Coaching details and cost

Quick start
If you don't have time to read this page about coaching, don't give it another thought, instead...

- Give me a call at 510-663-3555

- Or shoot me an e-mail.

Then we can talk personally about what you're looking for.

Coaching logistics
Here's what you'll find on this page:

How do I go shopping for a coach?
Ask me all your questions. Don't hold back or be polite. This is too important for that. The initial conversation is up to an hour for free.

How do I get started with my coaching?
Two key tips.

How often, how long?
Design your coaching.

How does coaching end? Endings can be uncomfortable.
It's interesting to look at how you'll stop coaching even before you start.

What's it cost?
Coaching is expensive, except when it's cheap.

Additional questions
1.  How do I make time for coaching? There's not one free minute in my schedule.
2.  I'm burnt out on challenges. Coaching is going to give me more of them, isn't it?
3.  What about accountability? I need it, but I don't like it.
4.  Am I going to have to do homework?
5.  What if I'm not being a "good client"?

How do I go shopping for a coach?
The most important thing I can tell you is this:

Don't settle for conversational chemistry. Look for coaching chemistry.

Why? Because coaching is not a casual conversation. Conversational rapport is lots of fun, but what makes coaching work is coaching rapport.

It really matters that you find a coach who is a match for what you need. So how do you go about checking out coaching chemistry?

Here are two things I offer to help you do that:

1.  You get to ask me all your questions.
I urge you to ask me everything you need to, including all your most challenging and skeptical questions.

There is no need to step around anything you really want to ask, because this is your life we're talking about. Please don't just do a polite interview.

And please don't feel you have to rush. I'm glad to talk with you for up to an hour for free.

I might have some questions for you, too. Like...

What do you love about leading?

What challenges are you facing?

What matters to you most?

How does nonprofit leadership fit into your life journey?

2.  You get to do a free session.
You get to see if there's a match between us or not.

Some people feel a little shy about asking for a free session. If you're feeling hesitant, here are a few tips to make it easier:

You don't have to know anything about coaching to try a free session.

Pick an issue to work on that matters to you, something that's alive for you. Please don't pick a pretend issue, because then we can't do real coaching.

You can ask for a particular focus. You can tell me at the beginning of the session:

"I want to solve a problem."

"I want to make a decision."

"I want to make a plan of action."

"I want to celebrate a victory."

"I want to stop to my inner critic."

Or you can just say, "I have no idea where to start." That's actually a great place to start, too.

It's okay to change directions mid-stream. If you start with one issue, but suddenly something else becomes much more alive for you, go for it.

The best two tips I can give you are:

1)  Stay focused on what you need, and

2)  Keep saying what's true for you moment by moment.

One of the things that can be most useful about a free session is that you get to push on the coach, test him out, and see what he's made of.

I really mean that. This is not about being all dressed up and on your best behavior. Coaching is about being real. As my teachers at CTI used to say, it's about your humanness, including your human messiness.

Nonprofit leaders can be such caretakers that they will toss softballs to a prospective coach and not really find out what they need to find out. Please don't do that.

This is about finding an ally who can be right there with you as you go through important changes.

How do I get started? I don't know anything about coaching.
Coaching works fine even if you know nothing about it. And you don't need to know anything about coaching, because I'll take care of that part of it.

Of course, you'll pick it up as we go along, and you may well find yourself bringing coaching strategies and the coaching spirit into your working relationships and your personal relationships. One client told me, "I've learned how to speak 'coaching' and good things are happening because of it."

But in the beginning, here's my recommendation. Just keep doing your best to...

1)  Stay focused on what you need, and

2)  Keep saying what's true for you moment by moment.

Do those tips look familiar? They're the same ones I just gave above for trying a free session. They're stalwarts, good from the beginning of coaching right up to the end.

How often, how long?
Here are three common questions about the arrangements for coaching:

1.  How long are my sessions and how often?
If you're not sure how you want to set up your coaching, then I recommend starting with:

Half-hour sessions every week.

I recommend half an hour because coaching is intense, which means you can get a lot done in 30 minutes. And the shorter sessions cost less.

I recommend once a week because that keeps your momentum going.

But you might prefer hour sessions (a 60-minute hour) because you want to go deeper into what you're working on and make faster progress.

Or you might want to start with half-hour sessions and ask for hour sessions whenever you're working on something especially challenging.

Later when you've basically handled the issues you came into coaching for, you might want to switch to follow up sessions every other week or once a month. Or you might decide to stop scheduling sessions and just call me for follow up as needed.

You get to experiment to see what works best for you. You get to re-design your coaching at anytime.

All that matters is that you get what you need. If you're going to put serious money into coaching, then please make sure that you set up your sessions so they really work for you. And part of the coaching process is figuring that out.

2.  Is coaching done by phone or in person?
Most coaching is done by phone.

When I first started coaching, I swore I would never coach by phone, but I had to do it as part of my training, so I got to see that it's just as powerful as in-person coaching.

I definitely want the initial session to be in person if at all possible. But overall the majority of coaching sessions are by phone. Here are some of the reasons for that:

You don't have to fight traffic and struggle for parking. There's no travel time at all, so a half-hour session takes only half an hour and an hour session takes only an hour.

You can be anywhere and do your sessions. You can be at the office between meetings or at home in your jammies with your cat on your lap. (Different situations give different flavors to your sessions, which is something interesting to experiment with.)

You can have a coach anywhere in the world. It doesn't have to be someone in your neighborhood, so you have many more choices.

3.  How long do I stay in coaching?
As long as it keeps meeting your needs.

Some people come into coaching to handle one or two specific issues, like:

Getting a breakthrough on major donor asks.

Making a decision about whether to stay in their job or move on.

Resolving a difficult staff situation.

For people like this, coaching is short-term. Sometimes you think coaching is going to be long-term and you get surprised:

Janey thought she was going to be in coaching for a year. By the end of the first month she got clear that she didn't like being an executive director anymore and missed direct client work so much that got herself recruited as the program director of a brand new agency.

I met with Joselle for her first session. She had already put a bunch of coaching sessions into her calendar for the next three months. But she had a beautiful breakthrough during the initial session, saw exactly the future she wanted, made a detailed plan, and realized she was not going to have any problem with motivation. So bim, bam, boom, she was done with coaching!

In the middle of a free introductory session, Jared cleared out the block that was stopping him from applying to be an ED and he was all set. He got what he needed and didn't have to pay a dime!

I love when this kind of thing happens, but these examples are the exception. Usually the issues nonprofit leaders are dealing with are of the longer term variety. If you're doing a turnaround of an organization, that won't happen in a month or two.

If you want to transform your operating system from sacrificial to sustainable or all the way to soaring, that kind of change usually, not always, but usually takes a good bit of time.

And there are some people who simply love personal and professional development. For them, development is a way of life.

It's like with athletes or actors or musicians who are very successful, but still they continue to work with their coach, teacher, or mentor. Achieving higher levels of mastery is a deep pleasure for them.

This kind of leader can be in coaching for two, three, or four years, or more. I love staying with people for the long term as they keep taking on new challenges and having ever more important successes.

How does coaching end? Endings can be uncomfortable.
There are lots of great reasons for stopping:

You've reached the goal you set for your coaching, so you're done.

You've been accepted into a special leadership program and you need to make that your priority.

You decide to stop coaching to see if you'll miss it.

You've gotten to a good stopping place and you want to rest for a while. You want to take a vacation from self-development work and enjoy what you've accomplished.

You've decided to put your time and money into another part of your life, like dance lessons, mountain climbing, or writing your screenplay.

As always with the coaching I do, the key question is...

What do you need?

That's where the coaching begins and that's where it ends. You keep paying attention to what you need, and when you no longer need coaching, then it's time for us to talk about what's next for you.

And to celebrate—both the challenges you've met and who you had to become to meet them.

Sadness might be part of completion, too. If coaching has worked for you, if it's been an important part of your life, you might feel some sadness at bringing it to a close.

I know for myself when someone I've been working with stops coaching, I really miss them. Coaching is a serious commitment on your part and on my part, too.

So I miss people when they leave. And I'm glad I do. I'm glad to have had that kind of connection.

What's it cost?
Coaching is expensive.

I charge $100 an hour.

So, what would you need to get from your coaching to make it worth that kind of money?

And it's not only the money. You're going to put your time into it. You're going to put your heart into it. You're going to invest yourself, so what return do you need to see?

I'd be glad to talk through these questions with you in the initial conversation.

Here are three things people often ask me about cost:

1.  Should I pay for coaching or should my organization pay for it?
About half my clients pay for their coaching personally:

Some leaders don't want their Board or staff to know they're doing coaching. They want it to be totally private. They don't want to ever hear any comments or jokes or anything at all about their coaching from anyone else.

Some leaders feel strongly about paying for their own personal and professional development. It gives them a deeper connection to their coaching work. More of a feeling of ownership.

About half my clients have their organization pay for their coaching, or they have a funder who is willing to pay:

Some leaders can't afford it personally.

Some leaders feel strongly that the organization should pay, because the organization is going to get significant benefits from their coaching.

You may have heard that old saying about therapy: "If the client doesn't pay for it himself, he won't get anything out of it."

But people are more complicated than that. I'm fortunate in that I seem to attract clients who are dedicated to personal and professional development. I don't see a difference between those who are paying personally and those who aren't.

From what I've seen, commitment to self-development trumps the commitment of money.

2.  How do I make the case to my Board that coaching is cheap?
Coaching is cheap!? Wait a minute! Didn't I just tell you that coaching is expensive?

Yes, if you look at dollars per hour, coaching is expensive. But if you look at results, coaching might be cheap:

In one coaching session, Jennifer created a new strategy for a long-shot grant that was due the next day. The foundation was impressed, she got the grant, and it brought in ten times more than the cost of her coaching for a full year.

By switching her priority attention from two problem employees to her eight top performers, Lauren was able to increase productivity by 50% and boost morale.

By getting a bully off his Board, George kept his great Board members from quitting—the ones who were actually raising the money.

Virginia was able to get out of sacrificial mode and into sustainable mode, and then decided she wanted to stay in her position rather than leaving, which would have been a terrible loss for the organization.

There are so many outcomes that make coaching worth it financially. But personally, I also think that a couple hundred a month is a pretty cheap price to pay to keep an ED happy.

3.  What if I'm blocked about spending money on myself?
Perhaps you've decided that coaching is something you want, but then you start hearing the voice of your inner nonprofit critic telling you:

You don't deserve to spend money on yourself because there are so many other urgent needs.

You're the leader; your job is to give to others, not take something for yourself.

Even if you're hurting you still don't have the right to ask for anything.

If coaching is not what you need, please don't sign up for it. Go get what you need instead. But if it is right for you, then please don't let the nonprofit culture of sacrifice stop you. And if this is an issue you're struggling with, you can use your free session to work through it and figure out what you want to do.

Additional questions

1.  How do I make time for coaching? It's impossible. There's not one free minute in my schedule.
Coaching is what makes time for coaching.

In your sessions, you might work on setting boundaries and saying no to anything that's not one of your priorities. Then you actually start saying no. Now you're saving time.

Or let's say you develop your negotiation skills. You're clearer with your staff about what you need from them. You're better at delegating. You get good at asking for what you want from others so you don't have to do everything yourself. Now you're saving lots of time.

Here's something you can try if you want. Challenge yourself to use your half hour of coaching each week to save yourself half an hour of time each day.

Then turn that saved time into a treat for yourself. Take a walk at lunch time. Meditate in the middle of the afternoon. Leave early to go swimming. Read a chapter of that romance novel you've been wanting to get to.

For some leaders, coaching starts saving time immediately.

But for other leaders, it takes longer. And that's especially true for leaders who are caught in the sacrificial operating mode. That's a tough trap.

In that case, it might seem absolutely nuts to add coaching into your absolutely impossible week. And yet, is there anything else you're doing that will get you out of the trap?

If your job is driving you crazy anyway, why not go all out? Why not get really crazy and jam coaching into your week, too? At least it's something that has the power to help you break the spell and set yourself free.

2.  I'm burnt out on challenges and coaching is going to give me more of them, isn't it?
If you're burnt out, the point of coaching is for you to come back to life not to sink deeper under an even greater burden.

I like to look at challenge this way:

If you have too much, you shut down.

If you don't have enough, your life goes to sleep on you.

So what do you need? Challenge that's not too big and not too little, but just right. You could call this a Goldilocks challenge. Or if that's too cute, you can call it a developmental challenge, because it grows you.

And that all sounds very nice, except you might be thinking, "But I don't get to pick my challenges. They just come at me fast and furious."

That's true for many leaders. And that's a hard way to live and one of the key reasons for burnout. Which is why I encourage you to not let that state of affairs go unchallenged.

If you're being overdosed, there are strategies—not easy, overnight strategies—but effective ones you can use. The quick rule of thumb for too much challenge is to recruit a team so that it's not just you all alone up against the challenges mano a mano.

By contrast, there actually are some nonprofit leaders who are being under-challenged. Typically they've been in their positions for a while, they've mastered the job, and they're coasting along with an underlying, nagging feeling of boredom. I love helping them find what's next, what's going to re-ignite them.

In the meantime, though, if you're the classic nonprofit leader struggling with an overdose, then yes, coaching will add a challenge to your load, but a subversive one, one that can pull the rug out from under the status quo.

3.  What about accountability? I need it but I don't like it.
Here's the key question about accountability: Are you being accountable to a "should" or are you being accountable to your heart?

I know what it's like to pick a goal and make a plan, but then somehow there's a wrench in the works and I end up procrastinating or rebelling.

Why does this happen? It happens because my inner critic picked that goal and made that plan. My choice was based on shoulds. And then I tried to force myself to accomplish the goal by driving myself with even more shoulds. And then I hammered myself with criticism: "What's wrong with you? Why can't you get with the program? Why can't you do a simple thing like this?"

If that's what accountability means, then who needs it? That's a destructive and demeaning way to live. It's what I call forced accountability.

The opposite is positive accountability. Or compelling accountability. Or you can make up your own name for it.

What it means is that you discover the goals that call to you most deeply. It doesn't mean that there won't be challenges, but that they will be compelling to you. They will feed you and keep you going.

Then if you find yourself procrastinating, it only means that you've lost touch with what matters to you. So you stop and remember and reconnect, which is worlds apart from forcing yourself.

Sacrificial leadership depends on forced accountability. Sustainable leadership thrives on positive accountability. And when you're soaring as a leader, you might not even need accountability anymore because your life is so intrinsically compelling.

One more thing about accountability. Why is it that so many strategic plans are dead on arrival? All that work and all that money, and the plan sits on a shelf gathering dust.

Too often organizations ask, "What should we be doing?"

What if they asked instead: "What's genuinely compelling to us? What makes us feel so alive that we wouldn't miss it for the world? Forget all the shoulds. What is it about service or advocacy or social change that we love, just simply love?"

This second set of questions is where sustainability and soaring come from.

So how would your life change right now if you had accountability with a heart instead of a hammer?

4.  Am I going to have to do homework?
For many people, "homework" means boring busywork. It means red check marks and grades.

So you might not want to use that word. Typically at the end of your sessions, I'll ask you what you want to focus on during the coming week.

I use the word "focus" to mean: How do you want to use the next week to move forward in your life or leadership? How do you want to challenge yourself? How do you want to take care of yourself? How do you want to enjoy yourself?

That's very different from the conventional meaning of homework.

Your focus might be an action plan, it might be running an experiment to learn something new, it might be taking time out to rest, it might be lots of things, but it won't be busywork.

That being said, I have a couple clients who like the word "homework" and use it. So, as always, what matters is what works for you.

5.  What if I'm not being a good client?
I hope you won't be a "good client," because coaching is not a performance. It's not about getting approval from your coach.

So if you're in a bad mood when you call me for your session, please be a "bad client." Show up with attitude. Tell me: "I don't want to be on this call this morning. I don't want to work on anything. I hate coaching. I want to be in Hawaii!"

This is not the polite way to begin a call, but it's what's true for you and that's the place to start. I've seen breakthroughs happen when someone's in a bad mood at least as often as when someone's in a good mood. Breakthroughs are not mood-dependent.

In fact, this morning a client called in a funk. She told me everything she hated about her week. usually she says, "I should do something about this." Notice that word "should."

But today she said, "I won't live like this anymore, I won't." She had touched bottom. Her voice sounded different, like her soul was speaking. That's when she took the stand for herself that she'd been needing to take for a very long time.

What a loss it would have been if she had put a happy face on her pain.

What matters is what works for you. For months now, a writer I work with has been picking a clear, focused goal at the end of each call. But then a week later, she can't remember what she agreed to. She doesn't have the slightest clue.

Is she a "bad client"? If there are rules about remembering, she is. But guess what? When she reports on her week, it turns out her goal has gotten accomplished on its own in the most creative way. It seems her subconscious is taking care of business for her these days, and it's doing a great job. So we don't mess with success, we just enjoy it.

I think it's important to remember that something that looks like a failure might just be a sign. If you commit to an action plan and don't do it, then maybe that's a sign it wasn't compelling enough. Or something else needs to happen first. Or maybe your inner critic picked that plan and then hooray that you didn't do it. Or maybe you really needed to take a break that week, and now you'll be sure to take one this week.

Good client? Bad client? What kind should you be? Why not forget the rules and be your own kind of client? Just focus on what you need.

© 2008 Rich Snowdon