Leadership Consulting & Executive Coaching
Executive 360 Coaching, LLC
Austin + Central Texas
Ellen Lindsey, LCSW
Organizational and leadership consulting focused on your leaders and the structures they work in.
How people think, adapt, and work together will propel your business forward or drag it down.
Human Dynamics ↔ Organizational Structures
Business problems can be rooted in many dynamics.
Leadership effectiveness, issues between the people at the top, or unclear governance and roles.
Sometimes it's all three.
That's why it's advisable to bring in both coaching and consulting when you're seeking solutions. In consulting, we look at the system: governance, decision rights, authority, accountability, roles and how decisions actually get made. Then, we make informed recommendations and give options for implementation.
In coaching, we look at the person: traits, background, mindset, impact. We broaden the leader’s perspective, deepen their self-awareness, and facilitate expanded leadership capacity over time. The structures impact the human dynamics and the human dynamics impact leadership effectiveness.
360 Coaching works with founders, executives, partners and family owners who have reached a limit in their leadership and are ready to grow beyond it. They lead SMBs, professional service firms, and startups.
My job is to analyze the system they are working in and help improve leadership effectiveness at the senior level. Once the system is mapped and understood, I advise on upgrades and alignment so that the system is actually supporting your leaders instead of restricting them. At the same time, I work with senior leaders to map their mindsets, bring insight to what is and isn’t working, and coach them through to more effective leadership.
From C-suite leadership to team dynamics to organizational analysis, 360 Coaching has services to support your success.
Organizational & Leadership Consulting Services
Organizational & Governance Analysis
Bring Clarity to Your System
For sponsors, partnerships, founder-led and family companies, leaders preparing for or inheriting a team after a sale.
As organizations grow and mature, their systems may not evolve with them. The ways of governing and decision making that worked in the earlier years become roadblocks down the road. In startup environments, pursuing proof of concept and getting traction often eclipses any focus on creating functional roles or ensuring clear decision rights and authority.
Organizational and Governance Analysis begins with confidential stakeholder interviews, understanding operating agreements, exploring roles and decision rights. The deliverable is a written diagnosis with actionable and impactful recommendations.
Team
Alignment
Boost Team Effectiveness
When leadership challenges aren’t isolated to one person, we look at the team.
This work brings together insights from across the team to identify what’s working, where breakdowns are happening, and what needs to shift.
The focus is not on training or theory, but on improving how the team actually functions: communication, alignment, decision-making, and trust. The goal is a leadership team that operates more cohesively and gets better results together.
Team Alignment begins with confidential stakeholder interviews, a formal 360 assessment of team functioning or gaps in leadership effectiveness, then custom team work sessions to dive deep and upgrade team dynamics.
360 Executive Coaching
Recalibrate Your C-Suite
Individual, high-impact coaching designed for founders, partners, and senior leaders.
You want support but you also need to be challenged. Aimed at helping you see your patterns, make better decisions under pressure, and lead more effectively in your role. Whether you’re navigating complexity, managing a team, or stepping into a bigger position, this work helps you move forward with more clarity, accountability, and impact.
We offer several formats: project-based leadership development for a single leader or for all the leaders in your C-suite, and ongoing support and sounding-board for the CEO.
Problems at the top? Tell me what you’re dealing with.
This AI age is exciting and dizzying.
The potential for transformation is boundless, but trust and confidence can be hard to come by. Businesses are swimming in a sea of possibility and leaders are often drowning in overload.
Do the same problems keep coming back? The usual fixes haven't worked?
Going in circles?
Your leadership team revisits decisions you thought were made. Meetings end politely, and nothing changes.
Decisions keep landing on the founder?
You built this and it's growing. You're adding roles and departments. All decisions used to run through you, but that isn't sustainable. The founder-to-CEO transition is a tricky one.
Partners disagree about who decides what?
The operating agreement says one thing, and day-to-day practice says another. Nobody is sure where one person's authority ends and the next one's begins.
Trust between leaders has broken down?
Something happened, and now people work around each other instead of with each other. The rest of the company feels it.
A new team after a sale, succession or transition?
New owners, new roles, old habits. What are the new expectations, goals, processes? Nobody has outlined how things work now.
Succession pressures are showing the cracks?
A longtime, key leader is leaving, and it’s becoming painfully clear that there isn’t an obvious candidate to step in. The role is so large and their decision rights are so broad that it wouldn’t be realistic for anyone to step into it as it stands. The question isn’t only who. It’s what the role should be now.
Coaching one leader or having one workshop didn't fix it?
They may have gotten better, but the team didn't. When the problem lives between people, or in how roles and authority are set up, individual coaching can't reach it alone.
The business has outgrown its structure?
The roles and accountability that worked when you were smaller are breaking down, and the strain shows up in the people at the top first.
No one to consult with? Who advises the founder or CEO?
Some leaders are surrounded by yes-people who don’t give direct, honest feedback. Some are facing tough decisions they need to process with a sounding board, not a stakeholder. And, some report to founders or boards who are out of touch with the day-to-day realities.
Often it's more than one of these. That's why the work starts with understanding what's going on before we design the engagement.
Leadership Consulting + Wisdom + Experience
Expertise in the human side of business
I’m Ellen Lindsey, LCSW, a leadership consultant and executive coach in Austin.
Each leader's starting point is unique and determined by their mindset and by the system they are operating in. Their personal path is shaped by their blind spots. Their professional path is shaped by the culture and structures they operate in.
You need an advisor who has depth and experience to understand both and the interplay between them.
After 25 years as a therapist supporting high-performing professionals, I have that depth. With expertise in interpersonal dynamics and personal growth, I’m trained to quickly identify patterns and their underlying drivers. I’m deeply tuned in to nuance and my ability to get to the heart of the matter is sharply honed.
As an entrepreneur, I’ve built a multi-million dollar company, scaling a business at a 40% year-over-year revenue growth rate. I led teams, weathered conflict, navigated overnight pivots, scaled in a frenzy and successfully exited through an acquisition.
I’ve been in your seat and I’ve come out wiser on the other side. With sophisticated assessments and an outsider’s objectivity, I assess leaders as they impact your organization, and the structures of your organization as they impact your leaders.
Today, as an organizational consultant, I work with businesses and leaders facing the same pressures I did. Growth, complexity, fast-paced change and heavy responsibility at scale. There are many approaches to choose from: individual, team, system.
Providing executive coaching in Austin is only part of the offerings. Coaching is focused on the individual inside of a team or organization. Team Alignment engages an entire team in development as a unit, how they function, where their energy flows and how it’s blocked. Finally, clarifying roles, understanding governance, and mapping out decision rights are just as important to leadership effectiveness as development work. Organizational and Governance Analysis brings all the structures in line.
Our work together can span all three, the leaders, the teams, and the structures they operate in, enhancing your leaders’ effectiveness, improving team alignment, and strengthening your leadership pipeline.
I’ve got you covered on the human side AND the business side of leadership.
I assess the ways your leaders impact the organization and analyze how your organizational structures impact your leaders, using sophisticated assessments, psychological insight, business savvy and an outsider’s objectivity.
What does that mean for you?
Leadership development that addresses your leaders’ rough edges, interpersonal challenges, and organizational development with credentialed expertise.
I work with senior leaders and their teams when it’s time for a people tune-up. They get all the benefits of personalized executive coaching with the depth of a seasoned counselor.
I readily build rapport and closely guard confidentiality. I gently challenge and share my informed insights. Together, we puzzle together the unseen drivers of the problematic dynamics. Then, I guide and support leaders through impactful behavior change that makes a difference in the culture and the bottom-line.
Often, shoring up outdated agreements or structures can be the first step to freeing the power of your leaders.
There are a lot of coaches out there. Lots of frameworks, hundreds of books, and endless workshops.
There aren’t many of me. If your leaders and team recognize there are people problems, if they are open to feedback and motivated to shift what needs shifting, if they are interested in taking a fresh look at governance, I’d enjoy talking with you. Maybe we will be a fit.
Outcomes with 360 Coaching
Partner-Owned, Professional Service Firm
40 staff
In a twelve month engagement, I worked with a group of partners who were experiencing conflict and stagnation after 15 years of working together. We engaged in Executive Leadership Coaching for the Senior Team and Organizational & Governance Analysis. They now share a plain-language reference for who decides what, a governance charter with agreed upon guidelines around authority and communication, and their CEO now has clear authority to oversee and hold the officers accountable, which was non-existent before.
Founder-led, Professional Service Firm
40 staff
In a multi-year engagement with a founder-led professional services firm, we tackled some tricky succession issues. The organization had been going strong for more than 30 years and the founder was ready to take a big step back. After conducting the first round of confidential interviews with senior leaders and interpreting their 360 Assessments, it became clear that the founder’s personal pick for a successor wasn’t a winning choice. A different senior leader was the clear choice. With this information, the founder quickly pivoted. A year later, the new president captained the sale of the company for tens of millions of dollars.
Board-run, Behavioral Health Services
70 staff
In a Coach & Confidant engagement with the director of a twenty-year old behavioral health center, we explored challenging dynamics between her and the founders who sat on the board and still held officer titles. The reality was that they did not genuinely take on the responsibilities of those roles and the director was essentially doing most of the jobs of the C-suite. Through exploration, consultation and advising, she gained clarity about what her needs and asks were from the founders. Once those were communicated, she was promoted to COO and is enjoying more role clarity, autonomy and decision rights congruent with her updated job description.
Now, more than ever…
The success of your business depends on the quality of your leadership and the structures they operate in.
Looking for a leadership tune-up?
We work with small-to-medium sized businesses, family operations, partnerships, professional service firms, and founder-led startups.
My focus is the people at the top and the structures they lead within. I don't take on large-scale restructuring, company-wide change programs, or operations and process consulting, and changes to legal agreements stay with your attorney.
What’s notable about 360 Coaching?
Uniquely qualified organizational and leadership consulting background:
Successful founder and entrepreneur
Business leader of a professional services agency, responsible for 120+ staff and thousands of clients
C-suite executive who propelled a homegrown counseling agency to a multi-million dollar acquisition
Therapist with deep psychological insight, skill and sensitivity; licensed since 2002
Master Social Worker, with training, experience and board-approved licensure to serve individuals and organizations through assessment, evaluation, consultation and implementation, in addition to developing, implementing and administering policies and programs
Certified Leadership Circle Profile, Collective Leadership Assessment, and Leadership System practitioner
Honest feedback, strategic guidance, a deep read on what’s driving behavior,
and the wisdom of executive leadership experience.
FAQs
What's the difference between leadership consulting and executive coaching?
1
In consulting, we look at the system: governance, decision rights, authority, accountability, roles and how decisions actually get made. Then, we make informed recommendations and give options for implementation.
In coaching, we look at the person: traits, background, mindset, impact. We broaden the leader's perspective, deepen their self-awareness, and facilitate expanded leadership capacity over time.
Why start with feedback?
2
Without clear input from others, leaders are often working from incomplete or inaccurate assumptions. Starting with feedback ensures that the work is focused on what will actually move the needle on leadership impact.
Who do you work with?
3
Business leaders and teams navigating complexity and carrying increasing responsibility: CEOs & senior executives, founders & entrepreneurs, startups, firms & agencies, small to mid-sized organizations, nonprofits and boards.
Do you work with professional services firms?
4
Yes. I've worked with engineers, auditors, attorneys, and behavioral health centers. I'm open to engaging with any partner-owned firm, including accounting, architecture, medical and financial advisory practices.
Can you help with a founder transition or succession?
5
Yes, and I've walked in their shoes. For founders, transition is a tricky and very personal process. For longtime leaders stepping down, succession issues can be confusing. These executives hold immeasurable institutional knowledge. Crafting a meaningful transition plan often is more successful with an outside advisor's input for the benefit of objectivity.
Do you interview each leader individually and confidentially?
6
Yes. Every interview is confidential. Leaders speak more honestly to an outside advisor who has no stake in the outcome when they are assured of discretion. Any written report shares themes and patterns, never who said what. Before the engagement begins, we will determine who will have access to the report.
What if a leader doesn't want to be coached?
7
That's common, and worth taking seriously. Reluctance usually means one of three things: the leader sees coaching as punishment, doesn't trust how the feedback will be used, or doesn't believe anything is wrong. Before any assessment, I meet with the leader alone to find out which it is. Many leaders who arrive skeptical become the most engaged once they see their 360 results and realize the work serves their goals, not just the company's concerns. If someone is still unwilling after that, I'll tell the sponsor coaching isn't the right fit. Forcing it wastes your money and their time.
How will we know it worked?
8
We set goals at the start, based on the 360 results and what the sponsor needs to see change. Progress shows up in behavior other people notice: how meetings run, who speaks up, whether decisions stick. Near the end, I check back with key stakeholders on what has changed. Coaching results are rarely a single number, but they should be visible to the people who work with the leader every day.
For organizational work, what we look for: decisions that stay made, fewer escalations, meetings that end with a decision, authority with accountability and leaders acting within their lanes.
How much does it cost?
9
It all depends on what service you're interested in and the package we design for you. 360 Executive Coaching engagements run from $10,000 to $15,000 per leader. These contracts usually last 10 - 12 months. Team Alignment Coaching runs from $3,000 and goes up from there, depending on depth and breadth. A very basic individual development package includes the LCP 360 review and a three-hour debrief, which starts at $2,000. Additional leadership coaching with Coach & Confidant starts at $600 monthly, depending on cadence. Most Organizational & Governance Analyses range from $15,000 to $30,000, depending on the number of leaders interviewed.
Do you work in person or remotely?
10
My preference is always in-person. (As the kids say, “IRL” is where it’s at!)
These topics can be confusing, the dynamics volatile and the patterns entrenched. When I'm physically present with the owners and leaders, I am better able to read them, understand their context and build rapport. That said, many clients need remote services, and I'm happy to oblige. I'm also available to travel.
Can we talk before we commit?
11
Absolutely. Fit is important and discovery calls carry no obligation. Fill out a contact form, and we'll schedule some time to talk.
Not Sure 360 Coaching is Right for You?
Start with a confidential conversation. There is no obligation and if it's a fit, we'll talk options. If it's not, you'll still walk away with more clarity about what you’re looking for.