Frequently Asked Questions

 As a certified executive coach, I predominantly address professional challenges.  I also provide life coaching, especially through major transitions .  Typical issues I might team with clients to address are:  career change, strategic planning, burn out, imposter syndrome, leadership presence, remote and/or change management, performance improvement, communication skills, employee engagement, or transition and succession planning.  Regarding career change, I specialize in facilitating significant changes in work cultures.

 I augment active inquiry, based in positive psychology, and other typical coaching and leadership development techniques with assessments (PXT Select and Genos Emotional Intelligence instruments).  These tools and the resulting debriefings can help clients gain clarity on professional strengths, areas for improvement and blind-spots.  Because these assessments compare clients to the general workforce across extensive traits and behaviors, clients gain an OBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVE about themselves.  The Genos assessment in particular can help clients coming from highly distinct work cultures identify how they will need to adjust their behaviors to fit into new work environments.  ExAgCo assessments can facilitate game-planning for further steps like skills development, role-playing, strategic planning, among others.  In addition to in-session activities, I provide clients resources tailored to their objectives and asynchronous engagement.  Resources might include articles, worksheets, podcasts, discussion groups, metrics and/or networking support.  ExAgCo's platform resources allow clients to get more impact for their dollars and the flexibility of asynchronous engagement, so that coaching can realistically fit into their busy lives.

This is a passion project for me and I tailor my practice to the individual needs of each client.  I bring extensive leadership training and experience, as well as formal education and certifications to our sessions without any agenda, arrogance or sales pitch.  My retirement status gives me the freedom to focus on providing impacts without sweating my bottom line.  l'll do some heavy lifting while you are going about your life so that your coaching experience gives you huge bang for your buck and for your time.  

Group Coaching is also available to promote growth, engagement and community, while holding costs down for clients.  Even within group  coaching, each individual has a tailored engagement.  My personal experience emerging from the highly distinctive work cultures of military intelligence and the FBI have contributed to my specialty in helping clients gain awareness of their own work culture biases before hiring processes and/or beginning new careers.

I chose CoachAccountable (CA).  While this platform costs me more than other options, I sought a system that took security as seriously as I do.  CA is GDPR, but not HIPPA compliant.   In addition, I appreciate that CA has many tools and features (worksheets, actions, metrics, whiteboards,  progress tracking and a seamless phone interface) that keep the coaching process engaging and impactful, even outside of paid coaching hours.  This ensures that the the excitement and intentions from coaching sessions don't fade like January gym memberships.

I'm Colleen, ExAgCo's owner and a service-disabled veteran, retired military intelligence officer and retired FBI program manager.  I have a Masters of Science in Strategic Intelligence, extensive post-graduate counseling and organizational psychology education, and am a certified Executive Coach with over 30 years of leadership and management experience in high-consequence, chronic crisis national security positions. 

Yes!   ExAgCo prioritizes making unsponsored coaching (coaching not paid for by your company or agency) affordable.  Individual Federal employees and disabled veterans are offered reduced pricing structures, on verification of your status.  In addition, when launching new engagements or courses, ExAgCo may offer reduced pricing for pre-launch (Drydock) or initial cohort participants (Plankholders) if clients contract to participate in debriefing sessions and to provide structured feedback about their experiences, so ExAgCo can optimize future client experiences. 

Yes, ExAgCo offers remote coaching via video conferencing, phone, or email.