Coaching Only Works If You Let It: Why Founders Must Surrender to the Process
There’s a particular pattern that shows up in founder coaching more often than most people realise.
A founder signs up for coaching. They’re sharp, driven, juggling more than is reasonable, and surrounded by advisors, investors, and peers. On paper, they’re the ideal coachee, but after a couple of sessions, a familiar frustration emerges:
“It feels like we’re just talking. I’m not sure I’m getting enough doing from this.”
This can be a pivotal moment in any coaching journey, as it’s either the point at which coaching deepens into something truly transformational or it stalls completely. The difference very rarely lies in the quality of the frameworks or the coach’s questions, because it’s about whether the founder is willing to surrender some control, lean into vulnerability (which is not easy for many of us to do), and actually do the work that coaching requires.
A Familiar Founder Scenario
Recently, in an anonymised engagement, a founder of a scaling tech business came into coaching with precisely this dynamic.
They were:
Highly intelligent and pretty self-aware in a cognitive sense.
Surrounded by SaaS experts and advisors.
Clear on their strategy and growth plan.
Under intense time pressure, with sessions squeezed between back-to-back meetings.
They wanted to work on:
Theirself as a leader.
Money mindset and relationship with pricing.
Personal effectiveness and prioritisation.
On the face of it, this was a great opportunity for personal growth and transformation, but in practice, something else happened:
Pre-session exercises were often skipped or de‑prioritised.
Sessions started late or ended early due to “a hard stop” for the founder.
When uncomfortable topics surfaced – such as money, boundaries, or self-worth – the conversation quickly turned back to strategy or external problems.
There was a desire for “insights I wouldn’t see myself”, but a reluctance to stay with the very processes that generate those insights and the eventual learnings.
Underneath it all was a subtle but important belief from the founder, which surfaced through a telling statement:
“I already do journaling and learning. I don’t need the basics. I need something more advanced.”
This is where founder–coach relationships can and do get stuck.
Coaching vs Consulting: Two Different Contracts
Part of the problem is that coaching and consulting are often conflated, especially in the startup world.
Consulting (or advisory) is fundamentally about:
“Tell me what to do, based on your expertise.”
Direction, frameworks, recommendations.
The consultant is the expert in the room.
Coaching is fundamentally about:
“Help me see myself, my patterns, and my choices more clearly.”
Reflection, awareness, experimentation.
The founder understands that they are the expert in their world, and the coach operates as a facilitator and mirror.
In consulting, the value is in the answers, whereas in coaching, the value is in the quality of the questions and the founder’s willingness to sit with them.
So when a founder says, “I want to make sure we’re not just talking – I want you to shine in your area of expertise,” what they’re often asking for is consulting, not coaching. This isn’t wrong, but it needs to be named and discussed honestly because coaching only works if both parties are clear on the contract.
The Hard Truth: The “Basics” Are Often the Real Work
Founders are used to operating at speed, managing complex systems with lots of moving parts, change, and iteration, and they’re responsible for answers, direction, and confidence.
Coaching, by contrast, is deeply uncomfortable for anyone with that identity.
It asks the founder to:
Protect time that isn’t tied to an immediate output.
Engage with “simple” exercises – journalling, values work, prioritisation matrices – that can feel basic or even beneath them.
Stay with uncomfortable reflections on money, self-worth, or control rather than quickly pivoting back to tactics.
Admit, even briefly, “I might not have this figured out.”
The irony is that the “basics” are often where the real transformation begins:
A money story from childhood quietly shaping today’s pricing.
A discomfort with saying “no”, driving scope creep, and burnout.
A belief that “real work” is only doing, never thinking, leading to chronic reactivity.
A need to stay in control, making delegation and team communication far harder than necessary (extremely common with first-time and/or early-stage founders).
These are not actually basics because they are about building solid foundations. However, they only reveal themselves when the founder is willing to slow down, be seen, and stay with the discomfort long enough for something new to emerge.
Surrender, Vulnerability, and the Founder’s Inner Compass
The language of “surrender” can feel threatening to all of us, but especially for founders. The business is their “baby”, and surrendering any control can sound and feel like giving up agency. In coaching, it means something very different.
Surrender in this context is:
Letting go of the performance of having it all together for one hour.
Allowing yourself to be the person who doesn’t have all the answers, at least in front of your coach.
Accepting that your current way of seeing the world might be part of the problem, not just the solution.
Vulnerability is not oversharing for the sake of it. It’s:
Answering the question you’d rather avoid.
Naming the fear behind the strategy.
Admitting that you do, in fact, care what people think, or maybe even that you don’t, and recognising that has consequences.
Your inner compass – the thing Founders’ Compass is built around – doesn’t come from external advice or templates. It emerges when you’re willing to:
Notice your patterns.
Question your stories.
Sit in ambiguity without rushing to the next optimisation.
That process can’t be outsourced to a consultant. It requires you.
How Founders Can Get Real Value from Coaching
If you’re a founder considering coaching – or in it already – here are practical ways to lean into the process and maximise the value.
1. Protect the Space Relentlessly
Treat coaching time as you would investor meetings or key customer calls.
Start on time, don’t cut it short unless absolutely necessary.
Close Slack, email, and notifications. You can’t do deep inner work without your full attention.
This simple act signals to yourself that your development is not optional, and that it’s an integral part of running the business. Remember, the business will grow and develop, and you need to grow and develop with it. Don’t sell yourself short.
2. Do the “Unglamorous” Work Between Sessions
If you’re given an exercise – journalling, a values review, an Eisenhower Matrix, a reflection on money – treat it like a customer interview or product experiment.
Don’t decide it’s “too basic” before you’ve actually done it properly.
Notice your resistance. Often, the thing you least want to do is exactly where the insight is hiding.
Coaching compounds when the work continues between sessions. Without that, every session becomes a reset.
3. Let Yourself Be the One Who Doesn’t Know
You’re used to being the node everyone comes to for answers. In coaching, you are allowed to drop that role.
When your coach asks a question that lands close to the bone, resist the urge to explain or justify. Sit with it. See what shows up.
If you catch yourself trying to justify your abilities, ask: “What am I avoiding feeling or admitting right now?”
The most powerful coaching conversations often happen just beyond the point where you want to change the subject.
4. Be Honest About What You Actually Want
If what you really want is a seasoned founder to tell you what they’d do in your situation, be clear that’s what you're looking for, not coaching.
Coaching and consulting are both valid, but they’re different. Expecting one and receiving the other will only frustrate you.
A good coach will either stay in the coaching frame, switch into a more advisory mode with clear boundaries, or signpost you to a more appropriate advisory relationship.
Honesty about what you’re seeking saves everyone time and preserves the integrity of the work.
5. Measure Value Differently
Consulting value is measured in answers, frameworks, and visible decisions.
Coaching value is measured in:
Decisions you no longer procrastinate on.
Conversations you have that you used to avoid.
Boundaries you now hold that you previously allowed to be blurred.
The quality of your thinking and presence, not just the number of tasks completed.
These shifts are quieter but often far more leveraged in the long term.
The Invitation
Coaching isn’t for every founder at every stage. There are times when what you need most is execution help, specialist advice, or simply more hands-on support in the business.
But when you choose coaching, you’re not buying the answers to questions in the way you think you are. You’re committing to a different kind of work:
Slower.
More confronting at times.
Less visible on your calendar.
Deeply impactful on how you lead, decide, and relate to your company and yourself.
At Founders’ Compass, the aim is not to turn you into a passive recipient of wisdom, but to help you build an inner compass you can trust. This is to ensure that when the next wave hits, you’re not just reacting, you’re navigating.
That only happens when you’re willing to lean into the process, surrender a little control, and be vulnerable enough to do the work.
If you’re willing to do that, coaching can become one of the most valuable relationships you have as a founder. If not, that’s coo tool, but it’s better to be honest about it, with yourself and with your coach.