Would Not Recommend to a Friend - Coach Learning as Leadership Employee Review

We were truly saddened to read your review and that this was your experience at LaL. While we do not believe your experience was the norm, it does not sit well with us and calls on us to revisit commitments we’ve made in the past and continually seek to do better. We appreciate (and agree with) what you’ve shared about the quality of the folks who work here, our positive intentions, and our shared commitment to results and impact for our clients. We do care deeply about supporting our clients and creating a positive environment for all team members. Thank you for recognizing this. Some of what you shared are historic blind spots and growth areas for us as a leadership team and company. We have been working on many of these areas in recent years and, while we still have plenty of room to grow, we are proud of the progress we’ve made. Here are just some of the efforts and improvements we’ve made recently: • Year-end company-wide experience and engagement survey, debriefed in an all-staff meeting • Weekly emails from leadership celebrating our hard work and successful engagements with clients • Ongoing conversations about the use of our tools across power gradients, both internally and in client organizations • Formation of cross-department and cross-level committee to explore and address internal dynamics at the company • Increased transparency across the board offering a window into decision making, strategic priorities, business health, hiring practices, DEI efforts, etc. • Ongoing efforts to offer salaries commensurate with industry averages, including re-evaluating incentive structures to reward and compensate those at all levels fairly We’ve heard (and felt!) that these initiatives have made a big difference for team members at all levels. And, we will continue to seek feedback and focus on making our company an even better place to work. While you offer some helpful feedback (and, frankly, reminders) for our company, you also present a number of criticisms that we would like to address directly: • We are in no way affiliated with ICF, and even pre-date them by a number of years. That said, ICF defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” These are words we live by at LaL! • We do not claim to be psychologists, nor do we believe that being a psychologist is a prerequisite for providing the coaching and workshop experiences that we do. That said, many psychologists have participated in and enjoyed our workshops. Some have even invited us to collaborate on academic papers and have studied concepts related to our work. • Without going into the specifics of our commission structure, we can confidently say we are not an MLM or “pyramid” organization, plain and simple. We encourage any prospective employees to ask us about our commission structure and to make sure it works for them before joining the team. • From what we know of them, we believe that comparing LaL with EST, Landmark Forum, and especially NIXVM is not accurate, even calumnious, and not reflective of anyone on staff’s experience (based on numerous internal conversations, our anonymous company survey, etc.). • We are sorry that your experience was that “single women are praised for their appearance and attractiveness, though less so for quality of work.” While we would be extremely surprised if this represents the experience of any current team member, we will include a question about this in our next anonymous company survey to be 1000% sure. It’s important to us that we foster an inclusive work environment where all employees feel safe and seen. To anyone considering working with us, if you are concerned after reading this review, we recommend you reach out to any LaL team member on LinkedIn and ask them about their experience. Also, please read our “notes for prospective employees”, below, and check out our Glassdoor company profile when it goes live. We want you to be informed of the great aspects of working at LaL as well as our quirks, challenges, and growth edges. To the person who has written this review, we want to reiterate that we were disheartened to read about your experience at Learning as Leadership. We truly want all of our employees to have a great experience and that would have included you. We’re sorry for any ways that we missed the mark. Sincerely, The LaL Leadership Team A few additional notes for prospective employees: • We are a hard-working team who cares deeply about our mission and our clients. At times, this can mean long hours and full plates, but most employees do manage to maintain a good work/life balance. • One of the cornerstones of our coaching and facilitation approach is that we are not simply “consultants” or “experts”, but practitioners, which means we engage in our own self-reflection processes, including during training. This review is a reminder to us that encouraging employees’ reflection and growth can be a delicate balance, especially when power dynamics are involved. Our training has changed substantially since the commenter worked with us, but even so we will continue to be vigilant and in dialogue with current and future employees to recognize earlier when support starts becoming imposition. • We agree with the commenter when they say we don’t have a lot of bandwidth to integrate different methodologies and approaches. Sharing outside approaches isn’t frowned upon, but our priority is to offer a defined and consistent experience for our clients, centered around our time-tested methodology. We fully understand that this setup is not what everyone is looking for.