Your Partnership Makes Decisions Together.
When Was the Last Time You Examined How?
I work with VC, PE, and hedge fund partnerships to surface the patterns that are costing you, in speed, in conviction, and in the conversations you're not having.
Most firms evaluate outcomes. Almost none examine how those outcomes were reached.
Investment partnerships are small teams managing large amounts of capital under uncertainty. The quality of those decisions depends on how information flows in the room, how disagreement gets handled, and which behaviors the partnership rewards or penalizes over time.
Most firms never look at this. They evaluate deal performance, fund returns, and portfolio outcomes, but never the decision-making process that produced them.
I work with investment teams to surface the patterns that are costing you, in speed, in conviction, and in the conversations you're not having.
Over two decades, I've worked with executive teams across technology, finance, and global organizations, from investment partnerships to leadership teams navigating hypergrowth. The industries differ. The patterns don't.
Investment Team Alignment is the specialization of my Leadership Team Coaching practice, built for the specific dynamics of partnerships that invest together.
VC firms that required unanimity for investment decisions had lower IPO rates than those that tolerated disagreement. The firms that argue well outperform the ones that agree quickly.
Study of 700 VC firms
How It Works
Three phases. Data first, conversation second, and sustained change third.
Hogan 360 Assessment
Every engagement starts with data. Each partner and team member is assessed using the Hogan 360, a validated instrument that captures how the team is perceived by the people around them: LPs, portfolio founders, co-investors, and each other. Individual debriefs happen first, privately. Each person sees their own data before anyone gets in a room together.
Team Alignment Session
A half-day facilitated session built around your team's actual 360 data. Not theory. Not a workshop. A structured conversation about the feedback that isn't happening, the performance that goes unchallenged, and the decisions that nobody quite owns. Writing before speaking. Junior voices first. Every discussion grounded in your data, not my opinions.
The session also incorporates Harrison Paradox Theory, which reframes the tensions inside a partnership: not as problems to eliminate, but as productive paradoxes to navigate. This is particularly useful for investment teams where qualities that are genuine strengths, conviction, decisiveness, and high standards, are simultaneously sources of friction.
Sustained Team Coaching
The alignment session ends with a team development agenda, and the rest of the year works it:
What changes: decisions that used to stall start moving. Positions that used to get softened start getting named. The partnership gets faster and more direct.
What I Typically Find
Most investment partnerships I work with share a common profile: high warmth, high collaboration, and high helpfulness, with underperformance in the areas that require directness, accountability, and conviction.
The team is warm enough. The question is whether it's honest enough.
- Feedback gets softened into reassurance. People feel comfortable but stay uninformed.
- Poor performance goes unchallenged because confrontation feels like it risks the relationship.
- Partners defer when they have a clear read, softening positions to keep the peace.
- Decision ownership is unclear. Consensus becomes a way to avoid accountability rather than build alignment.
Questions Your Partnership Should Be Able to Answer
These are the questions I bring into the room. Most partnerships have never asked them out loud.
Whose read on a deal actually moves the room?
Where do disagreements go: into the room, or around it?
How much conviction does it take to write a check, and whose conviction counts?
Have you ever had conviction you didn't act on, or didn't feel entitled to express?
Are we here to pick winners, or build them?
If reading those made you uncomfortable, that's the point.
Who This Is For
- Investment partnerships of 3 to 10 people who make high-stakes decisions together.
- Firms that have never formally examined their team dynamics.
- Partnerships navigating a partner transition, a fund raise, or LP concerns about team health.
- Teams that recognize their collaborative culture might be limiting their conviction.
- Firms that want a structured, data-driven process, not a workshop, not a retreat.
Michael enabled our executive team to collaborate more openly, communicate more honestly, and make decisions with greater cohesion.
Let's find out if your partnership is ready for this.
A 30-minute conversation. I'll ask a few questions about where your partnership is and what you're navigating. You'll get a clear sense of whether this process fits. No proposal until we've talked.
- Leadership Team Coaching, the twelve-month engagement this specialization is part of
- Executive Coaching, for senior leaders in high-stakes, analytically rigorous environments
- Cross-Cultural Leadership Coaching, for global leaders and multicultural teams