Deep coaching for people who are very good at what they do,
but still aren’t where they want to be.
One-on-one work with individuals, executives, and founders.
Year-long partnerships with senior leadership teams.
Most people arrive here having already tried the obvious strategies to address common challenges:
You’ve had the same conversation with the same person four times. The decision has been clear for months and you still haven’t made it. You’ve built the life you were supposed to want and still find yourself asking, “Is this all there is?”
These get treated as problems of prioritization, or energy, or communication. They’re usually not.
They’re symptoms of how you’re operating underneath — which is harder to see from the inside than anything else you deal with.
That’s the level I work at.
Two ways to work together
Long-term individual coaching for people who want to change something fundamental about how they live and work — not add another technique to the pile.
Some of the people I work with in this way are executives and founders. Others have built a life that looks right from the outside but doesn’t feel right from the inside. What they have in common is that they’re tired of “managing” it. This is the work I care about most.
People tend to come to me to “fix” something about themselves or their life. But it’s rarely just one thing. I look at the whole of the person, because after more than 20 years of coaching, I’ve learned that how you do one thing is typically how you do everything.
This is expensive and I take few clients, so if price is the deciding factor, I’m probably not the right coach for you. But let’s have a conversation and discover together what’s possible.
One person at a time
The same work, at organizational scale. Sometimes a CEO recognizes that the leadership team has become a group of strong individuals rather than an actual team. Decisions slow down, the same issues resurface, and nobody can quite put their finger on why that is.
I partner with four to six senior leaders across a full year. Individually and together.
The individual work is what makes the team work possible; you can’t align a group of people who haven’t each done their own reckoning first.
Then, every quarter, we come together as a group. What’s been surfacing individually gets worked through as a team — not five separate conversations running side by side. That’s usually where the shift becomes visible.
Because the work is deep and highly tailored for each organization, I accept a maximum of two of these partnerships a year.
An entire senior team
Hi, I’m Denise Yamada
Most people who reach out to me are good at what they do. That’s often the source of the problem. They’ve gotten this far on being capable, even extraordinary. But that’s not working anymore. It’s a strange, disorienting place to be.
Before I coached, I spent 23 years in broadcast journalism: as a correspondent and co-host for Good Morning America, and as a primary anchor in markets before and after. Along the way, I earned seven Emmy Awards.
What that career taught me was how to sit across from people who were the best in the world at something, and to hear what they weren’t saying. The version they present for an audience to see and the real person in the chair are rarely the same person. I learned not to be impressed by the first one.
I’m a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation, and I lead Accomplishment Coaching’s ICF-accredited training program in San Diego. That means I’m the coach who trains the coaches.
“…her approach was far more profound.”
“Prior to working with Denise, I was certain that executive coaching programs were merely predictable goal planning exercises wrapped in platitudes about how to succeed in business. By end of my first session, it was clear that her approach was far more profound. Her program was structured but not constrained, our conversations were unscripted and authentic, and the exercises were introspective and purposeful. Denise’s executive coaching helped evolve my perspectives and provided me with a framework to understand who I am and how I am – professionally and personally. My time spent working with Denise was invaluable and I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with her.”
— Jared Mathey, Executive VP, INDUS
Start with a conversation
No preparation required. We’ll talk about what’s actually going on, and by the end you’ll know whether this is worth continuing.