Little Disclaimer: This email series went out as my annual newsletter earlier and I am excited to share it with some of the folks here too. If you have received it already, thank you for reading through it and all the meaningful responses so far. I hope this serves you.
November 2023 marks 3 years and 3 months since I took the leap and committed to coaching leaders full-time, mid-pandemic, with a then newborn, and loads of personal stuff to figure out.
As the holidays approach, I’m filled with gratitude for the journey and the people.
Thank you to everyone who has joined me on this journey so far. Clients, allies, podcast guests, listeners, mentors, confidants, family. You know who you are. <3
I deeply believe that if we feel better, we lead better. And that better leaders create humane organizational cultures characterized by systemic belonging, safety, and dignity.
Over the last few months, I’ve often been asked what it is that we do at “Leadership That Heals The World” (LTHTW).
Partially in answer to that question–and also because I believe in the virtue of building in public to help others honor their purpose– I’m writing a series of “how it’s going” updates about the impact we’re making at LTHTW and what we’ve learned so far.
This hasn’t been your typical growth journey, with strict quarterly OKRs, hard deliverables, and nonnegotiable growth targets. This journey has been a deeply human fusion of mothering three young boys in a pandemic, always putting my marriage first as my center of belonging and enabler of genius, while staying doggedly committed to the iterative process of providing greater value every day. True boutique service work.
Over the last 3 years, I applied a somatic (read: based on my body’s capacity) approach to building this business.
I’ve made conscious decisions around:
how fast to go
how much to charge
how to design my coaching container
how to build the organization that brings this work to more people
how much to honor my evolving capacity to meet with fewer or more than 10-15 clients per week.
By no means has this been a pretty process; it’s been full of learning, and lots of moving backward to find wholeness and integration before moving forward again. It’s meant allowing myself to unfold, staying committed to excellence, and not performing for commercial success alone.
When people ask me about my fear of competition in the coaching industry, I tend to get really quiet and ask: “Who are you really competing against? What makes it easier to focus on someone else than on what’s working and not working within your own context, your company, or your team? What are you not focusing on by focusing on someone else?”.
Someone in my life who I deeply value once said to me: “Commit to where you’re going and people will commit to you.” And this has been my guiding principle for learning and delivering over the last few years. Bonus points if it makes you uncomfortable at times. That was the case for me. And continues to be as I see new frontiers of my work and myself.
When I started, I gave myself five years to build something excellent and inner-stand what it means to contain that excellence. For me, this meant focusing less on marketing and busy work, and more on deep connections and the very thing I want to be known for.
My theory of change has always been to guide and support a chosen few who go on to lead hundreds, thousands, or millions. And until now this has been very successful.
Instead of taking on a higher client load over the last 2 years, I increased my retainer by 200%. This financial freedom has enabled me to choose who to serve based on fit and impact potential. Increasing my rates (and the caliber of leader I serve) also gave me more time with my kids, which in turn helped keep my cup full for the clients I choose to serve.
In the other corner of my heart, I wanted to ensure that my methods and messages became more available to people for whom premium 1:1 coaching isn’t possible. So although we shifted our effort away from producing free bravespace journaling events, I’m dedicated to making LTHTW’s content available via the podcast, essays, workshops, Women’s Leadership Circle, and our upcoming monthly somatic leadership reflection events.
While I’m here on earth in this body, I am committed to making my viewpoint on whole-person leadership development widely available and accessible to those who identify as leaders, creators of change and humans on the journey of radical ownership, creative expression, and skillful action.
So over the next 3 weeks, I am reporting back on what’s transpired at “Leadership That Heals The World” this year despite and because of the recent priority of healing my son.
A final note for this introductory letter: sometimes these updates seem very “one-way”. As in: me sharing something and very little immediate value that you can take away. So instead of a simplistic “by the numbers” report, I’ve taken extra time to give in-depth insight and context into what’s transpired in each part of our business over the last year.
My hope is that this email and the next few support you, inspire you to think about your challenges in a new way, seek dialogue with others in your life, or feel compelled to reply to me. Even written communication like this still has the chance to create a sense of belonging among those on a similar journey in building conscious businesses.
Over the next 3-4 weeks, we will share more on our work in the following areas:
Advisory (and understanding my work in the context of a larger organization (approaching 2000 people)
Co-leading a workshop with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in September 2023
Takeaways from launching the Women’s Leadership Circle
1:1 coaching in a world of increasing complexity and my desire to re-imagine leadership with my clients
Understanding the world of book publishing
The energetic reality of running a podcast
Reflecting on remote corporate workshops and calling you all to host more intimate self-leadership workshops for your people
Expanding our team and introducing Ocean, our Head of Ops
The first two - Advisory and the workshop with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle - are below. I hope this serves you.
All the love, all the power,
Franzi
Advisory
At the beginning of the year, I joined Invisible Technologies as an advisor and small stakeholder. After dipping my toes into advisory conversations throughout 2022 to see whether my beliefs about leadership would be well-received in a fast-growing AI company, we concluded that my relationship to Francis and Invisible was the right fit.
I’ve known the founder Francis for a long time, appreciate him as an ever-evolving human, his ability to ask really hard questions, as well as taking a new approach to organizational design.
I also knew that Invisible would go through some cultural growing pains to meet growth targets. This is something that I get excited about. So, I am grateful for my increasing participation in Invisible’s growth and cultural backbone of entrepreneurialism, fortitude, and committed ownership.
Right now, I’m bringing somatic leadership, capacity management, hiring support, and mental health to the team through workshops and personal conversations with key team members.
Learning: As a coach, serial entrepreneur, VC, or ally of a company it is incredibly important to understand what exactly the value is that you are adding. You have to strike a balance between being involved enough in the operations to understand what’s happening and staying distant enough to maintain your unique outsider perspective.
Through several workshops and now many conversations with key executives it is becoming obvious what my mark is. My biggest wish is that the company and executives feel a deep sense of trust in me and know who to call if they need someone to build out capacity-enabling structures, defy burnout, and understand the signals of their employees, their teams, and the organization as a whole. This comes with deep trust. I never share insights from my private sessions with other leaders at the organization. All I do is inform bits of the strategy based on what is confided to me.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
In September, Ted and I had the opportunity to co-lead a workshop together with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Their non-profit The Archewell Foundation is committed to building a better online world. Given my background in Data Ethics and Data Trust, as well as my deep somatic leadership work, I felt enthusiastic about talking to parents to guide them through understanding their children and themselves, as well as the systemic problems in Big Tech. In my hometown Düsseldorf, Germany, we came together to reflect on the parents’ journey with social media, the attached harm of it, the challenges that they face, and the opportunities we have as individual parents, as well as organizations such as The Archewell Foundation. Ted hosted the workshop with the kids, drawing upon his experience building Moneythink in schools across America. This opportunity arose through the deep and beautiful work I did with a client who is also involved at the Foundation. And this for me was by far the greatest gift of all.
Learning: Passion projects matter. Over the last 3 years, I was deeply focused on family and business. Over the last few months, I’ve been exploring more and more projects that have little to do with my daily work, but would benefit from my background. The topic above is very, very close to my heart and I am excited to get more involved again. Just like I taught myself to sew my children’s clothes when I became a mother, this opportunity and a few others I am planning for next year have helped me to use a different part of my brain again. It opened up new ways of looking at my work in general and allowed me to understand an even wider application of it. I love the feeling when you grow deeper and deeper into your knowing, excellence, and wisdom. And sometimes it means you have to venture out a little or a lot (depends ;) ). 10/10 recommend.
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