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Your idea of connecting coaches with EA organizations is great. I've had similar ideas about connecting executive coaches (from business) and mental performance consultants (with a performance psychology background) with a broader audience of anyone working in jobs aimed to "tackle the most pressing problems in the world" (a la 80,000 hours). I think there are a lot of people in the executive coach and mental performance consultant occupations that would want to contribute to EA through "donating" their services to those working in occupations more directly connected to EA. I'd enjoy a chance to trade thoughts or talk more about your effort. Thank you. Best, Pete

Business Coaching/Mentoring For EA Organisations

by TheBusinessGrowthAgency

Nov 9 20212 min read 11

64

CoachingManagement & mentoringOperationsOrganization strategyPersonal development

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TL;DR: if you're a CEO or senior decision maker at an EA org I'd like to invite you to apply for our pro bono business coaching service. If you know somebody who could help connect EA orgs and business coaches/mentors please point me in their direction.

I'm the COO (Chief Operating Officer) at a business coaching practice in London. Over the past year I've been running a few EA side projects to try and use some of the influence I have at work to direct money and resources towards EA causes.

As a company we now donate a proportion of our profits to GiveWell charities and I've given presentations and worked individually with our CEO clients in London introducing them to basic EA concepts and supporting them in setting up giving pledges.

The next thing I want to try is providing pro bono coaching/mentoring to leaders at EA organisations.

Some reasons why we might be able to help...

We coach clients on productivity, goal setting and accountability but also practical business skills like management, operations, recruitment, culture, negotiation, marketing, ... etc. which I think could be relevant to many EA orgs as they grow
Each of our coaches have a decade plus of experience either in senior management positions at large organisations or founding and growing successful companies themselves
All our coaches have gone through rigorous coaching certification as well as coaching, between them, thousands of CEOs over the past decade
As a coaching practice with a team of 8 people we have a back office team and various different programmes that we've developed over the years. As well as 1-to-1 coaching sessions we do things like weekly group accountability coaching, workshops on specific business topics, coaching for emerging leaders in organisations and an entrepreneurs' book club. I'd be open to offering places at any of these free of charge to the right people.

If this sounds interesting to you and you would like to talk to one of our business coaches please fill out an application form at the bottom of this page.

If you know somebody who might benefit please forward them a link to this post or the application/explainer page on my website.

If you can put me in touch with someone who has a clever way of connecting coaches/mentors and EA orgs that I haven't thought of please let me know. (I've reached out to a few meta-EA organisations by email this morning but I'm sure there's others I'm not aware of or situations where I won't get anywhere without someone first making an initial introduction.)

If you have any feedback or advice on anything I've written above please let me know in the comments or via private message.

Thanks so much.

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32EA Updates for December 2021

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lincolnqNov 10 20214

This post says "EA orgs" but the linked page specifically says "charities". I assume this offer is restricted to non-profits, but I am commenting to check that was your actual intent!

TheBusinessGrowthAgencyNov 12 20212

I was imagining non-profits but I guess if there are people where the product or service they're working on is something clearly EA driven and a for-profit model is actually the best way to do that - I'd be keen to hear from them.

If you're unsure and you've got 5mins to fill in the application form, I'd encourage you to go for it.

samstowersNov 14 20212

I fall under this category - have applied. :)

Jamie_HarrisNov 17 20213

A number of effective animal advocacy nonprofits have listed "Pro bono management or leadership individual coaching/mentoring" as one of their top 3 most urgent needs in terms of pro bono support from skilled professionals. See the "leadership or senior management" section of our (Animal Advocacy Careers') skilled volunteering board.

(5 out of about 20 participating orgs selected as one of the top 3 priorities out of the more than 100 options they were given. And 5 others selected it as important and useful but not one of their top 3 priorities.)

So it's fantastic that you're offering this service! Please do use the above linked skilled volunteering board and the instructions there to connect with orgs if you're still looking for additional partners to work with. Thank you!

MichaelA🔸Nov 12 20213

Nice, thanks for this offer! Seems worth me / my org seriously considering.

Do you have data on feedback/impact along the lines of systematically gathered anonymous feedback from clients on what benefits (if any) they feel coaching had for them? (I see there's a Results page, but that's non-anonymous testimonials and case studies that seem written by the agency itself, which seems useful but still leaves room for other types of data to be useful.)

TheBusinessGrowthAgencyNov 12 20213

Yes, good question.

The best I can offer is...

Our Google Reviews page. It's not anonymous but we can't control who reviews us or what they say
On several of our coaching programmes we ask clients when they start and 12 months later how various metrics like revenue, profit, number of employees, hours worked etc. have changed. I did a bit of analysis on those numbers a while back here. Admittedly, it's still a marketing piece though.

Not exactly what you were asking for but I hope that's some help.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Nov 11 20213

Thank you for sharing this resource! I'll include it in this month's EA Newsletter, which goes out to a really large audience — I hope it helps you pick up a client or two.

TheBusinessGrowthAgencyNov 12 20211

Thanks so much Aaron!

I'm not sure if the newsletter has already gone out but we've received some great applications already.

PeterJensenNov 11 20211

Alex Barnes Nov 11 20211

I'm interested in applying this to EA Entrepreneurs. Let's talk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-barnes-toronto

SebastianSchmidtApr 11 20221

Great initiative! The time is definitely ripe for something like this and it's wonderful that you're pivoting your business in this way.

I have one concern, namely that the things you and your clients appear to be optimizing for are growth and revenue/profit. Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with this but I worry that the expertise and skills of your coaches might deviate considerably from what EA leaders want to be optimizing for (e.g., different measures of impact over very long timelines and in epistemic terrain that's very messy). But ultimately, this is an empirical question and I wouldn't be surprised if what you offer is already valuable and my concerns are more important slightly down the line. Did you have any leaders sign up and do you collect feedback from them?