Executive Coaching in the South Bay

Executive coaching is non-clinical and is not therapy or a licensed mental health service. It does not diagnose or treat conditions, and it does not create a clinical record.

Who you'll work with

Coaching here is led by Kristen Hodge, M.Ed., M.C., PCC, an executive coach, leadership facilitator, and strategic advisor with more than 12,000 coaching hours across more than 1,200 leaders. She works across technology, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, consumer brands, and global organizations, with people ranging from first-time managers to C-suite executives.

Before she became a coach in 2017, she spent a career in Fortune 100 operations, procurement, supply chain, and marketing, and then built and led entrepreneurial ventures of her own. She has managed teams, carried a number, negotiated complex agreements, and lived the competing priorities that come with delivering results through other people. That is the difference between coaching grounded in the realities of leadership and coaching grounded in a framework someone read about. Read more about Kristen and our team.

What executives bring to coaching

• Leadership presence, communication, and executive influence
• Navigating organizational complexity and competing stakeholders
• Delegation, accountability, and building through other people
• High-stakes decisions and strategic clarity
• Significant career transitions and new scopes of responsibility
• Performance and focus under sustained pressure
• Confidence, identity, and what the next chapter should actually be

Diagnostic before directive

Most leaders arrive with a clear description of the problem. The pattern underneath it is often something else. What presents as a confidence concern turns out to be a translation problem, the person knows exactly what they think and has not found a way to land it with the room. What presents as poor delegation turns out to be about trust, or about a leadership identity built on being the one who does the work.

Coaching that only addresses the stated problem tends to produce a temporary fix. The work here starts by finding out what is actually happening, which is why the first sessions ask more than they prescribe.

How the work moves

Kristen's engagements move through four stages: Awareness, seeing the pattern clearly, including the parts that are invisible from the inside. Alignment, getting your intentions, your behavior, and how you actually land into the same place. Action, testing new approaches in real situations rather than in theory. And Integration, making the change durable so it holds after the engagement ends.

The aim is not dependence on a coach. It is a leader who thinks, communicates, decides, and leads better on their own.

Assessments, where they help

When a structured read on how you operate would speed things up, Kristen draws on EQ-i 2.0 and EQ 360, Hogan 360, DISC and Motivational Drivers, and SuccessFinder. Assessments are used as a starting point for a conversation, not as a label. Plenty of engagements never need one.

Coaching and therapy are different things

This distinction matters, and it gets blurred constantly in a market where anyone can call themselves a coach.

Executive coaching	Therapy
Non-clinical, no diagnosis or treatment	Clinical care from a licensed clinician
Leadership, performance, and decisions	Symptoms, functioning, and mental health
Forward-looking and goal-driven	Addresses the present, informed by history
No clinical record is created	A protected clinical record is maintained
Delivered by a certified coach	Delivered by a licensed therapist or psychiatrist

Many senior professionals need both, and the honest version of this work includes knowing when what a leader is carrying is not a leadership problem. Because Bodhi Wellness Collective is one coordinated practice, coaching sits next to therapy for professionals and burnout care, and moving between them means a conversation rather than starting over with a stranger.

As Jack Foley, LMFT, our co-founder, puts it:

Most executives who need support will call a coach long before they will call a therapist. We would rather they land somewhere that knows the difference and has both, than somewhere that will coach a problem coaching cannot solve.

What to expect

We begin with a free, confidential 15-minute consultation to understand what you are working toward and confirm that coaching is the right fit. From there, cadence and scope are built around your goals and your calendar, in person in the South Bay or virtually across California.