novelty that it's outside their comfort zone. And so often that's psychologically, it's hard. And it um and equally that pairing, you don't want to instill like, I don't know what's going on, or they don't want to project that lack of confidence. They want to be grounded and in control. And so having that space where we have we we want to unearth the truth to then drive their performance. Um, and sometimes you'll feel the tip, the scales tip when people are performing so heavily that things are really cracking at home or in relationships or in how they're giving feedback or how they're showing up with a team, you'll start to see the cracks when there's no space where they're not performing, they're actually just truthful. And so having that combination I found between truth-seeking and performance, they're actually very complementary. And it's really important that you have contexts and spaces in your life where you can truth seek, and context and spaces where um you can give it your rule and you can like show a good give a good show.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah, because otherwise was you're sort of locked into the LinkedIn version of yourself 24-7. How dark hashtag blessed. Like joke is I I just I drove on the way to the South America, I drove past someone with a car which had hashtag blessed as a on the top of their car as like a screen or like a windscreen wrapper. Like astonishing. That's so jokes. Um but uh I should always take note. I was driving, so I could take a photo. I wish I had. That'd be a great LinkedIn post in there. But but I do think this kind of this LinkedIn version of yourself, it's exhausting to keep up. It's not true. And you can't make the best decisions when you're trying to protect that version.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

That's it. 100%. And especially when you're dealing with much more nuanced, like the leadership is generally sitting in nuance, and it's there's generally not like a right or a wrong or a black and a white. There's so especially when you're dealing with people dynamics and teams. And so being able to kind of wade through the nuance, then decide, okay, what am I anchoring into? How do I communicate that well? Um, is tough.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I I always think that like it's it's such a symbiotic relationship. Yeah. Because the better you do, the better the founder does. Actually, you said the more the more actually you need to coach because there's more new experience to go through, there's more new challenges, the more you're in your discomfort zone. But actually, that's probably mean the business is performing well, so the value becomes really clear. So actually, it's not something that is a three-month, six-month relationship. It could be like a I mean, I've worked with clients for four years, five years because that trust is there, you're a good space for them to talk stuff through, you know enough to challenge them. And also you start getting involved in so much else in their in their life, like sort of marri marriage decisions, sort of house buying decisions, like grief, all sorts of things. You you you get to see the true unvarnished nature of someone because you're you're showing up without judgment. And you often you see a cycle that that their partners don't see or their co-cause they have no need to impress you. It's so true. Which I th I thought we get to a lot of that sort of holding your clients in unconditional positive regard. Yeah. And I think that's a lovely space to be held, and I think it's a real gift to actually experience that.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

Yeah, it's so true. Because often in any other context of your life, people have an incentive structure that doesn't completely align with yours. And therefore, I think often people question what's the intention behind saying this? Um, and whereas, yeah, I often think about coaching as like your intention is to understand, like your intention is just for their good and their growth. For me, when I think about their good, it's okay, what how do I get to the heart of who this person is, what drives them, what their strengths are, what they see value in, what they see as a valuable use of their time and energy, what work they consider to be meaningful, how do we get them aligned with what they consider to be a great life?

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

And equally their growth is a combination of to grow effectively, we need to be supported, but we also need to be challenged. And that that delicate balance between support and challenge, I think in most other contexts of life, people can question the challenge. Um, and in a coaching context, you can challenge generously and pretty brutally in a way that can be received or truthfully, maybe not brutally is the wrong word. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

I think sometimes I think uh I worked on him for two years and he said his favorite session with me was when I told him he was speaking bullshit because he basically had this image in his head that he couldn't hire good people, he didn't have the right to hire good people. And it kept on coming back to this over the space of three months. That was like eventually I was like, you're talking nonsense. Like you deserve, like if you look at every other element of what you do, like you're amazing at fundraising, you're amazing at selling a business. Why can't you be amazing at h hiring good people? Yeah. They would love to work for you. And actually, just that challenge, he was like, Yeah, his next two people were amazing people because suddenly he reset the bar.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

But you have to earn the right, I think, to have that type of conversation because too early, people are like, Oh, you don't know my business, you don't know me.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

It it's so ingrained that narrative of like, I don't deserve to have good people working in my business. Yeah, that you need to have quite a lot of sort of credibility or capital in the bank to push past that point.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

It's so true. And I think it's also quite interesting when you can start to get a sense of someone that you know what they're saying isn't true. So once you've had a few sessions, you can start to get a rhythm of you get in tune with okay, what they're speaking feels right, and then sometimes they'll oft they'll share stories or experiences, and you're like, something's just not adding up here. I feel like you're distracting our time and energy on things that aren't important. What's actually going on, what's actually behind that, what's actually important, what are you actually avoiding? Like you don't need to perform for me. We need to focus on what's actually true here. And some because especially when so used to performing as a human and every minute being uh like trying to create value that you can forget that it's okay to talk about what's actually taking up most of your headspace at the moment, even if it feels really silly and it could be like what we it could be having feet giving feedback to someone. It could be something that's going on outside of work that's actually taking up all your headspace, draining your energy and distracting you from focusing on what's most important. And so I think that's also another part of the challenge is often just getting people to tell the truth faster. And I think coaching is often a process of getting people to tell the truth faster. And um it's it's a fun game once people feel like, oh, I'm talking, no, this is actually what's most important, and I've now got clarity on what's most important and the energy that that releases, then they can drive in other areas that maybe to the outside world seem like really sexy challenges or hard challenges. But often people have come they've come up against those challenges so many times that to them they they eat them for breakfast. Like there's no there's no problem with fundraising, or there's no problem with um like vision setting or there's a crisis or there's a big competitor. And sometimes that like for people, that's like, let's go, that's so exciting. But then something to do with like a seemingly in their mind small problem with a team just takes up, like they can't sleep over it and they're worrying about it. And so you've got to coming back to like what is coaching for it is also coming back to whatever you find challenging right now and whatever you desire right now, and and exploring both the aspiration, like the true aspirations and the true challenges so that you can navigate towards where you want to be, honestly, as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Yeah, I think that's big taker, isn't it? So it is if you find the right coach, it is so flexible. Yeah. Like that there's there should be some significant like ROI for your business on. I mean, should be really looking at 10x in your investment on 10 like business impact.

SPEAKER_03 17:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

But just life impact and how you can use it does vary very much person to person.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

100%.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Well, this is clearly a topic close to both our hearts. We probably could have gone for another 15 minutes. Um but uh thanks for listening. Uh it's been another great post bag, and we will see you next Monday for another one. Amazing. So hit subscribe and uh see you next week.