Leadership Perspective
“Tutti’s dual superpowers are her empathy and honesty. So few people understand what it feels like to be a founder and what you go through on a daily basis. She has the operational experience of working for a huge tech company and also knows what it’s like to start a company on her own. Being a founder is a unique position with everyone telling you that you’re great, while also getting so many ‘no’s and rejections. Tutti was remarkably honest and able to reflect back my strengths, the areas where I was killing it, while helping me improve by accurately processing feedback from clients and investors. Any founder, especially a first-time CEO, needs guidance to become an incredible leader. It’s something you want to do before it’s too late. Coaching showed me how crucial mental preparation is to building leadership habits and foundational blocks for a healthy company.”
“Tutti provided the perspective of a personal board, an outside source of truth, that’s not your actual board. I needed a coach who had been an operator, and who could see what was happening with other organizations and teams. The 360 assessment was the most valuable thing. Rather than other feedback processes I’ve experienced, Tutti can dig for the most valuable patterns and frame them with analogies and metaphors that make the lessons stick. We set performance and self-improvement objectives and had the closed-loop opportunity to address them in each session. ”
“Coaching with Tutti has helped me to gain perspective on my objectives and plans from someone who understands how to look at things holistically. Tutti raises interesting possibilities and asks direct and challenging questions, encouraging me to consider how my assumptions and sometimes unexamined beliefs affect my perspective. Her gentle but persistent accountability process extended the coaching beyond our conversations, ensuring that I remained focused on what’s important.
As a result, I think more creatively about how to approach interacting and working with my peers. I’ve taken a less serious and more playful approach, which has yielded meaningful dividends. On the executive team, I still say the same truthful things, but with less of a charge, enabling others to hear and accept them more easily. This shift in leadership style has resulted in a collaboration with product and sales that has gotten our executive team much more focused on the strategic core of the company and able to effectively prioritize our 2023 goals and road map.”
“Every head of design should have someone like Tutti. Leadership coaching accelerates growth and smooths wrinkles in the journey. People can generally figure things out on their own but it’s even more beneficial to have an external perspective and fresh eyes on something you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis.
In our sessions, there were times when I brought in specific questions/challenges/problems and Tutti was able to coach me to pull the answers from within. At other times, Tutti gave me more guided direction. That combination of coaching and prescriptive direction was a beneficial mix and she knew exactly which one I needed at any given time.
I’ve gained a lot more clarity in how to navigate change and make sure that my team is well positioned and well leveraged in the company. I’ve grown a lot as a leader as a result of my sessions with Tutti.”
“The original pull of working with Tutti was her experience with “difficult people” because I had a temper. I came from a place where I was told “You don’t want to be the problematic person.” Part of the cool thing with coaching is that my leadership style fundamentally did not change, but I managed to confront some things that I originally thought were wrong with my style. If you try to write with your left hand all the time, that’s not powerful. I felt like I was turning into a fake leftie. Tutti caught that. Now I know that it’s okay, sometimes you need to have friction and work through the things you care about. As long as you understand other people. It balances out. I managed to polish the rough edges, and realize that my style wasn’t bad, I simply needed to change my mindset to acceptance. It was an incredibly powerful experience.”
Confident Leadership
“Tutti doesn’t have a cookie cutter coaching template but helps her clients lean into their natural and authentic self — learning into who you are and owning it. She customizes her coaching to bring that out in ways to improve transparency and cohesion with your team”
“I was feeling uncertain as to what defines a true leader before Tutti and I met. Together over time, we rebuilt my definition of strong leadership and helped me build conviction in my values as a manager and reframe my expectations as an employee. As my confidence grew, I became more steadfast in my decisions as a leader, helping me to make very challenging decisions in business critical situations and drive hard negotiations.
Tutti provided honest feedback, which was a must for me. She’s not just there to listen and repeat back my own thoughts. She will push you and call you on the real questions, so that you learn to always ask yourself, “Can I do something better or different?”. Not everyone loves constructive feedback, but I believe there’s no such thing as progress without that kind of pushback. That has been the key driver for me.”
“I’ve become a lot more mindful and purposeful working with Tutti. I now recognize the difference between being self-aware and self-critical, including seeing how I show up and how I’m being received. In the past, I may have tended towards more pessimistic attitudes, whether it was towards myself or others. After coaching, my leadership style is more intentional, and it now consistently brings a positive impact to the teams I work with.”
“I was feeling stuck about how I operated as a professional. I wasn’t working on my strengths and had a lot of self-doubts. Even though I possessed the skills, training, and experience needed to excel, I didn’t believe that I was doing the right thing. I was trying to bring in durable change with online academies, articles, self-paced learning, but it was difficult to sustain.
I thought that I was missing out on some magic or secret sauce that all leaders know. Tutti helped me see that there is no magic - the secret sauce is myself and my leadership. Now I have clear vision of the things in my control and I want to improve. Tutti’s checkins and her leadership model have helped me to be accountable to myself. I have the confidence to succeed and now celebrate my strengths. I’ve learned that investing in oneself both from a time and resource perspective is a lifelong process not a a one-off learning.”
“Before working with Tutti, I used to chase external achievements and exist in a state of overwhelm where every week felt like the perfect storm. This is the first time in years that I’ve no longer needed to chase a title. External achievements have become less important. My leadership comes from connecting and continuing to learn from the people around me. I’m much more aware of my own negative emotions and how they limit me.
Tutti is the rare coach who will tell me the truth and call me out when I’m playing small. This is unbelievably useful to help me learn and grow, and I don’t get that from anyone else. ”
“My leadership has changed. I am able to more clearly balance how I communicate & learn with making space for others, and showing up authentically. Particularly being in a new leadership role, it’s been transformative to notice and shift this push/pull of showing up and making an impact while not overwhelming others. Tutti helped me find myself in how I lead.”
Growing Startups and Scaling Teams
“I needed a coach who had been an operator, and who could see what was happening with other organizations and teams. Her empathy for women in leadership helped me embrace that perspective as we hired and grew the team. ”
“My leadership is calmer. Before working with her, I was overwhelmed by the number of responsibilities that needed my time and attention. Our conversations allowed me to prioritize what matters setting a clear vision, action steps and a plan for the team. While truly understanding what someone else is saying. I’ve learned & practised those skills with Tutti. She provides a mirror to my thoughts and helps me to gain clarity. In the fundraising process, she helped me better tell our story and how to sequence the conversations, prioritize investors and their feedback. She was on my side to turn the feedback on its head to combat the reality that we’re an early stage startup with a lean team. Honesty is so hard to find these days. ”
“Start-ups are normally so focused and then suddenly boom, you have to scale up. Working with Tutti has deeply impacted the business, leading to higher quality work, and a bigger feeling of empowerment on the team, that they are trusted. The principles from coaching are passed along to the team and we learn together. It’s a crazy exponential effect on scaling. People like to take responsibility and be trusted.
I feel more confident. The application of my leadership is different. I’m not as reactive as I was before. My style has become more open as a leader, more proactive and more creative. I’m not behind the curveball and instead I’m ahead of it. It creates a feeling that things are more under control now, which has ironically happened through giving up control.”
“The company was in the midst of rapid scaling. We had just grown the team and it started feeling very different than even six months before. You could tell the company was entering a new state in its life with explicit and non-explicit change, and challenges in navigating that change.
Tutti helped me become more confident in myself and what I’m capable of doing. With a renewed sense of confidence in myself, I was able to instill more confidence in my team as well and help them navigate growth pains and other challenges. We were able to move from Design being the bottleneck to Design taking the lead and developing a strong voice within the company, and this shift led to a huge positive impact for the team and for the design practice at MainStreet.”
“One impact of coaching is that I feel quite confident in my role as Head of Product and am comfortable with the changing nature of our team as we grow. I trust my co-founders more and I feel that they trust me more. Collaboration is smoother and communication is more effective across all facets of the company.”
“At first, I was eager to find a step-by-step guide for how to build great teams, but working with Tutti helped me learn to trust my gut and natural style when hiring and managing a team. I learned how to switch up my operating style with different people, and to push myself to tackle harder feedback conversations. The shift in my perspective on leadership has changed the way I approach my career.”
Storytelling & Communication
“Before working with Tutti, I wasn’t telling my story well because I didn’t understand it myself. Tutti gave me structure and a sounding board. She helped me reflect on my successes and failures to find clarity in what I’ve accomplished and where I want to go next.
Coaching is an investment. I’m conservative in spending but believe it’s the cost of leveling up to be prepared for the roles I want. With Tutti, I was able to envision the future I wanted. It was transformative. I went from feeling stalled in my career to recognizing that my unconventional skills & work experience are my strengths.”
“In my leadership, Tutti taught me to embrace who I am. I always thought I had to be this strong voice and have power in the room, but working with Tutti has taught me that I don’t have to show up like that. What I thought were weaknesses are actually big strengths—being empathetic and a quiet leader.
Tutti is easy to talk to and so vulnerable herself. She is present and can read how I’m feeling. She teases out the underlying unsaid emotions and can share her opinion without being judgemental. She creates a safe space for me to grow. ”
“Practicing vulnerability and self-compassion has been really powerful. At work, I’ve experimented my way into believing that I can ask for help. Expressing when I’m struggling and asking for support has opened up new opportunities for me to grow as a leader. I can model it for my team and my peers. It’s opened up conversations & opportunities for us to improve our team and org as a whole. ”
Finding Creativity and Space
“Before working with Tutti, life was compressed without space to think or navigate. I felt stressed out and overwhelmed by the projects on my plate and dynamics on my team. This has felt like business as usual for a long time.
After working together for six months, I’ve found the space for my own creative needs and projects. I’ve learned to take the space for myself and be that person who looks out for me. I’ve gained perspective around letting certain things go, that this is only one moment in time. I’ve also come into my leadership with greater openness and knowing when to listen and take things in. I now lead projects and teams in a way where I let people drive their own contributions, recognizing the strengths of the different players on the team. I’ve done all the things we’ve set out to do while working with Tutti. ”
“Someday, when I’m finally famous, I will have Tutti Taygerly to thank. Her coaching has been capital “p” PIVOTAL in launching a long-delayed writing project. With insightful questions and ear for psychic themes, Tutti was there as we busted through workaholism, toxic tales from the past, and the heartbreak of perfectionism. Together we coaxed my saboteurs to pasture, where we gleefully shot these zombies one more time. Her support has been a building block in a career renaissance. Whether you’re ready for change or just willing to be willing, talk to Tutti!”
“Before working with Tutti, life was one big whirl. I knew something was wrong, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. I thought it was something exogenous in my environment and was unsure of my role or responsibility. I felt overwhelmed. Tutti helped me to put up the stop sign and hold up a mirror to help me re-think what was in my control. She helped me recognize that I needed to create space for myself.
I have clarity on the different ways I get in my own way. I can be a perfectionist and avoid working on things if I can’t get them done perfectly. I’m now able to catch myself faster and meet the shame with self-compassion. My recovery from difficult moments is much faster than in the past.
The insight I keep coming back to is that I can change my mind over time. Once I commit to something, I’m giving myself permission to change. This has been powerful as I think about my business ideas. It makes it far less intimidating to get started with my own business. Another insight is the slowing down piece. I’ve understood it in theory for a long time, and now I can put it into practice with small meaningful experiments. ”
“Tutti has helped provide valuable perspective about the ways I behave, the things I do, and what I really want for my business.
She’s helped push my leadership by encouraging me to teach courses. For the last seven years, I’d been putting up blog posts and tutorials and getting little reward from it. Diving in to teaching was the first and best thing I could do. Getting real-time, external feedback from students has clarified that this is an aspect I’ve been missing in my solo business.
Tutti also helped me with the day-to-day of writing my books - I better understand the ways I procrastinate, distract myself and unconsciously slow myself down. The biggest insight she’s given me is a clearer perspective of where I want to be in the future by finding the right balance between a thriving business, yet not overly consuming at this point in my life.”
“Tutti deeply impacted my life and leadership. We started working together when I was in the midst of a storm— everything was out of order, and I could glimpse bits and pieces of opportunity within the chaos. Tutti’s external perspective gave me the momentum I needed to internalize and act on the thinking, reading, and self-learning I had been doing.
She helped me find a bigger picture that’s outside of the limiting room I’d created. I was able to let go of a lot of things, and know that the past is just a story that I tell myself. Now the storm clouds are moving away, and I see the sunrise on the horizon. With that freedom, my leadership went from “I have no idea what I’m doing” to successfully creating all the aspects of my own business while continuing to work in a corporate job. ”
Career Transitions & Change
“I worked with Tutti when I started a new job that was a big step up in my career. I had the opportunity to make changes to the company culture of research and was coming into an existing team rather than building my own. I needed to be purposeful and intentional with this job, to both figure out what it meant for me as well as what I was giving to the company. We spent time defining my personal goals around learning and career growth. Having those helped me stay the course through the first three months of chaos, reminding me that I’m learning and growing as a researcher and a leader. I’ve learned that it takes time to change the way a company does research and the way that people participate and engage with this topic. I’m more honed in to my resilience and desire to stay the course and figure things out because positive cultural change takes time.
To manage the challenges, I now have tools and strategies that I picked up during our time together. Being coached on specific people and meeting instances helped me focus on the 2-3 things I could control. I better understood how to communicate with people using their language and owned these different strategies.”
“This was my first experience with a coach and I didn’t know what to expect or how effective it would be. However, Tutti has been a very good sounding board, especially through 2020 with so many things happening all the time. Coaching brought balance, and a way of processing work & life. One challenge I had was moving from focusing on the product and realizing that a high quality product wasn’t enough. I needed to approach the company in different ways and develop other aspects of the company, mainly promotion. It’s hard to put yourself out there because how your work is looked at as an extension of how others will look at you. Tutti and I worked on this reach-out strategy together, and I now care less about how others will react and focus more on the learning.
I gained insights around the balance of work and personal life; also in prioritization of goals around what really matters. As a leader, I do introspection more often and am more open to the idea of delegating work to others. ”
“I had a massively successful career transition from my last startup. Tutti helped me come to the hard self-realization that I had outgrown my role, and that it was time to move on in pursuit of my dream job. It was a tough period and she helped me maintain focus as I sorted through the challenges of leaving. Working together helped me better understand myself and what I needed to be successful and fulfilled at work. If you are feeling like it is time for a career change, Tutti will help you think through what you want, where you want to go and support you through the process of getting there.”
“I’d always been an individual contributor. In the 6 months since Tutti and I have worked together, I no longer do IC work and now focus on organization and PM duties leveraging communication skills, relaying requirements, and managing the Jira ticket process.
Before we started working together I had issues with communication and confidence. I’m a quiet person and don’t like conflict. It was hard for me to relay my ideas out there. Now, I’m never afraid to ask questions and speak my mind. I put my ideas out there and treat it like a brainstorming session rather than worrying if I’ll be respected when I say certain things. Another big insight, even from our first session - Tutti called me out on making assumptions about my coworkers. Now I don’t do that. I’m very open and honest, and simply ask them what they mean.
The biggest impact has been the mental fitness training. This has completely changed my mindset and the way I view life itself. Before the program, I had a really hard time with my emotions because I was always hard on myself. Now, I’ll say I did the best that I could, and easily move forward to focus on what’s next.”
“When I first reached out to Tutti, I felt stuck and unable to leave my current company. I was exhausted, overwhelmed and didn’t believe I was qualified for other opportunities. I worried my passion and inquisitiveness made me difficult, and felt I’d been boxed into a position that just didn’t seem to fit. I couldn’t see any way to use my strengths. Day after day, I found myself deeply frustrated.
Now, I feel like I can breathe again. I’m in a new company working with people who are genuinely brilliant, where curiosity and initiative thrive. Here, my strengths are not only accepted, they are straight up embraced and mirrored.”
“Before working with Tutti there were a lot of changes in my life. I had just started a new job, had returned from maternity leave, and it was the start of the pandemic. I was facing uncertainty, feeling that I had a lot to prove and that I was failing both personally and professionally. I would spiral into self doubt and had trouble getting out of it. I needed someone to guide me through this.
The biggest difference was consistency, knowing that Tutti was there regularly in my life and also that I was committed to making this change for myself. Her background in design and tech increased the relevancy. She understood the larger context of my goals, and could dive deep into the specific issues & ongoing themes in each session. I feel a lot more confidence in myself. I have the framework to deal with things that come up that used to make me question myself. Tutti has supported me with tools on how to navigate difficult conversations. She helps re-frame problems and keeps me aware of both tone and content while building relationships.”
“I started working with Tutti when entering a period of uncertainty with fears and anxiety about how to approach big changes. Just relying on my existing intuition and sticking to status quo was not working. Now, I’m in a great place. Tutti helped me get through all the muddiness of entering a new chapter. She kept me accountable to my values. As a leader, my value of lightness keeps me centered and helps me navigate both times of uncertainty as well as interact with different types of personalities. Knowing what matters to me keeps me sane and lets me lead from my strengths -it’s infectious to the people around me & draws everyone together. ”
“At the beginning of our time together, Tutti helped me identify my core values. It helped me identify what was important to me, what I was proud of, and I was able to pinpoint exactly why I felt my former company no longer fit, which meant that I could translate those values into measurable things to look for. As I interviewed, these values helped me identify what companies resonated with me and why, and now in my new job they show up daily - in the way I describe our processes to candidates, the way company strategies are built, and our product principles. ”
“I’d been hesitant to start coaching as I had a whole laundry list of things to do and worried that I was taking too much on. I learned that coaching with Tutti helps with focus. She guides me through the process and helps push me to getting it all done.
Tutti provided a different perspective and helped me see the rebel in me. I’d been focused on running away and now am focused on the good challenge. We had a good vibe together. I am more attuned to what matters, and am able to experience and experiment more.”
“Tutti’s leadership coaching helped me to clarify my next career choices. I was anxious and stressed about future next steps and she guided me through what I really wanted. Her bold challenges brought out my creativity and helped me recognize what I wanted to do next. Tutti created the space to let me get in touch with my own vulnerability. I was able to see vulnerability as a beautiful state rather than something to hide. I’m excited about my opportunities, and I’m embracing new challenges. ”
Visioning and Goal Setting
“I had encountered a number of difficult situations last year. That caused me to doubt my own capabilities and struggle with uncertainty about the future. After working with Tutti for 6 months, I’m more accepting and confident about my capabilities, even within the external forces of the pandemic. I’m more comfortable with not being on a totally traditional path. I know that no matter what the future brings, I can weather it.
Tutti started our relationship with visioning and goal setting. She continued to hold and weave these themes throughout our session, holding me accountable to what I wanted. When we had some sessions that didn’t quite feel connected, she didn’t hesitate to open up the discussion and was fantastic at course correction. ”
“Tutti helped me become internally confident and clear about my leadership strengths. She helped me to envision the future. This vision combined the impact that I want to have at Google and the type of leader I want to be. She helped me realize that I wanted to do bigger things, that I wanted to change the world. With this vision in place, it was easy to set goals for how to get there. When I can see where I want to go, then I can clearly make it there. If I don’t have a plan, then no-one else can have a plan. Working with Tutti gave me a model for how to coach my team to grow and excel. ”
“I’ve become more self-aware of my skills. Tutti really brought out that confidence and confirmed my strengths in different ways. As I shared stories and situations, she highlighted different things that I hadn’t been conscious of, for example, how I used storytelling in a workshop. Tutti helped reframe and recontextualize that there truly was purpose and intention behind our work. She connected the dots of these stories and instances back to my goals.”
“Tutti helped me to see my career goals and dreams more clearly. It’s like a small dam that I didn’t even know was there was removed letting the stream of ideas run more freely.”
“When I first started working with Tutti, I wanted guidance on how to progress my career. I had a lot of big companies that I wanted to work for, companies that are responsible for taking human kind fo the next level, and I wasn’t clear how to get there. I never had help to actively discuss some of these questions.
Now after working with Tutti for 6 months, I know more about my own values and what drives me. I have ease in approaching my professional goals. I know that I will be able to achieve them, with some work required. Personal goals have taken precedence over the professional ones. One of the biggest insights is to prioritize my personal life equally to my professional life.
My leadership has grown. I view myself and others in different contexts. I’ve learned to take a step back and more actively listen to others. I’m more flexible to other people’s style of working. I’m able to lead more comfortably, for the first time now expanding my role to lead a multi-national, multi-cultural team. ”
Negotiation
“Working with Tutti for salary negotiation helped me secure a 30% total comp increase for my new Google job. She helped me understand the process BEFORE I started negotiating, how total compensation works and the different negotiation stages post initial-offer. She helped me understand what was in my recruiter’s power to negotiate, what would have to be approved by a compensation committee, and coached me on how to negotiate higher TC based on offers from other companies. Thank you Tutti!”
“Tutti gave me negotiation advice which proved crucial in landing the best offer I could. Unless you’re a recruiter or manager who routinely hires 100s of people, you are outmatched when negotiating with employers. There is absolutely no reason NOT to hire a seasoned pro like Tutti. Do it now!”