Tee

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What’s coach­ing like? Rapid-fire takes on re­ceiv­ing & pro­vid­ing coach­ing from a train­ing program

• Tee 21 May 2024 10:14 UTC

  21 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Marisa, the Co-Founder of EA Any­where, Has Passed Away

  It’s heartbreaking. My unmistakable sense of Marisa is that she had the kind of soul that we need in this world. It’s hard to accept living in a reality that can feel so inhospitable to someone like that.
  
  It was an honor to have shared a small part of my life alongside a person that clearly left a lasting beautiful impression on so many people, evidenced by Carrick’s loving post, Catherine’s heartwarming pictures & comments, and the other outpouring of grief from those who knew her.
  
  Marisa was a beloved and critical member of the Rethink Charity team for years. Quoting what I’d said before when she moved on at the time in 2021:

  However impactful we feel RC has been over the years, much of that was made possible due to the operational foundations designed and delivered by Marisa Lynne. (Oh how a swiftly worded phrase encompasses years of dedication, sweat, tears, etc.)

  They came out of seemingly nowhere as this industrious young powerhouse who just wanted to help, distinguishing themselves as a volunteer to such a degree that we simply had to have them on the team. The EA community more broadly is surely also better for it.

  Some years later, their blend of heart, desire and applied intellect is still rare for me to encounter in people much their senior.

  So here’s to you, Marisa. It was an honor to be on this mission with you. I’m sure there’s a lot of greatness and (more importantly IMO) goodness ahead for you

  God speed!

  I have so many futile wishes about all of this. The last few days have been about trying to pay her life respect by how I think about the time we shared and what her struggle might have been like. My thoughts are with anyone who was close with her.

• Tee 25 Apr 2024 8:08 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: hrosspet’s comment on: Choose your own odyssey: re­sults & in­sights from Tee Bar­nett Coach­ing Train­ing (TBCT)

  Glad it was helpful! Happy to see that you utilized the ‘playlist’-type function of this to kick off these thoughts
  
  This sounds like a nice process you’ve carved out for yourself. Always pleased to see when people are at such an advanced position in being conscientious about their growth.
  
  Similar to what it sounds like your process is, my sense is that the best frequency for working with most coaches/​therapists follows an ‘organic cadence’ that’s tied to particular phases and occasions. It seems like, in most cases, consistent indefinite sessions are more likely to stray from addressing things that are (a)live
  
  Things I’d suggest that could be helpful to think about:
  
  – There’s a meta-skill to knowing when to bring in certain people to lean on /​ get inspired by in different situations. Viewing that as an ongoing learning project to reflect on could be good. (It could imply that you want to strengthen aspects of your network in case you want to call upon them, for example)
  – This project of knowing when to bring certain people in can be enhanced by more information about use cases associated with different people and frequencies. Maybe self-coaching is great for certain territories of your experience, but consistent founder-coaching while you’re in phases of creation, scaling up, management, etc. are almost always useful. A lot of this is tied to seasonality and phases in my mind. Bringing in a coach ‘to thrive’ in winter, when you’re likely to be more introspective, etc., could be better than doing so in the summer, when you might want to be having experiences in the outside world to bring back for yourself later.
  – I don’t want to assume things about your process, but self-coaching/​-therapy is tricky even for coaches and therapists. If you want to get really good at this, it’s likely some time refining that toolkit (*focusing explicitly on getting better at self-coaching*) would be a good investment of time and resources
  – Getting coaching/​therapy when you feel stuck is a reliable signal of need and/​or comes with a higher likelihood of getting value from individual (sets of) sessions. The downsides are that you can lose momentum getting stuck, you could get stuck for longer than it needed to be, some people struggle to ask for help in low-powered states. Consistent coaching aimed at the medium- to long-term can ‘head off’ certain tangles/​hangups. More on this here
  
  Hope that was helpful! Curious how what I mentioned landed for you

• Tee 8 Apr 2024 15:56 UTC

  1 point

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Choose your own odyssey: re­sults & in­sights from Tee Bar­nett Coach­ing Train­ing (TBCT)

  EA Forum note: I’ve cleared with the Forum team that I can offer free 20-minute calls as a ‘thank you’ for the first 10 people that leave thoughtful and engaging private or public comments. These short calls can be mini-sessions, coaching AMA, a catchup, or used any other way you’d like!

Choose your own odyssey: re­sults & in­sights from Tee Bar­nett Coach­ing Train­ing (TBCT)

• Tee 13 Oct 2023 9:54 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Should we in­vest more in sup­port­ing al­tru­ists to be at their best? (Men­tal health + pro­duc­tivity)

  Thanks to Seb and others for putting in the effort to get clarity in this area for the community.
  
  Very briefly before I circle back for a more substantive round of commenting – noting that I haven’t dug into all of the studies that these quantitative estimates are predicated upon, I wasn’t able to find mention of staff “turnover /​ churn ” or anything of the sort in this report.
  
  If it’s the case that estimates within this report, and/​or quantitative estimates within studies that this report draws from, do not include an approximation of costs from staff turnover /​ churn, I’d be very surprised if they didn’t have at least a noticeable effect on estimates like those found in this report.
  
  I’d imagine HR professionals would care a lot about costs associated with turnover /​ churn. Anyone who has needed to replace someone understands firsthand how much of a heavy lift that can be, including the shared bandwidth burden of needing to cover duties that trickle onto everyone else. (This often strains multiple people)
  
  My eye test from coaching EAs struggling with various aspects of their job is that a nontrivial proportion of them are often considering leaving entirely. And in fact, some number of former clients of mine have left organizations after protracted periods of comparatively low productivity and comparatively low overall wellness.
  
  To spell out the implications of what I’m saying a bit more, should staff turnover have any kind of meaningful effect on organizational costs, the value of implementing various staff wellness interventions should go up if it improves retention
  
  Seb had a preference for me to include as a comment here. Curious for thoughts!

• Tee 27 Jul 2023 9:16 UTC

  1 point

  1 ∶ 2

  on: Launch­ing the meta char­ity fund­ing cir­cle (MCF): Ap­ply for fund­ing or join as a donor!

  Just applied for TBCT! Incredibly happy to see this get set up. What a gift for this community it could be

• Tee 27 Jul 2023 8:54 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Devon Fritz 🔸’s comment on: Launch­ing the meta char­ity fund­ing cir­cle (MCF): Ap­ply for fund­ing or join as a donor!

  I was just thinking this

Coach­ing match­mak­ing is now open: in­vest in com­mu­nity well­ness by in­vest­ing in yourself

• Tee 28 Mar 2023 12:35 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ruben Dieleman 🔸’s comment on: Coach­ing Train­ing Pro­gram Launch: build and up­skill your prac­tice with Tee Bar­nett Coach­ing Train­ing (TBCT)

  My pleasure and thanks for saying that. Happy to add more popular questions to that section as they come

Coach­ing Train­ing Pro­gram Launch: build and up­skill your prac­tice with Tee Bar­nett Coach­ing Train­ing (TBCT)

• Tee 22 Nov 2022 13:36 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: LukeDing’s comment on: The FTX crisis high­lights a deeper cul­tural prob­lem within EA—we don’t suffi­ciently value good governance

  Can confirm that Luke was a huge proponent of this from our interactions from ~2016 – ~2019. It’s one of the primary reasons Rethink Charity created and maintained our governance structure, which I thought was only moderately good but likely above average relative to what I’ve seen and heard about in the community

Re­place­abil­ity v. ‘Con­tex­tu­al­ized Wor­thi­ness’

• Tee 13 May 2022 14:16 UTC

  21 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: Some clar­ifi­ca­tions on the Fu­ture Fund’s ap­proach to grantmaking

  I’ve got a similar feeling to Khorton. Happy to have been pre-empted there.
  
  It could be helpful to consider what it is that legibility in the grant application process (for which post-application feedback is only one sort) is meant to achieve. Depending on the grant maker’s aims, this can non-exhaustively include developing and nurturing talent, helping future applicants self-select, orienting projects on whether they are doing a good job, being a beacon and marketing instrument, clarifying and staking out an epistemic position, serving an orientation function for the community etc.
  
  And depending on the basket of things the grant maker is trying to achieve, different pieces of legibility affect ‘efficiency’ in the process. For example, case studies and transparent reasoning about accepted and rejected projects, published evaluations, criteria for projects to consider before applying, hazard disclaimers, risk profile declarations, published work on the grant makers theory of change, etc. can give grant makers ‘published’ content to invoke during the post-application process that allows for the scaling of feedback. (e.g. our website states that we don’t invest in projects that rapidly accelerate ‘x’). There are other forms of pro-active communication and stratifying applicant journeys that would make things even more efficient.
  
  FTX did what they did, and there is definitely a strong case for why they did it that way. In moving forward , I’d be curious to see if they acknowledge and make adjustments in light of the fact that different forms and degrees of legibility can affect the community.
  
  
  

• Tee 12 May 2022 11:46 UTC

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Nick_Beckstead’s comment on: Some clar­ifi­ca­tions on the Fu­ture Fund’s ap­proach to grantmaking

  why it’s at least a non-obvious decision
  
  Will we provide feedback to rejected applicants in the future? Possibly, but I think this involves complex tradeoffs and isn’t a no-brainer
  
  So I don’t think we should be doing this now, but I’m not saying that we won’t try to find ways to give more feedback in the future (see below).

  
  Very much appreciate the considerate engagement with this. Wanted to flag that my primary response to your initial comment can be found here.
  
  All this makes a lot of sense to me. I suspect some people got value out of the presentation of this reasoning. My goal here was to bring this set of consideration to yours and Sam’s attention and upvote its importance, hopefully it’s factored into what is definitely non-obvious and complex to decide moving forward. Great to see how thoughtful you all have been and thanks again!

• Tee 11 May 2022 19:39 UTC

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tee’s comment on: Some clar­ifi­ca­tions on the Fu­ture Fund’s ap­proach to grantmaking

  Okay, upon review, that was a little bit too much of a rhetorical flourish at the end. Basically, I think there’s something seriously important to consider here about how process can negatively affect community health and alignment, which I believe to be important for this community in achieving the plurality of ambitious goals we’re shooting for. I believe FTX could definitely affect in a very positive way if they wanted to

• Tee 11 May 2022 18:00 UTC

  20 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Robert_Wiblin’s comment on: Some clar­ifi­ca­tions on the Fu­ture Fund’s ap­proach to grantmaking

  an opportunity cost to providing feedback
  
  huge mistake for Future Fund to provide substantial feedback except in rare cases.

  Yep, I’d imagine what makes sense is between ‘highly involved and coordinated attempt to provide feedback at scale’ and ‘zero’. I think it’s tempting to look away from how harmful ‘zero’ can be at scale
  
  > That could change in future if their other streams of successful applicants dry up and improving the projects of people who were previously rejected becomes the best way to find new things they want to fund.

  
  Agreed – this seems like a way to pick up easy wins and should be a good go-to for grant makers to circle back. However, banking on this as handling the concerns that were raised doesn’t account for all the things that come with unqualified rejection and people deciding to do other things, leave EA, incur critical stakeholder instability etc. as a result.
  
  In other words, for the consequentialist-driven among us, I don’t think that community health is a nice-to-have if we’re serious about having a community of highly effective people working urgently on hard/​complex things

• Tee 11 May 2022 10:20 UTC

  12 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Luke Freeman’s comment on: EA and the cur­rent fund­ing situation

  Related thread that Sam and Nick are speaking on: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​hDK9CZJwH2Cqc9n9J/​​some-clarifications-on-the-future-fund-s-approach-to?commentId=JLDaxyk8uxdwcYNye#comments

• Tee 11 May 2022 10:10 UTC

  43 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Sam Bankman-Fried’s comment on: Some clar­ifi­ca­tions on the Fu­ture Fund’s ap­proach to grantmaking

  Thanks to Sam and Nick for getting to this. I think it’s very cool that you two are taking the time to engage. In light of the high esteem that I regard both of you and the value of your time, I’ll try to close the loop of this interaction by leaving you with one main idea.
  
  I was pointing at something different than what I think was addressed. To distill what I was saying: >> Were FTX to encounter a strong case for non-negligible harms/​externalities to community health that could result from the grant making process, what would your response to that evidence be? <<
  
  The response would likely depend on a hard-to-answer question about how FTX conceives of its responsibilities within the community given that it is now the largest funder by far.
  
  Personally, I was hoping for a response more along the lines of “Oh, we hadn’t thought about it that way. Can you tell us more? How do you think we get more information about how this could be important?”
  
  I was grateful for Nick’s thoughtful answer about what’s happening over there. I think we all hear what you’re saying about chosen priorities, complexity of project, and bandwidth issues. Also the future is hard to predict. I get all that and can feel how authentically you feel proud about how hard the team has been working and the great work that’s been done already. I’m sure that’s an amazing place to be.
  
  My question marks are around how you conceive of responsibility and choose to take responsibility moving forward in light of new information about the reality on the ground. Given the resources at your disposal, I’d be inclined to view your answer within the lens of prioritization of options, rather than simply making the best of constraints.
  
  As the largest funder in the space by far, it’s a choice to be open to discovering and uncovering risk and harms that they didn’t account for previously. It’s a choice to devote time and resources to investigate them. It’s a choice to think through how context shifts and your relationship to responsibility evolves. It’s a choice to not do all those things.
  
  A few things that seem hard waive away:
  
  1) 1600 −1650 (?) rejected applications from the largest and most exciting new funder with no feedback could be disruptive to community health
  
  Live example: Established organization(s) got rejected and/​or far less than asked for with no feedback. Stakeholders asked the project leaders “What does it mean that you got rejected/​less than you asked for from FTX? What does that say about the impact potential of your project, quality of your project, fitness to lead it, etc.” This can cause great instability. Did FTX foresee this? Probably not, for understandable reasons. Is this the effect that FTX wants to have? Probably not. Is it FTX’s responsibility to address this? Uncertain.
  
  2) Opaque reasoning for where large amounts of money goes and why could be disruptive to community health
  
  3) (less certain regarding your M&E plans) Little visibility on M&E given to applicants puts them in a place of not only not knowing what is good, but also how they know they’re doing well. Also potentially disruptive
  
  In regards to the approach moving forward for FTX, I wouldn’t be surprised if more reflection among the staff yielded more than ‘we’re trying hard + it’s complex + bandwidth issues so what do you want us to do?’ My hope with this comment is to nudge internal discussions to be more expansive and reflective. Maybe you can let me know if that happened or not. Insofar as I delivered this in a way that hopefully didn’t feel like an attack, if you feel including me in a discussion would be helpful, I’d love to be a part of it.
  
  And finally, I’m not sure where the ‘we couldn’t possibly give feedback on 1700 applications’ response came from. I mentioned feedback, but there’s innumerable ways to construct a feedback apparatus that isn’t (what seemed to be assumed) the same level of care and complexity for each application. A quick example – ‘stratified feedback’ – FTX considers who the applicant is and gives varying levels of feedback depth depending on who they are. This could be important for established EA entities (as I mentioned above), where for various reasons, you think leaving them completely in the dark would be actively harmful for a subnetwork of stakeholders. My ideal version of this would also include promising individuals who you don’t want to discourage, but for whatever reason their application wasn’t successful.
  
  Thanks for taking the time. I hope this is received well.
  
  
  
  

  What links here?

  • Tee's comment on Some clar­ifi­ca­tions on the Fu­ture Fund’s ap­proach to grantmaking by Nick_Beckstead (12 May 2022 11:46 UTC; 7 points)