There’s a Coach For That

Greenwich, Connecticut-based Laverge logged more than three decades in senior roles at Viacom and ABInbev before pivoting to help other mid-career execs ready to rise to upper management.

“Some people are seen as talented because their technical skills might be really high, but they’re not getting promoted because they’re not visible,” she says. Laverge helps address both issues: She advises people to be ready with a few examples of their work—and its additive value—when a passing boss might ask. Then she’ll help polish up etiquette and appearance. “Words are only 7% of what people hear,” she says. “The rest is tone, attitude, body language and so forth. You have to make sure you’re delivering on your reputation all day, every day.”

A first-generation Hyderabadi immigrant who was raised in the US, Boppana remembers clearly how her kindergarten teacher singled her out in front of the class because she shook her head side to side to answer yes, in the style of her home country of India, instead of nodding. Now Boppana wants others, of any age, to avoid that kind of upsetting experience and instead thrive in a new place.

Boppana’s client base includes Slovenian immigrants and Haitian Americans; one 20-year-old South Asian student in the US told her, “I never really understand when someone’s making a joke, and they don’t when I am. I feel there’s a missing link.” Boppana suggests not shying away from asking if you don’t understand or there’s been some cultural confusion. Pick the person you feel most comfortable with and choose them as a confidant—eventually that person may explain colloquialisms without being prompted. Boppana has also coached parents to help their soon-to-be college-age kids prepare for what to expect at an American university.

It was a chance meeting on an airplane with John Schneider, director of football operations for the Green Bay Packers, that upended Johnson’s professional path. He was working as a generalist leadership coach, but Schneider tapped him to shake up, and shape up, the team. He’s now known as the GM Whisperer, helping struggling NFL franchises, including the Titans and Dolphins, find their touchdown technique anew.

Johnson also works with C-suite execs to deploy his NFL-honed know-how in an off-the-field setting. His major emphasis: self-belief, as impostor syndrome is so widespread. (He examines his clients’ using a 20-question quiz.) When you’re freed from feeling pushed to do what you don’t believe you should be doing, you can pursue what you actually might love. “What rings the bell of joy in your heart?” he asks. The answer for one client, an executive at a major hospital system, was to ditch his job and found a medical clinic for Indigenous Americans in New Mexico. Another, also a health-care executive, who was making $800,000 at 33, ended up junking his corporate gig for entrepreneurial life. “He raised $20 million in seed money to start the first virtual emergency room in the United States. That took off, and he later sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Durnil, 47, was a stay-at-home mom when she found out her husband had been unfaithful; they quickly divorced. “He worked a ton, so when I was married, I was a single parent anyway. Our day-to-day didn’t change, but I was blindsided and caught completely off-guard,” she says. She was among the first of her friends to face that emotional earthquake and, when folks started asking for advice, rapidly recognized an opportunity.

Durnil’s practice starts with a 30-minute call to get a brief on the situation: Is the other parent still in the house? Are there drug or alcohol abuse issues? Is it a high-conflict situation? She then coaches clients, all of them women, to deal with individual needs—as with one who wished to keep living with her soon-to-be ex-husband, who traveled regularly for work, in a large house where they could co-parent their two kids more readily. Durnil focused on if it was really best for the kids and how it felt for her client. “She was really determined and felt she was strong enough, so we worked on how to have boundaries when he was in town.”

A freelance journalist and former New York Times columnist, Wulfhart, 44, has spent the past decade honing an unlikely side hustle as a decision coach. “I’m one of those people who, if you start telling me about an issue in your life, my brain will start working, and I cannot hold in that advice,” she says. “I had to start a business doing that because my friends and family were like, ‘Shut up!’ ”

Wulfhart’s niche is simple: She helps people find an answer to a single, major question over an extended phone call—usually an hour, but there’s no time limit. She prefers a classic call to Zoom so she can take notes. She always comes into the conversation blind to the topic, though she’ll ask for some background on lifestyle, profession, location and other basics. “My whole thing is complete and utter transparency. I’m a neutral third party who has no investment in what they decide to do, other than wanting them to be happy.” Wulfhart says she tries to draw out from clients what they want to do and what they think they ought to do. She says that “98% of the time they’re the same thing, and it’s my job to write them a permission slip to say it’s OK.” Job offers are a commonplace conundrum, as are breakups. One fiftysomething med student called to discuss whether to sell her house (answer: yes); another woman, fatigued by too many decorating decisions after her house was destroyed in a fire, was stuck on what color to paint her kitchen (answer: yellow, the same as before, despite a choice of a dozen different shades of white). “It was nice to decide something frivolous, and it was a good illustration of how people can get bogged down and waste so much time on things that are pretty inconsequential.”

Of those two inevitabilities, death and taxes, Duncan is determined to make at least one less ominous, proactively improving the end-of-life experience for clients. As a former hospice nurse, she’s a seasoned palliative pro.

Duncan’s approach intends to strip the stigma from dying and instead help anyone prepare for a good death. If she works with the dying person, the focus might be on education and arranging powers of attorney or a funeral directive, tidying their life for those left behind. With family members, that administration might be commingled with emotional support: In one family a daughter came to Duncan keen to force her siblings and widowed, terminally ill mom to communicate with one another after her father’s traumatic death. “The mom wanted to talk openly about the fact she was dying,” Duncan recalls. “We did letter writing exercises and planned her funeral.”