Tee

• TeeMay 11, 2022, 7:39 PM

  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

• TeeMay 11, 2022, 6:00 PM

  20 points

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  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

• TeeMay 11, 2022, 10:20 AM

  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

• TeeMay 11, 2022, 10:10 AM

  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 (May 12, 2022, 11:46 AM; 7 points)

• TeeMay 10, 2022, 12:38 PM

  16 points

  0 ∶ 0

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

  Also not trying to lay this all at FTX’s doorstep. Hoping that raising this will fold into some of the discussions about community effects behind closed doors over there

• TeeMay 10, 2022, 11:50 AM

  40 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Some clar­ifi­ca­tions on the Fu­ture Fund’s ap­proach to grantmaking

  Thanks for writing this up, Nick. It seems like a pretty good first step in communicating about what I imagine is a hugely complex project to deploy that much funding in a responsible manner. Something for FTX to consider within the context of community health and the responsibilities that you can choose to acknowledge as a major funding player:
  
  – How could a grant making process have significant effects on community health? What responsibilities would be virtuous for a major funding player to acknowledge and address? –
  
  I’ve picked up on lots of (concerning) widespread psychological fallout from people, especially project leaders, struggling to make sense of decision-making surrounding all this money pouring into EA (primarily from FTX). I wouldn’t want to dichotomize this discussion by weighing it against the good that can be done with the increased funding, but there’s value in offering constructive thoughts on how things could be done better.

  What seems to have happened at FTX is some mixture of deputizing several individuals as funders + an application process (from what I’ve been hearing) that offers zero feedback. For those involved over there, is this roughly correct?

  If indeed there are no other plans to handle the fundamentals of grantmaking beyond deployment of funds, fundamentals that I believe dramatically affect community health, unless I someone can persuade me otherwise, I’d predict a lot more disoriented and short-circuited (key) EAs, especially because many people on this community orient themselves in the world of legible and explicit.

  In particular, people are having trouble getting a sense of how merit is supposed to work in this space. One of the core things I try to get them to consider, which is more pronounced perhaps now more than ever, is that merit is only one of many currencies upon which your social standing and evaluation of your project rests. This is hard for people to look at.

  I hope FTX plans to take more responsibility for community health by following up with investment in legible M&E and application feedback. Echoing what I said a month ago about funders in general: https://​​bit.ly/​​3N1q3To

  “Funders could do more to prioritize fostering relationships – greater familiarity with project leaders reduces inefficiencies of all sorts, including performative and preparation overhead, miscommunication, missed opportunities, etc.

  In my opinion, this should also apply to unsuccessful projects. A common theme that I’ve seen from funders, partly due to bandwidth issues though not entirely, is aversion to giving constructive feedback to unsuccessful projects that nonetheless endure within the community. Given my firsthand experience with many clients who are fairly averse to interpersonal conflict, it wouldn’t surprise me if aversion to conflict + public relations considerations + legal issues (and other things) precluded funders from giving constructive feedback to failed applications. Funders would likely need to hold the belief that this feedback would meaningfully improve these projects prospects, and therefore the community overall, in order to put in the requisite effort to get through these blocks to this type of action. They’d also likely need to feel reassured that the feedback wouldn’t be excessively damaging reputationally (for both themselves and others), destabilize the community, or the integrity of community norms.

  ...

  EA leaders are often at least partially in the dark regarding expectations from funders. This could be the case for many reasons, but a common reasons among leaders included the following:

  • Reputational fears – Reticence to reach out due to some (un)justifiable fear of reputational harm

  • Value system clash/​lack of familiarity – not wanting to waste the time of funders, usually due to lack of familiarity and fears of how they would be received, but also sometimes a principled decision about not wanting to bother important decision-makers

  • Not having considered reaching out to funders regarding expectations at a meaningful enough grain of detail

  • (Likely not always misplaced) concerns about arbitrariness of the evaluation process

  • Preparation overhead – not being ‘ready’ in various ways. In some cases, My outside view of the situation led me to believe that quite a bit of preparational overhead and perfunctory correspondence could be avoided if funders made it clearer that they care less about certain aspects of performative presentation ”

  What links here?

  • Tee's comment on EA and the cur­rent fund­ing situation by William_MacAskill (May 11, 2022, 10:20 AM; 12 points)

• TeeApr 11, 2022, 5:10 PM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  Yeah. On the face of it, I could see how this feels like an easy ask, but I intentionally constructed this post in such a way as to have my work stand up and be evaluated on its own, without being associated with (or positioned against) other programs, coaches, or theoretical paradigms for now. I’ll have to spend a bit more time thinking through the differences between displaying in terms of ‘highlighting’, ‘promoting’, ‘recommending’ and ‘publicly outing’. What to look out for in both positive and negative senses sounds like something that actually could be a great post on its own. Maybe we could co-author that.

  With that said, I’m curious to hear what high quality you’d like to promote. I’m guessing Paradigm?

  This answer might make the above make more sense. My understanding is that Paradigm isn’t currently active, but were it still an option, I would restrict the scope of my recommendation to attending their workshops and working closely with specific coaches. For someone looking for a well-structured coaching program and hoping for a widely-recognized credential to earn, it wouldn’t be a very good choice. For me personally, my style of learning is boosted tremendously by fruitful individual relationships (great mentors, coaches, etc.) I like to think it worked out quite well in that sense

• TeeApr 11, 2022, 11:31 AM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Re­place­abil­ity v. ‘Con­tex­tu­al­ized Wor­thi­ness’

  Replaceability v. ‘Contextualized Worthiness’

  I’ll take help recoining the term ‘Contextualized Worthiness’. Curious for thoughts, feelings, criticisms!
  More on my coaching trials with a dozen EA leaders here

  My guess is that 80K is likely unaware of this, but the concept of ‘replaceability’, ^[1] or at least as my clients almost exclusively seem to interpret it,^[2] seems to wreak havoc as a mental model on people’s self-approximations around whether they should be taking on/​staying in a given role. I see lots of evidence that it can even be ongoingly corrosive for those holding a role over a long period of time.

  This feels like a big problem. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I believe it’s a primary culprit for imposter syndrome and decision paralysis in EA.

  Anxieties around replaceability are often delivered to me as a completely decontextualized hypothetical exercise, which is “is it possible that there’s someone in the world who would be better at this role than me? If so, me taking this role could be critically bad for the world.” The weight of this is likely exacerbated in leadership positions.

  Putting high credence into decontextualized replaceability arguments seem obviously flawed to me, but more importantly, seems to me to have the psychological effect of egregiously warping risk calculations around career exploration, patient accumulation and consolidation of career capital, and particularly willingness to assume responsibility and take action.

  You can basically condemn yourself (internally & socially) as a bad person for taking a role.^[3]

  A thing that I believe calibrates people better would be called something like “contextualized worthiness” considerations.

  Here’s a handful:

  • Distinguishing between ‘being quite well-placed contextually’ with ‘being best-placed decontextually’

  • Comparable talent landscape – where do comparable people seem to concentrate? Does it seem like none/​some/​most/​all would be interested in taking on this role?

  • Whether you were selected out of a search process

  • Whether the costs of running an expansive (or infinite) search process are too prohibitive to make a move

  • The importance of in-network trust in having you assume the role (versus a hypothetical ideal stranger), especially if respected individuals in a domain are actively encouraging you

  • Nearly everyone is pretty poor at approximating skill at a distance, or even knowing what it takes to be great at something, unless it can be identified by highly specialized credentials (and _even then_…) Seems even more true with complex leadership & generalist positions.

  • Whether the position/​org would have existed counterfactually

  • Institutional knowledge – being in the role/​org for a reasonable amount of time + rapport and sync with surrounding individuals is not trivial for the ideal stranger to attain

  • Reversibility (sort of) – can you run a set of experiments in a fixed amount of time that will allow you to relinquish the position/​fold the project if in fact you weren’t a good fit

  • Grace – having grace and forgiveness for yourself if you truly thought something through, took action and happened to be wrong

  • [the list can continue]

  The above ‘contextualized worthiness’ considerations often have the effect of getting people to track more inputs from reality, rather relying too heavily upon an abstract thought exercise that yields an absurdly high bar for action, and often bottoms out in a nasty set of implications for any misstep.
  
  If 80K doesn’t already plan to do this, a suggestion for remedial action would be an additional series of posts nuancing this concept for people. Many people I speak to could use this.^[4]

  1. ^

     To their credit, they do seem to have addressed some misconceptions and attempted to nuance it a long time ago: https://​​80000hours.org/​​.../​​replaceability-isnt-as.../​​....

     I’d wager that corrections would probably stick better in the community if misconception examples and even anonymized case studies were included.

     Nonetheless, I still think the point about how trying to correct how things spread mimetically still holds. If we keep seeing evidence that very unhelpful versions of this are still floating around, and that it severely affects (potentially) important people, more should be done to address this

  2. ^

     It could be claimed that this bastardizes the concept, but how concepts are originally designed and how they spread mimetically are very different.

  3. ^

     Worse still, interacting mental models often reinforced by EA can make people feel morally very bad for inaction

  4. ^

     Someone made the point that knowing how messages will spread is quite hard. Were I speaking to someone from 80K, I hope for the tenor of my message to be “hey, I get that mass media is hard, and you’ve largely been doing great, but we’ve potentially (re)discovered something pretty big as a result of your messaging. Would you seriously consider following up here?”

• TeeApr 7, 2022, 6:04 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  I’m struck by the effects reported after just around 4 sessions ~ 7 hours. I can’t help but question whether these effects will last for more than a month after the coaching. When did they fill in the survey relative to the coaching? For how long do you predict that the effects will last?

  
  Good questions – I think the set of claims that I’m more comfortable standing behind are that the coaching seems to be quite valuable and important during the period that the coachee is engaged, rather than trying to predict what the consequent effects will be after a pre-packaged period of time for the trial. A follow-up on the stickiness and potency of consequent effects would be interesting though. I’m taking this suggestion pretty seriously.
  
  The set of claims I’m more comfortable standing behind is particularly true if that pre-packaged period of time for the trial is constructed for reasons that aren’t all aimed at maximizing effects (e.g. if I had unlimited resources to run this trial in order to cause effects, the duration and frequencies might have been different)
  
  Nearly all filled in the survey after the 4th session. The turnaround time on getting a completed survey ranged between 2 days and 2-3 weeks, depending on the person’s responsiveness. A more rigorous trial would probably be more hardcore about when final feedback surveys are issued and completed. I didn’t feel that I was in a position to draw hard lines on when these leaders submitted the surveys.

  What do you think the ideal coaching frequency is for people in this reference class? I.e., every week, every other week, once per month? (Assume that we’ll have unlimited supply of high quality coaches).

  Short answer is that fortnightly (once every two weeks) seems to be the sweet spot for fairly busy leaders undertaking complex roles. But the frequency we end up going with is unique to the individual and varies according to a constellation of things – a non-exhaustive list includes what their goals are/​what the subject matter is, how inclined they are to test out new actions and outlooks and the time horizons on those feedback loops, how inclined they are to take time to pause and reflect (ie have they taken the time to think through what they felt was important to think through), their mental space and general availability, personal financial situation, etc. I’m sure their pre-existing models of what they need to work on and how long it will take to bring those things to a good place also plays an important factor.

  One of the main rooms for improvement (from my perspective) might be if the evaluation had been conducted by a third person and I’ll probably see if I can find someone like this if/​when I do a trial myself. Do you have any thoughts or reactions to that?

  Good point – I flirted with this idea and I’m still quite interested in doing this. My primary hesitation is that I’d be concerned about off the bat about whether there’s enough epistemic alignment on the ‘metrics’ that are chosen, and furthermore what the implications of certain metrics are. (For example, if someone over-engineered the quantitative metrics and anchored too hard in the importance of them, the results could be pretty damaging to how people look at your practice in a way that doesn’t seem justified to me.)
  
  Anticipating epistemic idiosyncrasies in the wide variety of readers out there, I personally chose a variety of metrics that would likely resonate in different ways with different people. I was shooting for producing a collage of valuations that cut across different paradigms.
  
  Following from that, I think it would actually be cool to have sections of a single unified evaluation designed by different people that measure along different paradigms.

• TeeApr 7, 2022, 12:22 PM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  it’s worth high-lighting that there are other promising “audiences” who can benefit massively from coaching even though they’re currently less impactful.

  
  Couldn’t agree more. There were a set of strategic and tactical reasons why I felt it would be more compelling to make the case with leaders first. It seemed to me like a more straightforward way to cleanly demonstrate value in multiple ways. Others might disagree. Curious about your take.
  
  As an example, in the case where a broader community-talent-enrichment-focused project needs to receive funding support, you first need funders to be able to approximate and properly appreciate the value of coaching.
  
  This is quite a bit more difficult if you’re trying to project the value of future talent + (likely) getting lower valuations of the value of the coaching because early-career people have a different relationship to money & growth, not to mention the anecdotal anchoring that often obfuscates these decisions for funders that would likely work against trying to fundraise for a project like this.
  
  You’d basically need tastemakers and purse-holders to have the willingness to evaluate this, ability to evaluate this, come to agree with this reasoning, and/​or have high in-network-derived trust of an individual, in order to have a shot at doing that. Also curious if you have a take on that.
  
  > What do you think about this—in particular the numbers that I brought forth?
  
  It seems flatly clear to me that investing in the development of individuals at earlier inflection points would be extraordinarily valuable. Add-em-up methods of approximating value is not my strong suit unfortunately (nor my preferred method of approximating things in certain contexts), so I probably don’t have much to say on specifics of your BOTEC there
  
  > How much unmet (known as well as unknown) demand do you think there currently are within the community? I.e., given the eagerness of the participants (as well as my personal experience) I’m inclined to think that virtually all EA leaders should have a coach.
  
  I mention here that, strictly speaking, I don’t know for sure. I’d say that certainly there’s far more demand for professionalized support than we’ve clocked, and there’s far more developmental needs that individuals have ‘at the top’ than people realize. Being nitpicky, I’m not so sure that ambient demand or perceived need for coaching is a perfect proxy for whom, how much, and how useful it would be, though it does tend to be that those who recognize that they need help are much more easily helped.

• TeeApr 7, 2022, 11:55 AM

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  Cool to see your path to this Sebastian. Some great tips here. What’s both tricky and exhilarating about navigating this space is how free-form it is. I have lots of respect for people who are this damn resourceful.
  
  I’d call your “alternative strategy” instead a “potential pathway” to gaining skill as a coach. What I outlined was more like a scaffolding set of considerations for thinking about how to gain skill and become a coach, within which innumerable pathways could be pursued. But I did like that you provided a personal example. It’s probably a lot more accessible for others to model off of than the prompts I gave.
  
  Writing out your journey in this way does make me want to write out something of my own that’s similar. Like the Coaching Insights section of this post but for how one could work towards becoming a professional coach. Could be interesting for people whose pathway is currently under consideration (or for those looking to fold in different approaches)

• TeeApr 7, 2022, 9:58 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  In other words, if this is as good as it seems, one should prioritize providing this kind of coaching (or something similarly valuable) to all leaders within EA.

  I wouldn’t disagree with this! Another way to say this, even if it’s half as good as it seems, like if you slashed all of the metrics by which I calculated value here by 50% (e.g. quantitative monetary evaluations, productivity, # of people who had a notably good experience, # and quality of testimonials, # of people who continued on in a paid arrangement after the trial) it’s still worth devoting far more attention and resources to this from within the community.

• TeeApr 7, 2022, 9:51 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  Getting back to this comment might take a bit longer than usual for me to dig up exemplars of each category and even decide whether I think it’s a good idea to promote coaching types of a certain category (i.e. I’d rather be quite selective of what I choose to promote, rather than highlighting less good things in an attempt to be comprehensive.)
  
  Also this from above! “I wouldn’t say I’ve exhaustively canvassed what’s out there, so if anyone reading this has any suggestions for high-quality credentialing programs, particularly ones that encourage the integration of multiple methods and paradigms, I’d be curious to hear about them!”

• TeeApr 5, 2022, 11:33 AM

  10 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Peter Brietbart’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  This was arrestingly sweet of you, Peter. Thank you. It’s one of the best things that’s come out of writing this post. I hope these types of comments get normalized in the community more broadly!
  
  

• TeeApr 2, 2022, 12:59 PM

  10 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joseph’s comment on: Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

  Heartened to see that you enjoyed it! And great prompts/​questions. Lovely to hear that this post could go some way in nudging you toward coaching. I have lots of thoughts on how to find a coach that might turn into another post, but some about getting the vibe right and trialing with more than one coach I mention here in this post. Hope it helps
  
  There’s a lot to say about how coaching can improve the metabolization of stressors. In many cases, I’m pairing remedial efforts (working through emotional fallout and imprints) with methods that often have the effect of building more flexibility into the client’s ways of making sense and interpreting things. We’re also proactively aiming for a more elegant way of being and acting that causes less emotional shear (ie psychological toll) in local contexts. This can be approached and achieved in many ways as you might imagine. IMO it’s always a different set of moves, methods and timing for each person.
  
  On recommending a coaching program – I’d almost never recommend a specific program offhand. My probably unsatisfying (though very on-brand) answer is that the way you pursue coaching skill and credentialing is mediated through what kind of coach you want to be, how you think the world works, and what you believe the path looks like to get there. (e.g. “I want to make a career change. How do I make a career change? Learn a new skill well enough to earn a living. How do I do that? Get a degree in a different field of study. That way, I’ll know what to do and people will take me seriously if I have gone through a course/​get a degree”. This isn’t necessarily incorrect, but it’s a line of reasoning that will result in a particular sequence of specific actions)
  
  The subject of how to develop skill and how to think about credentialing in this ‘industry’ also super interesting to get into. My rough approximation of the credentialing landscape is the following:

  • Some pockets of high-quality programs that are narrowly specialized. These often require considerable time and monetary investment.

  • Lots of low-grade, mass-scale credentialing bodies that basically take aspiring coaches from 0 to 0.1. (Usually the first thing that most people reach for in order to find the permission to make a career change and qualify to get listed on coaching registries. I’m not knocking it because I’m sure some really great coaches got started that way. But the typical use-case is good to know)

  • Many ideologically intense woo-woo or pseudo-scientific-claims-about-maximizing-human-potentiality programs (where some content/​model gems do exist)

  • A subset of (usually individual personality-driven) coaching programs with little substance that try to intensely upsell people. These irritate me to no end and I find many of them pretty predatory or manipulative in gross way.

  I wouldn’t say I’ve exhaustively canvassed what’s out there, so if anyone reading this has any suggestions for high-quality credentialing programs, particularly ones that encourage the integration of multiple methods and paradigms, I’d be curious to hear about them!
  
  I’d characterize my own situation as a sustained (over years) combination of structured coaching training, informal coaching training, being mentored by senior coaches and therapists, and building skill through my own practice. I’ve no credentials issued by an official body. My introduction to coaching was through Paradigm Academy, where I received the more structured coaching training. After that, I preferred to pursue coaches and subject-matter experts that I felt could upgrade my ongoing practice in some way. I’ve done most of that my own dime personally, but also in professional contexts. In my time at Counterfactual Ventures, we designed our founder selection and development program alongside a cognitive developmental theory-oriented consultancy co-founded by Bill Torbort. Developmental paradigms derived from Piaget’s work popularized by Kegan, Kohlberg, Fischer and Torbort etc. have influenced me a lot.
  
  Because of my own models of what coach I want to be, how the world works and how to get there, unless there’s something really amazing that’s not on my radar, I’ll probably opt for undertaking a handful of highly specialized courses/​training (and possibly getting credentialed) that will hopefully result in a varied and potent repertoire of coaching methods.
  
  Apologies if that was a lot to take in! Happy to chat with you about it more if you’d like. Feel free to reach out at tee@teebarnett.com if you’d like to continue the discussion elsewhere.

Un­der­in­vest­ment at the top: what I dis­cov­ered coach­ing a dozen EA leaders

• TeeMar 14, 2022, 11:31 AM

  16 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Co­or­di­na­tion within EA: com­mu­nity & ecosystems

  Very grateful for this post. Personalizing to contextualize, it’s amazing to see Vaidehi, Christina, Jack (and others I apologize for not remembering/​knowing about) for consistently advocating for things that I gave up pursuing after hitting brick walls for years in the community starting in 2015. It takes courage (and almost certainly, tact) that I didn’t have at the time when I was running multiple projects in this space. Maybe someday I’ll say more about that if people would be interested
  
  On the ‘coaching for co-founders of organizations’, Training For Good is exploring this area with their coaching trials (which I’m a part of), and in general this is something I feel well-positioned to tackle and I’m currently looking for support in being able to do so. I’ve recently finished trialing my coaching with more than a dozen EA leaders over the last few months. I feel the results are quite good, but I’m debating whether to post them publicly for privacy reasons. People who may be interested viewing the results can DM me! Keen to chat with anyone who wants to talk about supporting EA leadership

• TeeMar 10, 2022, 10:24 AM

  1 point

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  on: Hello from the new Con­tent Spe­cial­ist at CEA

  Welcome Lizka! Hope the role is enjoyable for you for quite some time

• TeeDec 27, 2021, 3:40 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joe Connolly’s comment on: Coaches for ex­plor­ing ca­reers?

  Thanks Michelle! Hey Alex, happy to chat with you more about how I can help. Much of how I’ve helped others (including EAs) in the past regarding career transitions has revolved around the deliberate discovery, examination, articulation and refinement of your perceptions surrounding the many dimensions of the potential transition. (I say ‘potential’ because changing jobs isn’t always the desired result).
  
  I’d contrast my approach to content– or landscape-specific type of information/​model sharing, in the way that other career coaches might offer. For example, rather than telling you what’s out there, my clients have chosen to create exploratory plans for coming to get information they’d need.
  
  If that’s interesting, you can choose a time to chat with me here! https://​​calendly.com/​​teebarnett/​​chi20 (times for January 2021)
  
  Hope you find a skilled person to help with this in any case ~

• TeeJun 29, 2020, 9:40 AM

  29 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EA could benefit from a gen­eral-pur­pose non­profit en­tity that offers donor-ad­vised funds and fis­cal sponsorship

  Hey Brendon, in 2020 Rethink Charity pivoted to provide fiscal sponsorships to select value-aligned projects in EA and adjacent communities. As many might know, we helped kickstart Rethink Priorities with a more in-house FS arrangement. We’ve just completed our first external FS arrangement with Dao Foods. For you or anyone who has seen this post, please do let me know if you know of any projects who could use this service!