Joel is one part shaman, one part management coach, and one part MBA professor. He has added a ton of skill to my arsenal and all of my reports think I am just a nicer person since I started working with him.
Brian Walsh, SVP product, Pendo.IO | CEO, CodeScience
I call Joel whenever the stakes are high, the issues are challenging or complex, and a high level of commitment and engagement are required.
Mike Stacy, CEO, ID90 Travel | SVP, Travelocity
Code Science
|
NatWest Group
|
San Jose School District
|
Travelocity
|
Coca-Cola
|
Strava
|
The World Bank
|
Electronic Arts (EA)
|
FedEx
|
Clorox
|
Procter & Gamble
|
General Mills
|
Bayer
|
LoungeBuddy
|
National Park Service
|
Los Angeles Education Partnership
|
Hewlett Foundation
|
Stuart Foundation
|
GreenBiz
|
Code Science | NatWest Group | San Jose School District | Travelocity | Coca-Cola | Strava | The World Bank | Electronic Arts (EA) | FedEx | Clorox | Procter & Gamble | General Mills | Bayer | LoungeBuddy | National Park Service | Los Angeles Education Partnership | Hewlett Foundation | Stuart Foundation | GreenBiz |
I am an executive coach who works with leaders to accelerate progress on critical business challenges by leveraging the human side of your organization. Over the past thirty years, I have helped drive growth, improve innovation, and build cultures capable of extraordinary performance. I will both challenge and support you, strengthening your inner game and enhancing your leadership skills and capabilities.
Executive Coaching
Leading an organization is a demanding, intense and sometimes lonely experience. Many of the leaders I’ve coached over the years reached a point where they hit a barrier – but felt like there was nobody they could turn to for help.
As an executive coach, I work with you to move beyond that barrier. I work with you to help you see yourself more clearly as a leader, and to understand the impact of your leadership style on your team and your organization. I work with you to:
● Evolve the tools and techniques you need to stay calm, clear, and centered, even as challenges around you multiply
●Tackle high-stakes conflicts in your organization directly and effectively
● Ensure you are able to continue to deliver at your best even in the most high-pressure circumstances.
Most critically, I ground all of our work together in an understanding of you – why it is that you do what you do, and the deeper sense of purpose that is uniquely yours. In my many years of coaching, I’ve found that clarity of purpose is what separates the good leaders from the great, and the leaders who are just getting by from those who are thriving. I look forward to hearing more about yours.
In addition to regular virtual sessions, I often do extended customized retreats in natural settings, engaging nature as a partner in the coaching process.
Top Team Alignment
When you have it, you can sense and feel it.
There's a palpable sense of motivation and focus, hard effort, and vibrant energy. Team members are clear on their roles and look out for each other. Conflicts are dealt with openly, not ignored or skirted around. Everyone is highly accountable. People build on each other’s strengths and skills.
You may have been part of such a team, but as you're aware, it's rare for leadership teams to operate at this high level.
More often, they're hindered by competing goals, slow decision-making, operational disputes, confusion over roles and responsibilities, or clashing personalities.
Teams are dynamic and complex. I work with you to create the conditions for your team to operate at its best, and to sustain that over time.
Even the most aligned teams can falter when it comes to executing large scale, complex strategic initiatives that require coordinating different stakeholders and perspectives. When a company changes its strategy, for example, and needs to line up everything – culture, technology, process, behavior change – for the strategic shift to land. This creates the opportunity for a leadership team to deploy and embed new capabilities to accomplish unprecedented breakthrough results.
Clients
With several new members and a major development project critical to our future revenues, I was looking for an approach I could count on to align my team. Joel’s step-by-step process, combined with his unique insights into individual, group, and organizational dynamics, delivered the needed impact.
Ron Morita, VP, Fortune 200
I am better at what I do because of my work with Joel. He provides clear and practical advice that I can quickly put into action. Joel fully recognizes and appreciates who I am. He gets me.
Charmaine Mercer, Chief of Equity and Culture, Hewlett Foundation
I hired Joel on short notice to lead a three-day meeting of experienced senior executives. The session was a huge success. His ability to engage and transform the leaders using personal anecdotes and solid behavioral science coaching was impressive. I consider him among the absolute best I have ever worked with and I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from him.
Michael Nestor, Head of Organization and Change, Bayer Corporation
Joel guided our organization through significant change over several years, including integrating the largest acquisition in our company history and implementing a complete change in our organization structure. His approach enabled us to rapidly launch the new organization, which went on to win top awards from our largest global customer in its first year of operation.
Todd Slingsby, VP, Global Consumer Products Company
Having Joel as a coach has been one of the greatest gifts of my career. He has made me, my team and my organization better. A lot of coaches come with standard approaches and push standard fixes. Joel listens, reflects and gives truly insightful individualized advice. It has produced measurable results for me.
Jean Philibert, SVP, Chief HR Officer
I’ve always hungered for this type of support and mentorship. I’ve become a better leader through our work together.
Bob Lenz, CEO, PBLWorks
I had reached a plateau and felt dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Even though my business was doing well, I continually felt as if I was running up against hidden barriers. Joel’s coaching enabled me to quickly get at the root of the issues. We made a few focused changes to my mindsets and approaches. I am re-energized, focused and enjoying my work – and my life – again. Business is growing and thriving.
Chris Coomber, Founder, East Brother Beer Company
At GreenBiz, we had a fantastic experience working with Joel. He designed our offsite in less than two weeks so that we could get it done before year end. He helped align the company around high level aspirations and then worked with us to translate that into concrete objectives and goals. The entire company feels empowered and motivated to achieve our ambitious goals.
Eric Faurot, CEO, Greenbiz
Joel has the rare ability to take what appears to be a forbiddingly complex or tangled situation and transform it into something simple and straightforward to tackle. He helped me through situations where I was potentially headed for trouble and somehow made the clouds part in such a way that my next steps became crystal clear and obvious.
Tamara Pulsts, Former President, Ecoreserve
Joel’s coaching has been an important addition to my professional development. His probing questions bring invaluable depth to our sessions, allowing for insights and growth. I highly recommend Joel for anyone seeking meaningful personal and professional development.
Kathryn Bradley, Partnerships Manager, Stuart Foundation
Joel has been an invaluable partner to our executive team. He has a way of surfacing the most important, yet often hidden issues. Most importantly, he helps distill the issues down to simple sets of challenges that feel far more manageable. I cannot recommend him highly enough.
Mark Gainey, Co-Founder Strava
We have made huge progress. If you would have told me a month ago that we would have made this much progress in such a short period of time, I would have never believed it. I am less stressed and sleep better. I have gone from misery to happiness in four weeks.
VP, Software Engineering, Fortune 200
Joel has successfully guided me through one of the most turbulent and difficult periods of my career. He has helped me to accomplish my personal goals, grow my leadership capabilities, and ultimately enabled my entire organization to be more successful.
Zachery Anderson, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Natwest Group
About
Clients describe me as a thought partner – helping them develop strong cultures, execute strategies, build teams and develop themselves as leaders.
Joel Yanowitz is an executive coach and business advisor known for his ability to help leaders accelerate progress on critical business challenges by leveraging the human side of their organization.
Over the past three decades, he has helped countless business leaders drive growth, improve innovation, and build cultures capable of extraordinary performance.
With his hands-on experience launching and running companies, clients find Joel’s experience in business is part of what makes him a valued thought partner. He was the co-founder and managing director of Innovation Associates, the firm that pioneered the field of Organizational Learning and brought the prestigious work of Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline to companies worldwide.
As a Vice President at Arthur D. Little, a global management consulting and technology development company, he led their Organization Practice and co-led their Strategy Practice. Joel has served on a number of corporate and non-profit Boards.
Joel holds a fourth degree black belt in Aikido, and has been teaching Aikido for over fifteen years. Aikido, a Japanese martial art also known as the art of peace, focuses on transforming one’s embodied relationship to conflict, fear and stress. Joel lives outside of San Francisco and enjoys mountain biking, hiking and playing guitar.