Executive Coach Amsterdam for entrepreneurs, founders and leaders

The search for a good coach, or perhaps better said, the right coach, can be quite difficult. Often it already starts with the question whether you even need a coach at all.

I can speak from experience, because I once stood in those same shoes. I wondered how someone who knew nothing about my business, my life and my situation could possibly tell me anything useful. Looking back, that was exactly my mistake. I did not distinguish between a mentor and a coach.

A mentor needs specific knowledge of your business, market or field of work. He or she must be able to advise you, because that is what mentors do. A mentor brings experience, knowledge and direction. A coach works differently.

A good coach does not immediately give you answers, but asks questions that help you arrive at better insights yourself. Often these are questions you would not quickly come up with on your own. Not because you are stupid, but because you are too close to your own situation. And yes, that is exactly why those questions can sometimes be quite confronting.

So before you decide to look for help, first ask yourself one simple question: do I want advice, or do I want to arrive at new insights? That may seem like a small difference, but in practice it is essential.

The first coach I ever hired came from Amsterdam. Because I had not asked myself beforehand what I actually needed, I found myself sitting on his couch after two hours, somewhere between reasonably and very irritated. He had not given me a single tip. No advice. No smart shortcut. No entrepreneurial wisdom I could immediately use.

I thought: am I really paying this much money for this?

But yes, he was a coach. Not a mentor.

A good coach does not start with advice

My own field of work as an executive coach and leadership coach is Amsterdam and the surrounding area. Recently, a relatively successful entrepreneur came to me with a question about how she could bring both her private life and her business life into better balance.

She wanted more balance. Not because things were going badly, but precisely because things were going well. She had growth plans, but was already drowning in work. More growth sounded attractive, but somewhere she also felt that she might be building something that would pull her further away from herself.

During the sessions, she arrived at a number of clarifying insights. After that, she started asking practical questions. How had I handled certain situations as an entrepreneur? What would I do? Which choices had I made in the past when my companies were growing? She knew that I had built several successful businesses and had been through this kind of thing before.

That is exactly the moment when it is important to keep things clean. Because every senior coach knows that coaching and advising are two completely different things.

That is why I asked her to first complete the coaching sessions. If her practical questions were still open after that, we could always schedule a separate strategic sparring session.

That may sound strict, but it matters.

During coaching, I do not have an opinion about what you should do. In that moment, there is no right or wrong coming from me. The session is about you. About what you find important. About what feels right for you. About what you do or do not want anymore.

As a coach, I do not steer that with my own preferences, experiences or beliefs. I mainly look at the reasoning behind what you think, feel, believe or assume. Does that reasoning come from calm, clarity and honesty? Or does it come from fear, anger, the need to prove yourself, exhaustion or old patterns?

Because we all know we do not make our best decisions when we are furious. Or exhausted. Or hurt. Or when we mainly want to prove that we are right.

As an executive coach, leadership coach and entrepreneur coach, you are trained to ask exactly those questions. Not to impose your truth on someone else, but to help someone discover for themselves whether their reasoning still makes sense.

How do you find the right coach in Amsterdam and the surrounding area?

But suppose you have made up your mind. You know you want a coach, preferably nearby or in Amsterdam. Then the next challenge begins, because this is not your field. Just like with finding a contractor or driving instructor, there is no clear manual that tells you exactly how to do it. At the same time, you do not want to end up with the wrong person. After all, it costs time, money and most likely you will want to put things on the table that you do not discuss with just anyone.

If you are from Amsterdam or the surrounding area and you are looking for a leadership coach or executive coach, you actually have both a problem and a huge opportunity. The opportunity is that there are quite a few good coaches in the Amsterdam region. The problem is that there are also an enormous number of spare-bedroom coaches and coaches who do not even realise that they are actually failed consultants or mentors. And then try to see the forest for the trees.

You might think you can simply look at someone’s experience, or at the institute they are affiliated with. But no, both say relatively little. Let me start with experience. I know people who have worked as designers for thirty years and still have no real talent for design. It works the same way with coaches. I am not saying you should look for someone who has only just completed a coaching programme. On the contrary. But experience in itself does not say that much.

And then there is being affiliated with an institute. Personally, I would see that more as a red flag than as reassurance. A leadership coach or executive coach with real talent and skill usually works independently, in his or her own way, and does not need that kind of label. It is a bit like an economics teacher explaining how to build a successful business. If that teacher really knew so much about it, would he not already be a successful entrepreneur himself?

So what should you pay attention to?

1. The click

Very simply, just like with friendships, you look at the click. Do an intake and if it does not click within ten minutes, move on to the next one. Because believe me, in Amsterdam and the surrounding area, finding a coach can be quite time-consuming because of the large supply. That is not a problem, but it does mean you should not settle too quickly for someone when you already feel that something is not right.

2. Recommendations

Good executive coaches and leadership coaches have good recommendations from the right kind of people. Often not even that many, because that is usually not where they earn their living. Sometimes there are only a few, but those few say a lot. Another reason there are sometimes only a few is that many entrepreneurs and leaders do not publicly share that they regularly work with a coach. That is a shame, but also understandable. Not everyone wants to make visible that they are struggling with something or looking for help with leadership, choices, pressure, growth or balance.

3. Publications

Experienced executive coaches and leadership coaches have, as the word suggests, experience. And if someone really has experience, he or she will usually want to turn that knowledge into articles, videos, talks or appearances. If you can find absolutely nothing about someone online, that does not automatically mean the coach is shy. It may also mean that he or she does not have much inspiring to say and is therefore usually not very inspiring either.

That may sound harsh, but I do mean it. Coaching is not only about asking questions. It is also about language, sharpness, life experience, understanding people and the ability to see through the noise. If someone shows nothing anywhere of how they think, write, speak or look at life, it becomes difficult for you to judge whether that person is right for you.

4. Rates and duration

If you are standing at the bakery and you are only allowed to buy one loaf of bread if you immediately agree to buy two every week, you will probably look at the baker strangely and walk out. And if that loaf then costs ten cents or twenty euros, I hope that would trigger the same reaction in you. It should be the same with a coach.

First of all, every concrete issue an entrepreneur or leader is dealing with should be clear or largely resolved in around five to six sessions of one hour. It can take less time, but rarely, if ever, much longer. In addition, too cheap is usually a bad sign and too expensive is too. In Amsterdam and the surrounding area, a good executive coach or leadership coach usually costs between 250 and 450 euros per hour and the intake is almost always free.

In the end, it is not about coaching, but about clarity

Finding the right coach in Amsterdam or the surrounding area is therefore not about the most beautiful website, the most certificates, the biggest network or the highest rates. It is about whether someone is able to bring you to the core faster. Not to the story you have already told yourself ten times, but to the point where it really rubs.

Because that is often what entrepreneurs, founders and leaders are dealing with. Not a lack of intelligence. Not a lack of ambition. Often not even a lack of possibilities. The problem is usually that too much is happening at the same time. Business, people, money, responsibility, relationships, growth, expectations, exhaustion, the need to prove yourself and sometimes simply the realisation that something no longer feels right in the way it once did.

A good executive coach does not solve that for you by telling you what to do. A good coach helps you regain clarity about what you actually already know, but can no longer hear properly because of all the noise around it.

That is why choosing a coach is also personal. You are not looking for someone who sounds impressive, but for someone with whom you feel you can be honest. Someone who is not impressed by your success, but also does not dig for the sake of digging. Someone who listens, asks deeper questions and is sharp enough not to let you get away with beautiful explanations you no longer fully believe yourself deep down.

Whether that is in Amsterdam, just outside Amsterdam or online matters less in the end than you might think. Proximity can be pleasant, especially if you prefer to sit physically across from someone. But the real question remains the same: does this person help me look more honestly, choose more sharply and get closer to something that actually feels right?

If the answer is yes, you have probably found the right coach. And if the answer is no, keep looking.

I personally offer leadership coaching (called Silent Authority Thought Leadership coaching) and executive coaching on location, online or at my place in Aalsmeer. Online can work perfectly well, but for most entrepreneurs and leaders I work with, face-to-face still tends to be the most valuable, because you feel more quickly what it is really about.