Coaching And Mentoring With

Alex “Have A Crazy Day!” Bleau

I coach and mentor  product managers, leaders & teams, early startup / business founders & executives. I am a Thoughtsmiths certified coach and have been coaching and/or mentoring for over 7 years now. 

I met Alex at a learning expedition at it became clear soon, that he would be a perfect coach for the organization I work with and for myself.

He asks the right challenging questions that sometimes hurt, but are always to the point and make me think. With Alex’s help, we were able to define and discuss good outcomes and OKRs. That helped us to focus and prioritize as an organization and on team level.

Why Coaching?

Coaching is a creative & powerful process meant to help people discover new insights & perspectives as well as to help them maximise their professional or personal potential.

It is not about the coach giving solutions or advice. It is about helping the coachee to find or set out what they want to achieve or what they want to deal with and then find the best approaches for themselves.
The coach does not say how to achieve success. The coach creates the right space and asks the right powerful questions through which the client himself finds the solutions.

And it is exactly this element of not giving solutions, not saying what to do that makes coaching transformational. Because the insights, reflections & discoveries that we come up with ourselves are long lasting learning moments. 

This is why most of the times, it does not matter if the coach has experience with the issue that the coachee brings to the table. To paraphrase some of the coaches that I learned from: “The coachee brings the issue and their thinking is focused on said issue. The coach however, focuses on the coachee’s thinking about the issue, not the issue itself.”

Why Mentoring?

Mentoring is a 1on1 or group agreed development relationship that most often forms between someone with experience or expertise in a field and an individual or group with the goal of helping the mentee in their learning, development and growth. 

Mentors generally guide one or more mentees by offering examples, sharing knowledge or expertise but also by helping to model positive behaviours. This is also why and how it differs from coaching. 

Mentoring usually has goals, either defined in general by the mentee (informal) or clearly defined by both parties before the start of the sessions (formal).

Ways we can work together:

I offer and deliver my coaching and mentoring services in a fully remote format. However, when and where possible, I value getting to know my clients in person.

I coach and mentor individuals, teams or groups, generally with one or two 60-minute sessions per month and tailored to the specific needs of each client.

Note that I have a limited number of clients I can take on every year. Doing this part-time is intentional, as I believe that staying in the job and industry, staying up to date and working with teams & leaders is both important and relevant when coaching, mentoring and consulting.

Do reach out to schedule a free session to explore if we are a fit and can work together.

I have worked with product managers, leaders, executives and early founders from trivago, Innogy, E-on, Metro Markets, EarlyNode, Thyssenkrupp Materials Services, Caru AG, Swisscom, Zalando.

The CEO job can be lonely, stressful and full of uncertainty. The thoughtful way of Alex asking questions during our sessions helped to clarify my thinking, gain new perspectives and making better strategic decisions due to the gained insights. I definitely recommend him as a coach and “sparring partner”.

I transitioned into the world of product management role from a data science role with Alex as my coach and mentor. Discussions and brainstorming sessions with him on numerous user problems really helped me drive better conversations with my team and definitely helped me become a better product manager.

He is really passionate about solving and prioritising the right user problems and you can always learn tons of techniques from him on doing that.

He is a keen listener and his first principles approach always pushes you to ask the right questions. ‘Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. No other way to summarise his coaching and mentoring skills!