What is coaching?
Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires you to maximise your professional and personal potential. A true coach aims to help you develop your own ability to solve problems and deal with the incoming challenges whilst driving towards longer term growth.
Product coaching vs Leadership coaching?
A product coach focuses on skills related to leading product teams to build delightful products that create immense amounts of value. Areas that we might cover are product strategy, user research, metrics and data, team organisation, OKRs, high performance, product design, growth, and much more.
A leadership coach, on the other hand, concentrates on developing your leadership abilities. I am currently completing my coaching training with Co-Active and love working with founders that are focussed on product and CPOs, Heads of Product and Product Directors at high growth startups from Seed to Series B.
My clients generally choose to work with me as I have a strong understanding of product leadership, building a startup, sitting on boards and as a VC on the other side of the table. I can comfortably switch from mentoring to coaching depending on what’s needed.
Why do I need a coach?
When you are in a startup there is a lot of learning to do very fast. You also need to keep growing as, with scale, comes new opportunities for growth. A coach offers an external perspective, expert guidance, and accountability to help you keep riding on top of the wave. It’s like having a personal trainer for your career.
I have been fortunate to have benefited from coaching and have also wished in my early career I had access to a coach. Having a safe space to reflect and grow is extremely powerful.
How does it work?
Typically, we will start with a discovery call to really understand areas you would like to work on and see if we would like to work together. I typically meet twice a month, but I have some clients that I meet monthly or adhoc when needed. The sessions are you for to bring specific challenges or topics and my role is to help you reflect on these more deeply, uncover new insights about yourself or the challenge at hand and then to guide it back to action. Each session will be different but my biggest objective is for your long term growth and fulfilment.
”Dharmesh combines great coaching skills and deep product expertise. Also the fact he has been a VC and a founder means he has a wide range of perspectives. He has been invaluable in helping me build the product team and know-how at Rhino.
Daniel, CEO & Co-FounderRhino.fi
”Dharmesh is a fantastic coach. I was looking for a coach that was more product focused, and that could really balance when to mentor vs when to coach. Dharmesh does this brilliantly. His insights and guidance over this time have been incredibly helpful in my development as a leader. I feel very lucky to have him as my coach!
To any newly minted Product Leader I happily recommend Dharmesh to help you grow and shape your thinking.
Lorna, VP User ExperienceAccuRx, Health
”Dharmesh has provided invaluable insight, as well as simply space for me process my thoughts and challenges with someone who has been there and done it all in the past.
To any newly minted Product Leader I happily recommend Dharmesh to help you grow and shape your thinking.
Kris, Chief Product and Education OfficerUpLearn, Education
”Coaching is releasing a person's potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them
How I can help
Clients choose me as their coach as I have unique experience of being a product leader for over 20 years, a founder and a VC. Most of the clients I work with are Founders and Product Leaders, CPOs in Seed to Series C companies. I also enjoy training and coaching multiple PMs as a group and individually within a larger organisation.
I bring a curious and supportive approach to my clients to help them develop and grow. If we need to switch to discussing product topics then I am comfortable switching styles to be more of a mentor or sparring partner.
I offer a free discovery call and coaching taster so we can establish whether there is a good trusting relationship.
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