Mica Vaipan's Linkedin Analytics

Hi ☺️👋! I’m Mica - the founder RunYouself, a pioneering AI-powered platform that helps managers develop transformational communication skills, which helps their companies develop a high-performance culture (without burnout). Here’s my story and what led to RunYourself: My first experiences of leadership were highly authoritarian and directive. I grew up in an ex-soviet country and my first job was in investment banking. So for a long time, I thought that to lead meant to tell people what to do with a lot of authority. Luckily the following 15 years would teach me differently. In my first role at Graze.com I found myself managing a team of data scientists and engineers (without being one). I quickly realised that telling people what to do wasn’t going to work, but I didn’t quite know how else to lead. Following that, I held various other leadership positions including a COO position. And during these years I kept wondering - how do you lead without telling people what to do? How do you lead in an enabling and empowering way rather than command-and-control … but still get stuff done at the pace that it needs to be done? How do you develop a culture of ownership, responsibility and accountability? Years later, I stumbled upon coaching because I was interested in behaviour change. I was absolutely amazed by this different way of communicating that I had uncovered. It taught me that when someone comes to me with a challenge, I don’t need to fix it for them - I can help them solve their own challenge. I call it a super-power - the ability to catalyse critical thinking, creativity and self-awareness in someone else without telling them what to do. Over the past 5 years, I’ve spent thousands of hours coaching over 100 founders and leaders in tech companies. Developing the skill of coaching has absolutely transformed my personal and professional interactions. I have whole-heartedly come to believe that it is an essential skill for every leader and manager. And guess what? The research backs that up - employees who have a coach-like manager are eight times more likely to be highly engaged (source: Forrester). The good news is that coaching isn’t rocket science. The bad news is that it requires behaviour change, which is easier said than done. And hence our mission at RunYourself is to make it easy for leaders and managers to have effective coaching conversations - both between peers, as well as managers and their team members.