The Coach You Didn't Know You Needed

Fri, 22 May 2026 09:00:00 -0600

The more senior you get, the more responsible you are for developing other people and the less anyone is responsible for developing you. That inversion doesn’t get discussed much, partly because there’s an implicit assumption behind it: by the time you’re here, you’ve built the network and found the mentors you need to keep growing on your own.

That’s sometimes true. If you’ve come up at a steady pace, you’ve had time to build those relationships organically: a mentor from one role or a trusted peer from another. But if you’ve moved fast, that infrastructure often didn’t form when it was supposed to. You were executing, not investing, and then when the formal scaffolding stops the informal version isn’t there either.

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The Coach You Didn't Know You Needed