Leadership Coaching for Startups

When people often talk about leadership coaching the expectation is that it is catered to those in middle or senior leadership positions in rather large organizations in the public, private or third sector. This is very understandable given that executive coaching is not always pitched as an affordable service to new founders of business, especially when the focus is on trying to get a business of the ground.

It's a shame that this perception prevails. Given that many businesses do fall apart because of leadership gaps around finance, especially around cashflow, talent management or sales, I wonder why all the loud voices in the startup and enterprise space don't place more emphasis on the need for founding teams to have good leadership direction.

Some would suggest that an advisory board may help in giving direction and that's OK, but is that enough? Surely new founders should be able to have and understanding of their way of leading, staff responses to it and how they can close the gap between the two.

Whether through group coaching or one to one, I wonder if there is room for ensuring that leadership coaching is part of the narrative for new company founders. If big organisations do it to ensure that their leaders are doing the best, then surely it should be something we encourage smaller founders to do too.