Coach - Progressive Sector

Note: We are not currently actively screening new applicants for this position, but if you’d like to be considered in the event that we re-open a search, please submit your resume, and we’ll let you know when we do.

The Management Center (TMC) is seeking an experienced manager to work with our clients – primarily executive directors and other senior managers of progressive advocacy organizations. You will lead coaching engagements and serve as a teacher / coach / trainer / nudge / confidante / advisor / thought-partner to client executives, with the aim of helping them build their teams into high performing organizations that deliver great results.

Ideal candidates won’t be lifelong consultants or necessarily have any consulting experience at all. Rather, we seek experienced senior managers (have held roles at senior levels of organizations, either as an executive director or second-in-command or as the head of a department) who have produced results and who have a passion for teaching other leaders from diverse backgrounds how to do the same.

Who We Are

Our mission is to help leaders working for social change build and run more equitable, sustainable, and results-driven organizations.  Founded in 2006, we’re now a 50-person, $11.5 million organization (and growing!).  We have helped shape the practices of hundreds of influential organizations and thousands of individual managers, focusing in particular on leading progressive organizations working for social change. Our clients work on issues – like promoting immigration reform, fighting for racial, economic and gender justice, advocating for educational equity, and protecting voting rights – where they face an inherently uphill battle and so must fight more effectively than their opponents if they are going to win. We aim to help them do that by making their organizations as effective as possible.

A great deal of our work involves direct coaching of clients, and we also offer publications and training to the broader field. Along the way, we have built a strong reputation: on our most recent anonymous survey, 95% of clients said they “Strongly Agree” (the top choice on a 7-point scale) that they would recommend TMC to a friend. Such positive word-of-mouth has created fairly explosive demand for our services that the new coach will help us meet.

What You’ll Do

Your job will be to instill the management practices that will help your nonprofit clients become high-performing organizations that deliver great results equitably and sustainably. You will work with CEOs and their senior teams to help them define ambitious goals; manage for execution; implement rigorous “people practices,” including selecting and retaining a diverse team of the best talent and letting go of people who don’t meet expectations; and build cultures that reinforce high performance, constant improvement, and values like equity and transparency.

At any given time, you will lead roughly three to five intensive client engagements and several other less intensive relationships. Your work with clients might include:

• Observing them in action, diagnosing their needs, and designing the scope of our work with them;
• Delivering services to clients, including coaching senior executives one-on-one, designing new organization-wide systems, providing advice on challenges of the day, and conducting trainings for senior teams;
• Serving as the primary point of contact for clients and developing strong working relationships with them;
• In the most encouraging way possible, nudging client leaders to make sure they are following-up on their commitments; and
• Prioritizing across client needs to ensure we spend our energy wisely.

Beyond your work with clients, you will help build and grow TMC by collaborating with peers on team and organizational initiatives.  You might develop new tools for all of our clients to use, identify better approaches for how we engage with clients, or help us come up with more effective ways to assess our progress.  

You will report to one of our senior coaches, who will measure your success primarily by improvement in your clients’ practices, client satisfaction, revenue generated, and contribution to our culture.

Who You Are

To be successful in this job, you will excel in four areas:

1. Management insight:  You will have a demonstrated track record of success in managing a high-performing organization, department, or team, and will therefore bring a deep understanding of what it takes to produce results, instincts for going beyond the “textbook” to get to solutions that will work, and an understanding of the CEO perspective and what it’s like to be in a senior management role.
2. Critical thinking skills: You will need the smarts to quickly become “fluent” in your clients’ contexts, analyze situations to see beyond the surface of challenges, and effectively customize general practices to fit clients’ particular needs.
3. Racial and gender equity commitment and skills: You understand the impact of systemic and implicit biases related to race and gender identity that can play out in management practices, and you're able to surface this with clients in a way that allows them to hear what is being said without compromising the clarity of the message. You can proactively spot issues of equity and inclusion in the work and bring practical solutions.
4. Interpersonal and relational skills: You can win over a wide range of clients by relating to their challenges, building trust, being deeply on their side, and operating in a range of modes depending on the situation (teaching, nudging, problem solving, facilitating). You are attuned to team and interpersonal dynamics and can advise clients how to handle tricky situations in a nuanced way.

We are more interested in these four qualities than in any particular type of experience. However, because you will need to be able to relate as a peer to executive directors and other senior leaders, you will presumably bring experience yourself having operated at senior levels of organizations, either as an executive director or second-in-command or as the head of a department. Prior experience in the nonprofit or progressive political arena is a plus, but not a requirement.  

Finally, you need to contribute to our culture, which we sum up as “excellence with heart”, by living into ourcore values and helping to strengthen our organization.  

What Else You Should Know

We are an equal opportunity employer, are committed to racial and gender equity, and we make a particular effort to recruit candidates who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color, and gender non-binary to apply for open positions. 

We also strive to ensure our hiring process, including the submission of the application, meets your needs. To submit an application to this post, you will need to upload a resume and answer a few questions (using open text and multiple choice answers). If there are accommodations that would help you in submitting the application, please email [email protected]. For accommodations needed during the interview process, we have a section to indicate this in the application (no need to email). 

Our coaching roles come in two varieties – a more junior position (Vice President) and a more senior position (Partner), with the difference between the two being the executive experience you bring and the type of clients with whom you work.

Our most urgent current need, given our current client demand and staff makeup, is for a Partner-level coach based anywhere in the United States.

This position is full-time, can be based anywhere in the U.S., and could involve some travel once TMC transitions back to approving in-person gatherings (typically 1 - 4 days per month).

The full-time salary range for VP roles is between $101,825 to $135,098, and between $132,455 to $177,162 for Partners, with exact salary depending on experience. We aim to offer competitive salaries and benefits and are committed to equity, trust, and transparency in compensation. Basing compensation on someone’s willingness and ability to negotiate or on their prior salary leads to wide inequities and bias in how people are paid, particularly for groups experiencing historical oppression. Therefore, we do not ask for prior pay history from our candidates and our offer-making process is negotiation-free for salaries and benefits.  

We determine the best possible salary offer based on relevant experience and extent to which candidates demonstrate the competencies for the role during the hiring process. TMC uses our annual performance evaluation process at the end of each year to determine raises and promotions.    

We also offer excellent benefits, including (but not limited to):

• 90% of premiums covered by TMC for employees; 80% covered for spouses, domestic partners, and dependents
• Life and long-term disability insurance and an Employee Assistance Program at no cost to employees
• Option to enroll in pre-tax health and dependent care flex spending accounts
• We support staff and loved ones in times of financial hardship through an additional Hardship Fund that staff can access as a wage supplement.
• An additional 5% employer contribution to your retirement fund with no match required
• $100 per month stipend towards cell phone and internet
• Generous time off (including 4 weeks of paid vacation for full-time staff) and we close for 2 weeks at the end of the year.