Meet Ellen Lindsey, LCSW
Leadership Consultant & Executive Coach in Austin
Work with a therapist-trained executive coach in Austin — 25 years of counseling clients plus a founder's lived experience scaling a multi-million-dollar agency.
About 360 Coaching
Helping senior leaders, founders, and executives navigate pressure, blind spots, and complex leadership challenges.
Ellen Lindsey provides Austin-based leadership consulting and executive coaching grounded in real experience as both a therapist and a business leader. Her work helps leaders improve communication, decision-making, and overall leadership effectiveness. Her strategic guidance helps organizations assess and update their structures to support their leaders.
Leaders looking for the best executive coach in Austin aren’t looking for generic frameworks. They need honest feedback, a deeper understanding of what’s driving behavior, and the guidance to change how they lead in high-stakes situations.
360 Coaching is for leaders operating at a high level who want to be more effective, more direct, and more aligned in how they lead.
This work focuses on how you think, respond, and operate under pressure, because that’s what ultimately drives performance.
Why Austin and Texas Leaders Trust Ellen Lindsey
360 Coaching Details
-
Ellen Lindsey's 360 Coaching brings together leadership development and human development.
The focus is not just on strategy, skills, or performance. It is on the patterns, assumptions, and behaviors that shape how leaders operate day to day.
Because leadership is not separate from the person leading.
And, the quality of your leadership determines the outcomes of your business.
Using multi-rater assessments, we begin each engagement with a clear view of what is working and what isn’t. Where the blind spots are, where the energy is blocked, what growth edge will bring the most traction.
We don’t operate on assumptions or predetermined frameworks.
Leadership coaching follows a proven process while also uniquely oriented to the personal presentation of the leaders.
-
Expanding self-awareness to meet real-world leadership demands.
This work is a strong fit for leaders who:
hold significant responsibility or influence
are open to feedback, even when it is uncomfortable
aspire to great leadership, not just authority
are ready to examine their part of what’s not working
I focus on how leaders impact others, orient to challenges, handle pressure, and lead through complexity. The growth is both personal and practical.
If you’re looking for quick fixes or surface-level techniques, this won’t be a fit.
If you’re ready for honest reflection and meaningful change, it is.
-
Executive coaching can feel like jumping into the 68° waters of Barton Springs.
You know it’s good for you. You want to do it. But there’s still a moment of hesitation before you take the plunge.
This work requires that same courage.
We look at what’s not working. We examine blind spots. We intentionally update your mindset to achieve better outcomes.
We craft new ways of thinking, responding and relating. Then we test it out and make adjustments.
It can be uncomfortable. It can be daunting. It can also be energizing.
That’s the work we do.
The outcomes are meaningful and visceral.
-
Bringing human development out from the confines of mental health diagnosis and bring it back to our daily lives, where it belongs.
Focusing on personal growth in the professional setting is really what 360 Coaching is all about.
The things that limit most leaders aren't mental health issues. They're developmental issues. I’m talking about basic defensive habits, outdated mindsets, and unexamined behavioral impact.
Most organizations don’t have the infrastructure to address those kinds of growth edges. Rarely is there ongoing, honest constructive feedback or anyone on staff equipped to understand their leaders’ internal wiring, much less skillfully guide them to become more effective leaders.
That's the void 360 Coaching fills. With proven psychological insight and first-hand experience of business leadership, 360 Coaching brings human development (which is the same as leadership development) into the workplace. And, work is where people spend most of their time.
Turn Your Blind Spots
INTO
Superpowers
Meet Ellen •
Meet Ellen •
Meet Ellen • Meet Ellen •
Leadership Consultant Founder
Executive Coach Entrepreneur
Ellen Lindsey, LCSW
I was born and raised in Austin back when Barton Springs felt like a local secret and the skyline wasn’t crowded with cranes.
Being a true native in this iconic city is a big part of my identity, but there is always more to the story.
I began my career as a therapist in 2002, helping people navigate the pain, confusion, and grief that comes with being human. Eventually I became a supervisor and began training the next generation of counselors. That effort grew into a multi-million dollar agency.
Being responsible for 120 staff was weighty. We built infrastructure, designed programs, trained leaders, navigated overnight pivots, struggled with scaling, weathered conflict, and survived an acquisition.
I came out wiser on the other side.
Today, I bring all of that experience into my work as a leadership consultant and executive coach. Supporting leaders facing the same things I have and determined to raise awareness of a core truth.
Human development is critical to business success.
I’ve spent more than 25 years working at the intersections of personal growth, entrepreneurship, and leadership, helping high-performing professionals navigate tension, challenges, and increasing responsibility. I am deeply interested in both business growth and leadership development.
As organizations grow, people must grow with them. Or, the effort fails.
Let me help you grow your people and evolve your organization to support them. I’m passionate about it and I know what I’m doing.
-
I’ve always believed leadership is personal. So here’s a little more about me, beyond the professional bio:
Born and raised in Austin — for real
Graduate of Austin High and the University of Texas
Avid walker, lifelong beach lover
Same residence since 1990
Mom to two amazing humans
Daughter of civic leader Mary Arnold and cable TV pioneer Bill Arnold
-
My background combines licensed clinical training, entrepreneurship, and advanced leadership. In 2012, I co-founded a counseling agency . One built from the ground up, with an ambitious mission. In ten years, we built a team of 120 clinicians, provided ongoing clinical and professional staff training, developed and leveraged a powerful practice management software to maximize the power of metrics, and served more than 1,000 clients a week across five locations. In 2022, we sold the business to a family with a “venture studio”. I learned a lot through that experience. About foundership, partnership, leadership and growth.
If you’re ready to lead with more clarity, this work may be for you.
Why 360 Coaching?
There’s always more to the story. That’s what I love about working closely with people.
I am warm yet challenging, funny yet unwaveringly on task, and I am tuned in to my clients in key ways that increase the effectiveness and impact of the change process. I like to work with clients IRL - in real life. I can Zoom when absolutely necessary, but I prefer just zooming right to the client, wherever they are.
-
I’ve spent a career as a psychotherapist and more than a decade as a C-level founder scaling an agency from nothing to booming. My approach to consulting and coaching is deeply informed by my therapeutic expertise. My leadership development philosophy is driven by my leadership experience.
It matters how we show up. How we think, relate and respond as leaders determines the trajectory of the business and impacts everyone around us. As adults in this culture, we don’t spend a lot of time reflecting on our mindset. We are almost always focused on the doing instead of the way things are getting done.
I like the analogy of the IOS - internal operating system. Our IOS is our mindset that generates our thinking and relating patterns. Like all operating systems, our IOS becomes outdated over time.
That is what my approach to leadership development is all about. Each person’s IOS was once effective. But time moves on, circumstances change, the IOS degrades, and things don’t run smoothly any more. We need to take some time to find the bugs and rework the processes.
Often, the patterns that are causing problems aren’t even in our awareness. They live in our blind spots.
To become more effective, we need a mindset upgrade. I take leaders through a proven change process.
-
This work is for leaders who have already proven themselves and are now operating at a higher level of complexity. They're smart, capable, and genuinely accountable to the people they lead.
But something has shifted. The role has expanded. The pressure has increased. And something is no longer working the way it used to.
There is a gap between how leaders are operating today and how they want to be functioning.
So, they look for some professional help to close that gap. They're not looking for someone who has simply studied leadership or thrown up a coaching shingle.
They're looking for someone who has depth and expertise. Someone who has lived the leadership journey and can bring that into the room with them. That’s why leaders choose 360 Coaching.
-
This work combines the wisdom of human development with real business experience.
It’s not just an intellectual process. Leadership development is relational, behavioral, and often nonverbal. Because of that, I prefer in-person executive coaching whenever possible.
All leadership consultation engagements begin with feedback from the people working closest to the leader. I know the power of this phase. I’ve been through my own 360 assessment.
Many comments felt affirming. “It’s hard to find people in the corporate world who are so intelligent, steadfast and sure, and who come at everything they do with so much heart.”
Nice. It’s great to be seen in a positive light.
But other comments were eye-opening, to say the least. Learning that my high-standards often flipped into impatience was hard to acknowledge. And, understanding that the way I wield my confidence can constrict other people's contributions was honestly disheartening.
But, the truth is it was a gift to take all of that in.
Deep-diving into my shadow sides with a trusted coach took courage but it brought me new options. And having new options gave me a lot more breathing room to grow into my next level of leadership.
Coaching or Counseling?
How do you know which is right?
I’ve been a licensed therapist since 2002. I’ve also completed extensive training and certification in executive coaching and leadership development tools.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that conversations about “coaching vs. therapy” are often oversimplified or outright inaccurate. In some cases, the distinction is blurred in ways that don’t serve clients well.
Here’s how I think about it…
-
Both coaches and counselors support clients in making meaningful changes in their lives through structured conversation, reflection, and professional guidance.
Both may explore patterns, beliefs, emotions, and long-held stories. Both can help clients grow in insight, confidence, and effectiveness
And both may specialize in particular populations or areas of focus.
-
The most important differences come down to training, legal scope, and ethical responsibility.
Counselors are required to complete advanced graduate education, maintain licensure, and adhere to a legally enforced Code of Ethics. They are trained and required to assess, diagnose, and treat mental health conditions when present.
Coaches are not licensed healthcare providers. Coaching certification programs exist, but they are optional and unregulated. Coaches are legally prohibited from diagnosing or treating mental health conditions and must refer out when clinical issues arise.
These distinctions matter not because one approach is “better,” but because clients deserve clarity, safety, and appropriate care.
-
Coaching is often a good fit if you can:
reflect on past behavior, feedback, and patterns
generate insight and consider multiple options
experiment with new ways of thinking or responding
take responsibility for your actions and outcomes
If this sounds like you, coaching can be a powerful catalyst for growth.
-
A responsible coach knows when to pause or end a coaching engagement and recommend counseling. This may be necessary when:
insight does not translate into behavioral change over time
narratives repeat without new perspective or movement
emotional processing increases distress rather than clarity
suicidal ideation, self-harm, or threats of harm are present
substance dependence is impairing functioning
psychotic symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations are present
This is not a failure of coaching—it’s an ethical boundary.
-
As a licensed clinical social worker and certified executive coach, I work in the overlap where personal insight meets leadership responsibility.
I do not provide clinical treatment in my coaching work. I’m not diagnosing, treating, or maintaining medical records. But I do bring more than two decades of experience understanding human behavior, emotional patterns, and change dynamics into every engagement.
For clients, this means:
greater psychological safety
sharper insight into blind spots
fewer missteps when growth gets uncomfortable
support that is both compassionate and appropriately bounded
It’s not therapy and it’s not surface-level coaching.
It’s leadership development with depth, discernment, and integrity.
Choose Your Leadership Consultant Wisely
Experience
& Wisdom
Mental health provider since 2002
Agency owner and operator, 2012-2022
Entrepreneur, since 1990
Founder and CEO, successfully built , directed and sold
a multi-million-dollar companyProduct Owner & Manager, proprietary practice management software, 2015-2023
V.P. of Therapy Austin, 2023
Highly Trusted
& Valued
“She offers a perfect balance of support and challenge, empowering growth personally and professionally.”
★★★★★
“Working with Ellen has been a transformative experience. Her insightful guidance, strategic thinking, and personalized approach helped me elevate my leadership skills to a new level. She offers a perfect balance of support and challenge, empowering growth personally and professionally. I trust her expertise, and I’m grateful for her lasting impact on my career. I can’t recommend her enough!” ~ R.W., Austin, Texas
Licensed
& Certified
Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Texas
Leadership Circle Profile®, Certified
Collective Leadership Assessment®, Certified
Leadership System®, Certified
PULSE™ Survey, Certified
Emotional & Social Competency Inventory (ESCI), Certified
Not Sure 360 Coaching is Right for You?
If you're looking to find an executive coach in Austin, start with a confidential conversation. The right fit matters as much as the credentials.
Consultations are no obligation. If we’re a fit, we'll talk options. If not, you'll still walk away with more clarity about what a better match will be for you.