Question 1

What can a personal strategist offer?

Accepted Answer

Working with me is about having a ‘personal strategist’ that helps guide the discovery, navigation and refinement of deep perceptual constructs that meaningfully affect your personal and professional life.   In short, the idea is that working through several surface-level issues will often lead to the exploration of deeper patterns and structures of sensemaking and interpretation. Addressing (un)conscious constructs that underlie connecting surface-level issues is useful for causing deep and lasting effects.   Our actions and emotional states are often dictated by beliefs that we harbor. Working with me entails focused one-to-one sessions where we meticulously examine your beliefs surrounding an issue and then work through them in order to build out more sensible life plans. Shaping beliefs and creating increasingly elegant plans is often an antidote to hopelessness, feeling overwhelmed etc., which improves how you move through life.

Unlike regular life coaching, we address your blocks mechanistically – not via a mindset or ideology. I also don't simply drop gems of wisdom like CEO coaches. The mechanistic approach to shaping your beliefs means that we want to understand your belief system and decision-making structure with the utmost precision so that we can craft a solution uniquely suited for you. Rather than copy/pasting other solutions or advice, what you take from these sessions will likely be higher yielding because it is tailored for you.

Question 2

Who would benefit most from this type of coaching?

Accepted Answer

This method of personal strategizing would be most valuable for anyone currently struggling with:    • Interpersonal tensions between co-founders or among a management team • Interpreting patterns and blocks (e.g. discerning reasons for aversion, gaps in self understanding, recognition of psychological and behavioral patterns)  • Adjusting in situations of increasing complexity (e.g. job promotion, work/life balance clashes, relationship entanglements)  • Approaching uncertainty in transition (e.g. starting new business/field of work, life circumstance shifts) • Building skill development (e.g. public speaking, productivity, interpersonal ability)  • Feeling capped in terms of their growth potential (e.g. growth, opportunities)  • Sustaining motivation and clarity (e.g. current situation lacks meaning, personal goals, articulated principles and values)   See Client Stories for specific examples

Question 3

What are co-founder sessions?

Accepted Answer

Beyond intuitive logic that co-founders ought to work well together, top VC firms, statistical analyses, and academic research widely stress the realness of interpersonal tensions being a primary cause of upper management failure.    The demands of being a co-founder require bringing more of yourself to the table than a professional persona. As with other high-intensity, multi-year relationship commitments, harmony and longevity between co-founders is not just about filtering and selection.    Nearly all co-founder matching efforts miss these simple realities:    – Deep-rooted incompatibilities between you and your co-founder will always exist.   – New and unprecedented situations will pop up that are beyond your emotional competence.    – Incompatibilities and emotional competence matter more as the stakes rise. 
Co-founder sessions are about not leaving these realities to chance. My one-to-one and group sessions raise the reflective self-awareness of you and your team, proactively surfacing and working through interpersonal issues that could arise. The goal is to fortify an increasingly healthy and robust co-founder relationship.

Question 4

How can I get started?

Accepted Answer

You can write me via the contact form. If you're ready to meet me in order to determine whether we're a good fit, feel free to schedule a free intake call. These calls typically last 20-30 minutes.

Question 5

What's a first session like?

Accepted Answer

You can see a live demonstration here. Following the free intake call where we familiarize ourselves, as a general pattern, I allow for 15 - 20 minutes in the beginning for you to describe the situation in your own words with minimal interruption from me beyond periodic questions.   It's quite important for me to hear you describe your relationship to the challenge and the load-bearing assumptions therein. These verbal cues are crucial for me as I build and adjust mental models of the situation. I tend to ask further clarifying questions in order to continue adjusting my models according to your context.   At around the one-hour mark, I tend to have a sufficiently detailed understanding to populate potential shallow, medium and deep interventions aimed at making your plans and future actions more elegant. After I present these options, we then discuss how sensible the options seem to you and how enthusiastic you would be to pursue them moving forward.

Question 6

How long is a typical session?

Accepted Answer

Most sessions last between one and a half and two hours depending on the subject matter, but there is pretty wide variance here. Sessions can be be as short as one hour, typically in circumstances where I'm quite familiar with the client and the issue area.

Question 7

How much does your coaching cost?

Accepted Answer

The current going rate ranges between $250 - $500/hr. USD. I maintain a sliding scale and special rates to account for my clients' personal and financial circumstances, especially those working in effective altruism and similar communities/projects trying to do effective and scalable good.   Please feel free to get in touch regardless – I always strive to be flexible with payment if the relationship seems worthwhile!

Question 8

What are micro-sessions? What are they used for? How can I schedule one?

Accepted Answer

Micro-sessions are 20-minute (typically spilling 5-10 minutes over) sessions that clients have found quite valuable for a variety of situational needs. These sessions are currently priced at $80 USD. 
Schedule a micro-session

Micro-sessions tend to make sense for coaching relationships where I have sufficient context on what's happening and what the goals/aims already are. This is important so that too much time isn't spent catching me up.

Common uses for micro-sessions:

• Time-sensitive decision-making – prior to an upcoming decision point, receiving valuable input on various considerations, takes on an individual's sense making structure and beliefs, etc. 
• Value for money – some clients believe they can get the majority of coaching benefits from a short concentrated period of time. 
• Skilled sounding board on-call – related to the use case above, but more about sense-checking important decisions, reactions, and/or planned actions moving forward
• Reflection & Accountability –  reflecting on progress you've made and infusing suggested improvements moving forward.  • Priority calibration – Getting key input on prioritization before undertaking a crucial time period/phase in your life • Emotional support – sometimes you just need a skilled guide to support how you're feeling about things. For this I'd likely recommend a longer session, but micro-sessions are good as a landing pad and sensemaking support.   Schedule a micro-session

Question 9

Is there a referral rewards system?

Accepted Answer

Yes! For an individual that you refer to me, here's how the referral reward system works:

•  3 Sessions – the individual referred completes three paid sessions with me = 1 free session (or monetary equivalent) for the referrer.*

•  10 Sessions – the individual referred completes more than 10 paid sessions with me = 1 free session (or monetary equivalent) for the referrer.*

• Other rewards  – I've been known to give away free sessions on occasion or transfer the monetary equivalent to others when I feel like it! I want to create with open hands and work with those who feel the same.

*Monetary equivalent is based on my standing pay arrangement with the referrer.

Question 10

Do you have a cancellation policy?

Accepted Answer

Not a formal one. If abrupt cancellations happen occasionally, that's no problem. If they become a recurring issue, especially multiple times in a row, we'll likely need to have a conversation.

When using the scheduling software to set up a session, you agree to the following:

"Scouts honor – with the exception of emergencies, I will not to cancel our meeting less than 24 hours prior."  (This is principally because holding your reservation displaces time for others)"

Question 11

Is coaching the same thing as therapy?

Accepted Answer

No. While we may work through emotional issues associated with the relevant challenges you're facing, my coaching should not be mistaken for therapy or the advice of a doctor. Please seek a professionally licensed therapist where necessary.

Tee Barnett Coaching