Is a business coach enough?

At the highest level, most companies are the same. Same departments, same challenges.

You get a company to grow by addressing the blockers, often a combination of strategy and leadership.

How do you decide whether you need a business or technical leadership coach?

There’s a significant overlap in responsibilities.

You get a business coach if the problems are predominantly related to people and processes. Perhaps the organizational structure, communication, or leadership skills must be improved.

However, a technical leadership coach may be better if a solution requires domain expertise, such as aligning tech initiatives with business strategy, improving the development process, managing tech debt, or evaluating tech team performance.

A fantastic tech product can only be built and maintained once you solve the company’s leadership and organizational issues, so there will be an overlap between the two roles.

For example, imagine a tech company where the CTO constantly puts out fires in the codebase and neglects strategic planning. A business coach might advise on delegating tasks, managing time, and focusing on strategy.

However, they need to understand the technical depth to ensure that the development process can be improved and that the dev team should stop investing too much in a micro-service infrastructure too early.

Yours,

Taj