An Executive Coach Can Transform Your Career. Here’s How to Find One.

After a decade as CEO of Child Care Aware of America, Lynette Fraga stepped down to reflect on where she was in her career. She initially imagined it as a six-month sabbatical, but it evolved into a yearlong exercise in personal growth.

A few months into her intentional pause, she attended a course at the Co-Active Training Institute led by Kelly Jones-Waller, a leadership-effectiveness strategist and executive coach. Fraga had found coaching valuable in the past, and the timing felt right to pursue it again.

“There’s a lot that CEOs go through, and there are a lot of responsibilities,” Fraga says. “I really wanted to engage with an executive coach who honored who I am and where I’ve come from, while at the same time offering space for me to push my own boundaries.”

Over that initial six-month engagement, the pair dug into the thorny questions of leadership, Fraga recalls: “How do I want to show up as a leader? What is important to me? Am I clear on what my guiding values are? How do I lean on those values when difficult decisions need to be made?”

Fraga was hired in September as CEO of Reach Out and Read, a national literacy organization. She felt energized and ready to take the helm again, and credits Jones-Waller with renewing her sense of curiosity about her calling. “Where I’ve grown as a leader is to focus less about the answers and more about the questions that will push us forward in achieving our mission.”

The Chronicle spoke to several nonprofit leaders and executive coaches about how to find a good match and get the most out of the coaching relationship. Here are their top tips.

Ask for referrals to begin your search.

To find a coach, ask your peers for their recommendations or use LinkedIn to search for those who specialize in the nonprofit sector — they’ll be more attuned to your needs.

Anne Wallestad, an executive coach who works exclusively with nonprofit and foundation CEOs, is no stranger to the demands of charity leadership. She turned to coaching in 2022 after spending nearly 10 years as CEO of BoardSource.

Her website shares testimonials from some of the CEOs and executive directors she’s worked with, and she offers prospective clients a free 30-minute consultation to determine whether they will be a good match.

“Fit is so incredibly important when it comes to coaching,” Wallestad says. “So for leaders who are thinking about engaging a coach, really do some reflection before you start talking to coaches about what is most important to you. Think that through from a style and background and expertise perspective.”

Commit to a coach who empowers you.

Fraga agrees you must be selective when choosing a coach. When vetting potential coaches, she asked, “Do I hear from the other person the same values that I hold, and where might this person push me?”

Fraga found her own coaching experience so powerful that she started Fiercely Forward LLC to serve as a coach for other nonprofit executives, particularly women of color, through periods of transition.

Where I’ve grown as a leader is to focus less about the answers and more about the questions that will push us forward in achieving our mission.

Now that she’s leading Reach Out and Read, her coaching services are currently offered pro bono, tailored to help leaders from historically marginalized backgrounds trust their instincts in the C-suite.

“As a woman of color, I really felt like there were some unique challenges that are faced in leadership positions,” Fraga notes. “So many talented women are in that space but don’t necessarily have the structures or resources to be able to operationalize or optimize that wisdom.” 

Narrow down what you want to work on.

Coaches can help you improve your communication, confidence, strategic thinking, self-awareness, and more, but you’ll get the best results if you pick one area to work on at a time. Enter the relationship with a clear idea of the skill you most want to develop, the experts recommend.

“That might be, I’m struggling with work-life balance, or I really suffer from an orientation towards perfectionism, or I want to work on delegation,” says Wallestad. “Then that becomes the goal.”

Thomas Panek has been in nonprofit leadership roles for nearly 20 years and has used a variety of coaches to help him build better teams.

I do have blind spots as an executive. … Coaching really helped me figure out where those gaps were.

Off and on for the past five years, he has worked with Julie Johnson as his coach. In March, he became the first blind CEO of the Lighthouse Guild, a nonprofit that serves people with visual impairments. 

“I’m a person who’s blind, and I do have blind spots as an executive,” he says. When working with a coach, he says, “one of the things that we really focused on is how can you improve engagement in the organization, both at the leadership team, at the staff level, and at the mission level with the people you serve. Coaching really helped me figure out where those gaps were.”

In his previous role as CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, he negotiated a compensation package with his board that stipulated the organization would pay Johnson’s fee so that she could continue to work with him — and his leadership team as well.

“It’s a key to my success,” he says.

Enter the relationship with a growth mindset.

Many people pursue coaching at the beginning or end of a job, but everyone — from early-career workers to long-tenured leaders — can benefit from the process, the experts say. Mainly, the key is a willingness to grow.

“There’s no bad time to be working with a coach, unless it’s a time where you don’t have the ability to engage,” says Wallestad.

She’s helped clients work through feelings of burnout, get to the next level in their career, and survive a major organizational crisis. While many people view coaching as primarily valuable to solve problems, she thinks that’s a limiting perspective. 

“Coaching is what you do when you’re trying to invest in yourself,” Wallestad says. “Particularly nonprofit CEOs and executive directors, but really anyone who’s leading people. An investment in yourself is an investment in your team.”

Explore creative ways to pay for it.

The pay range for executive coaches is vast — from less than $100 an hour on an ad hoc basis to $25,000 or more per engagement, typically defined as a three- or six-month period.

Some foundations will cover executive coaching under grants for capacity building or professional development, but you can also ask coaches directly for payment assistance. Wallestad offers a sliding scale to her clients, and says many coaches offer their services “low bono” or pro bono under some circumstances. Group coaching helps you share costs with peers in similar situations.

An investment in yourself is an investment in your team.

If your organization is footing the bill, Panek says there is one pitfall to avoid: Your relationship with your coach is yours alone, and the coach should never report on outcomes to the board of directors or human resources. “That will destroy your trust with the coach instantly,” he says. “It’s not a performance evaluation.” 

However, he says it was money well spent to give him what he needed to strengthen relationships with his team.

He recalls it initially cost about $6,000 to have six members of his senior leadership team meet with Johnson one-on-one and another $5,000 a few months later as the engagement continued.

“This whole executive coaching thing, from an ROI [return-on-investment] perspective, is really nominal relative to the benefit,” he says. “It’s definitely worth it.”

Have you worked with an executive coach? Tell us about your experience.

Correction: The article has been updated to reflect that Thomas Panek negotiated a compensation package to pay for executive coaching during his time as CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, not in his current role as CEO of the Lighthouse Guild.