Exec Coach: The New Industry Must-Have (and Career Off-Ramp)
With bosses too stressed to mentor, more Hollywood pros are seeking (and giving) leadership advice. You'll just have to pay up
Elaine Low reports on TV from L.A. She recently scooped the first five shows whose writers earned streaming bonuses since the strike and how Gen Z is learning Hollywood swagger.
When you think about your career up until this point, are there key figures who loom large in your memory? Former bosses or well-placed friends who helped you onto that next stepping stone? Mentors you’d thank once you’re on the Emmy podium, holding a statuette?
If you’re like Maria (a pseudonym), a 36-year-old former literary manager and development exec, that answer might be “no.”
She’s been in the industry for 14 years, with a resumé filled with recognizable production companies and studios. But she hasn’t found anyone she considers a mentor along the way, and not for lack of trying. “I feel really, really left behind,” she says, echoing something I hear from other 20- and 30-somethings, particularly Gen Zs who started their careers during the pandemic.
“The way that it had always been explained to me was that entertainment was an apprenticeship business, so your boss would be mentoring you in some capacity,” she tells me. “I’m not going to sit here and say that I didn't learn from my bosses. I completely did. But I think in my 20s, I learned a lot more of what not to do than what to do.”
Maria applied to the Hollywood Radio & Television Society’s mentorship program, but the mentor she was assigned was actually a little younger than her and had a similar level of experience. A few months ago, in between jobs and increasingly frustrated, Maria received a gift from her partner: a $2,000 resumé-building and career guidance package including four hourlong sessions with a leadership coach.
Hollywood has long regarded executive coaching with suspicion. It has a rep as a kind of rehab for toxic executives, a remedial course for bad bosses. But as more senior executives engage coaches and many former studio and agency execs turn to coaching for their next act (I talk to former CAA partner Risa Gertner and HBO’s Karen Jones below, among others, who made the leap), looking outward for guidance is increasingly in vogue.
Maria has had two interviews so far and has two more lined up. Her coach at Hollywood Resumes — a former Apple TV+ executive — helps her determine what kind of executive she wants to be, how to optimize her professional network and even craft emails and Slack messages. “It wasn’t anything that I didn’t quite know before, but it was just synthesized in a way that made sense and had a direction and a purpose,” Maria says.
I talked to strivers yearning for mentors, Hollywood vets-turned-coaches and industry professionals who have sought out coaching to understand the industry’s mentorship gap better and how pro guidance can help.
In this week’s Series Business, I’ll tell you:
The best free advice from these pricey coaches to early career and mid-level staffers
Why the mentorship gap has widened in the streaming era
How the lack of mentoring opportunities frustrates bosses too
Why Hollywood still stigmatizes coaching while Silicon Valley and Wall Street embrace it
The high-level studio, agency and network execs who became leadership coaches from places including UTA, WBD, NBCU and Netflix
How skills from entertainment translate into the coaching world
How coaching can help workers “triage” obstacles even amid a chaotic industry and spells of self-doubt
What coaching costs (a lot) and how to access “peer circles” and other alternatives
Why Coaching Still Comes With a Stigma
