Is coaching right for me or my team?
Coaching can be valuable at many stages of leadership, not only during moments of difficulty. Leaders and teams work with a coach to create clarity, strengthen decision-making, and navigate complexity with greater confidence and effectiveness.
Coaching may be helpful if you want to:
- •Gain a fresh, external perspective
- •Identify blind spots and patterns that may be limiting impact
- •Think through complex or high-stakes decisions
- •Navigate internal challenges or organizational change
- •Use a neutral, confidential sounding board
- •Be held accountable for priorities and commitments
- •Be challenged to reach your full potential
- •Strengthen specific leadership or team effectiveness areas
- •Improve focus, efficiency, and how work gets done
- •Support growth during transition, scale, or increased responsibility
Coaching works equally well for individual leaders and leadership teams and can be adapted to short-term needs or longer-term development goals.
How is coaching different from mentoring or consulting?
Coaching differs from mentoring and consulting in where ownership sits. In coaching, the leader owns the goals, decisions, and outcomes. My role is to support your thinking, not to prescribe solutions or take over execution.
- •Mentoring draws on the mentor's experience to offer guidance or advice based on a similar path.
- •Consulting focuses on diagnosing problems and recommending or implementing solutions.
- •Therapy addresses personal or clinical issues and is not the focus of executive coaching.
Coaching is a thought partnership. I work with leaders to clarify priorities, examine assumptions, strengthen judgment, and make decisions aligned with their goals and context. When helpful and requested, my background in strategy and advisory work may inform the conversation, but responsibility always remains with the leader.
Coaching is:
- •Partnership: You define the goals and set the agenda
- •Confidential: A neutral, trusted sounding board
- •Strategic: Support in challenging assumptions and developing new approaches
- •Results-driven: Accountability for actions that move you toward meaningful outcomes
How confidential is coaching?
Coaching is strictly confidential. For company-sponsored engagements, confidentiality boundaries are clearly defined upfront. Content of coaching conversations is not shared without explicit consent. This creates a trusted space for honest reflection and high-stakes thinking.
How do you measure success?
Success is defined collaboratively at the start of an engagement and revisited regularly. Outcomes often include clearer decision-making, stronger leadership presence, improved alignment, and measurable progress on leadership priorities. The focus is on meaningful, sustained impact rather than surface-level metrics. While coaching outcomes are often reflected in performance, influence, and decision quality, coaching is not reduced to simplistic metrics. The emphasis is on durable leadership capability that continues beyond the engagement.
What is Amanda's coaching style?
Amanda's coaching style is direct, thoughtful, and practical. She works as a strategic thought partner, helping leaders think clearly, challenge assumptions, and make decisions with confidence.
Her approach is grounded in her training through Columbia University's executive coaching programs and informed by over 25 years of experience in consulting, advisory work, and research. This background allows her to blend strategic rigor with human-centered insight.
Amanda asks rigorous questions, offers perspective when useful, and focuses on progress and accountability. Coaching conversations are structured but flexible, balancing reflection with action to support sustained leadership impact.
How often are coaching sessions?
Hypatia Leadership offers multiple engagement models with a defined coaching cadence. Session frequency is tailored to leadership context, goals, and decision complexity, and may evolve over time.
Common coaching cadences include:
Weekly coaching — Best for leadership transitions, high-stakes decisions, or periods of rapid change. Provides real-time support, strong accountability, and accelerated progress.
Bi-weekly coaching (every two weeks) — Best for sustained leadership development and decision execution. Balances consistent support with time to apply insights and build momentum.
Monthly coaching — Best for long-term strategic leadership and performance maintenance. Supports high-level thinking, course correction, and continued alignment.
Can AI replace executive coaching?
AI tools can be helpful for reflection, preparation, and information gathering. Executive coaching addresses a different need. Coaching focuses on judgment, context, power dynamics, and real-time decision-making in environments where nuance, accountability, and confidentiality matter.
Leaders work with a coach when decisions carry real consequences and require more than pattern recognition or generic advice. Coaching provides a trusted, human thought partner who can challenge assumptions, surface blind spots, and support disciplined action in complex situations.
Do you work with leadership teams?
Yes. Hypatia Leadership works with both individual leaders and leadership teams. Team engagements focus on alignment, decision-making, trust, and performance and are often paired with individual coaching for senior leaders. This combined approach supports both personal leadership growth and collective impact.
Do you offer workshops or facilitated sessions?
Yes. Hypatia Leadership offers custom workshops and facilitated sessions for leadership teams and organizations. Topics often include strategy, leadership alignment, decision-making, and navigating change and transformation. Workshops can stand alone or be paired with coaching to support deeper, more sustained impact and follow-through.
How do we get started?
The first step is a 30-minute discovery session. This conversation is exploratory, confidential, and pressure-free. We discuss your goals, context, and whether coaching is the right fit. From there, we determine the appropriate engagement model together.