80% of Executives Cannot Answer This Simple Question

David Buirs - Leadership & Executive Coach

80 Percent of Executives Cannot Answer This Simple Question

David Buirs is a Leadership & Executive Coach in Amsterdam, working with CEOs, directors and senior leaders. This post covers business coaching for executives and three strategic themes: what a strategy really is, authentic executive presence, and influencing without authority. You also read why the question of who you want to be as a leader weighs more than your job title.

Ask an executive about the company strategy and you almost always get a list of goals. More revenue. Higher margins. A new market. Those are ambitions. None of them tell you how you get there.

Business coaching for executives often starts right here. With the question of what a strategy really is. With how you come across to your people. And with the question underneath it all: who do you want to be as a leader.

What Is a Strategy, Really?

Richard Rumelt wrote a whole book on this, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. His observation: most strategies are not strategies at all. They are wish lists dressed up nicely.

A real strategy has three parts.

First, a clear diagnosis. What is the biggest obstacle to growth. Most strategies never even get to this. They only say what they want to achieve. And there is nothing wrong with that, a list of goals is fine. It just has little to do with strategy.

Second, a guiding policy that sets direction. That means choosing. And choosing means deliberately ruling things out. A strategy that wants everything at once falls apart.

Third, a set of coherent actions that reinforce each other. Loose initiatives pull in every direction. Steps that push the same way add up.

As an executive coach in Amsterdam, I see how much this clears up. The moment someone puts their finger on the real obstacle, the right choices tend to fall into place. And it becomes painfully clear where the calendar is full of things that do not matter.

Executive Presence: Coming Across as Who You Are

The classic picture of executive presence is projecting confidence, assertiveness and having all the answers. That picture drains you, and people see right through it.

The authentic version works better. And it starts with something simple. Whether you are a team lead or a CEO, we are all human.

We often think a senior role means hiding our human side. As if vulnerability belongs to the lower ranks. The opposite is closer to reality. The CEO who readily admits a mistake, asks for help or apologizes, while clearly being competent, is someone you trust.

That combination is the core. Competence without vulnerability feels like armor. Vulnerability without competence feels shaky. Together they build trust, because people sense that nothing is being performed. And it saves you enormous energy, because you no longer have to play a part.

Influencing Without Authority

Formal authority works like an emergency brake. Pull it too often and you lose the very trust you need. Effective executives get things done through connection. They ask the right questions, listen for real and make sure people feel ownership of the result.

In coaching we make this concrete. Which conversations do you keep postponing. Where do you push, when inviting would work better. Small adjustments, big effect.

The Question Beneath All the Others: Who Do You Want to Be as a Leader

Strategy, presence and influence are skills. Beneath them sits a bigger question. Who do you want to be as a leader. What effect do you want to have on the people around you. What do you stand for when things get tense.

Nietzsche saw character as a work of art you build across your whole life. I find that a beautiful idea. Who you are, your character, your personality, weighs far more than your title. And still we pour far more energy into strengthening our job title than our character. In coaching, that turns around.

At director level it counts double. Your behavior sets the tone for the whole organization. People copy what you do, not what you say.

What Coaching at This Level Delivers

Research from the International Coaching Federation shows that 86 percent of organizations at least recoup their investment in coaching. And over 70 percent of coached professionals report improved work performance.

Numbers are a start. What executives tell me afterward weighs more: more calm, sharper choices, and conversations they had postponed for years.

Recognize these questions and want to talk them through? I work from Amsterdam and online with directors and senior leaders. Read more about my approach through executive coaching amsterdam. If you would rather train specific skills, a 1-on-1 leadership training is a good route. Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Business Coaching for Leaders: Which Form Fits You?

David Buirs - Executive Coach

Business coaching for leaders: what it is and which form fits you

David Buirs is a Leadership & Executive Coach based in Amsterdam. This article covers business coaching for leaders, an umbrella term for leadership coaching and executive coaching. The reader learns what separates the two forms, which themes appear in both, when a coaching track makes sense, and how to choose a certified coach.

You type "business coaching for leaders" into Google. And you get a wall of pages that all seem to promise something slightly different.

That's because it's an umbrella term. Business coaching means coaching aimed at a professional context, at your work and your role in it. Leaders who search for it almost always mean one of two things: leadership coaching or executive coaching. This article explains what separates the two, which themes show up in both, and how to know which form fits your situation.

What Is Business Coaching for Leaders?

Business coaching for leaders is a one-on-one track where you work on how you lead. On your behaviour, your communication, your decisions, and the beliefs underneath them.

You sit with someone who has no stake in the politics of your organization. Someone who asks about what you say, and about what you avoid. Who sometimes offers a model, sometimes asks a question, and sometimes stays quiet while you reach the conclusion yourself.

A session usually lasts an hour. You bring a real situation. That conversation you keep postponing. The reorganization you dread. The team member who drains your energy.

The Difference Between Leadership Coaching and Executive Coaching

Business coaching for leaders, leadership coaching, and executive coaching are fundamentally the same service. The distinction sits in the level of the leader, and therefore in the themes that come to the table.

Leadership coaching focuses more on junior and mid-level leaders. Team leads, managers, people who recently stepped into a bigger role. The themes tend to be operational. Delegating without taking everything back. Performance management. Building ownership in a team that keeps looking to you for every answer.

Executive coaching focuses on senior leaders, directors, and C-level. Different questions play out there. Executive presence. Communicating in the boardroom. Translating strategy and vision into something people will stand behind. Making big decisions while everyone watches.

The Themes That Show Up in Both

The overlap is larger than people expect.

Harsh self-criticism comes up in both programs. A team lead who lies awake after a difficult meeting, replaying it for hours. And a director who, after thirty years, still hears a voice saying it should have been better. That voice sounds the same regardless of your pay grade.

Wanting to communicate better. Too blunt, too careful, too little empathy, too little assertiveness. Nearly every leader recognizes themselves in at least one of those four.

Finding more balance. The calendar that fills up with other people's priorities.

And confidence. In both forms, that's often where it ends up. Confidence to make the call. To set the boundary. To be yourself in a role that sometimes seems to demand you become someone else.

When Do You Need a Coach as a Leader?

Many leaders see a coach as a corrective measure. Something offered to you when things go wrong.

Look at sport. The best athletes in the world all have a coach. They perform at the top and want to stay there. Leadership works the same way.

A few moments where a track delivers real value:

You just got promoted and the role feels bigger than you. The skills that got you here won't take you further.

There's a conversation in your head you've been postponing for weeks.

Your team looks to you for every problem. You spend your days putting out fires.

You perform well, and you sense there's more in you and in your team.

You're the only person at your level in the organization. There's nobody to think out loud with. That last one I hear most often from senior leaders. The higher you climb, the fewer people dare to ask you the question you need.

Does Business Coaching for Leaders Actually Work?

Research on coaching consistently shows effects on confidence, communication, and goal achievement. The honest answer is more nuanced than a percentage.

Coaching works when three things line up.

You want it yourself. A track imposed on you while you consider it nonsense delivers very little.

There's a click with the coach. This is the strongest predictor of results. Which is why nearly every serious coach offers a free introduction.

You do something between the sessions. The session is where you understand. The week after is where you practice.

What you notice after a good track: you make decisions faster. You postpone fewer conversations. Your team brings solutions instead of problems.

How to Choose a Good Coach

Certification. The coaching market is unregulated. Anyone can call themselves a coach. Look for ICF accreditation and serious training such as Co-Active. That guarantees a structured methodology and an ethical code.

Real leadership experience. There's a difference between someone who has mastered coaching techniques and someone who has run a department. The second one knows how it feels to announce a reorganization, or to let go of someone you like.

The click. Book an introduction and pay attention to what happens. Do you feel free to say what you actually think? Are you challenged, or only confirmed? Do you leave with more clarity than you arrived with?

What It Costs and Which Form Fits You

A serious track consists of multiple sessions across several months. Behavioural change takes time. One session gives insight. A track gives new behaviour that sticks. The investment usually runs to a few thousand euros. Many employers cover this from the training budget, even when you're the one who asks.

For the form, look at the themes you recognize. Delegating, giving feedback, performance management, ownership in your team, finding your footing in a new role. Then leadership coaching is your fit.

Executive presence, boardroom dynamics, strategy, vision, isolation at director level. Then executive coaching is the logical form.

Still unsure? Ask in an introduction call. Within twenty minutes it's usually clear where you belong.

In my coaching for managers, we work on exactly these themes, shaped around your situation and your team. For leaders at director level, executive coaching amsterdam is the logical next step, since the decisions carry more weight and the context grows more complex.

For organizations that want to develop the entire management team at once, an in-company training program is a logical step.

Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

You can read more about the ethical code and accreditation standards for coaches at the International Coaching Federation.

Development of Senior Leaders Rests on One Thing

Leadership & Executive Coach | David Buirs

Development of Senior Leaders Rests on One Thing

David Buirs is an executive coach in Amsterdam. This post is about the development of senior leaders and why an open, curious attitude is the opening to growth. You will read how the ego treats constructive feedback as a threat, and how to break that pattern.

The higher you climb, the fewer people around you say what they really think. That makes the development of senior leaders harder than it looks. There is plenty of room to grow, but the signals that show you where become rare. Anyone who wants to keep developing at director level needs one thing first, before any specific skill comes into play. An open, curious attitude toward your own blind spots.

The power that dulls your edge

The psychologist Dacher Keltner studied power for years. He called his finding the power paradox. The very qualities you need to reach the top, empathy, attention, careful listening, get weaker once you hold that power.

Keltner compares the effect of power to a mild brain injury. You become more impulsive. You read other people less well. And you judge your own impact worse than you think.

For senior leaders this is daily reality. Your environment adapts to you. People weigh their words. The feedback you get becomes more polite, vaguer, safer. At the exact moment you hold the most influence, you receive the least honest information about yourself.

Why almost no one knows themselves well

Research by organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich shows a striking gap. Around 95 percent of people consider themselves self-aware. In reality only 10 to 15 percent meet the criteria. Nearly everyone believes they know themselves well, while most people are wrong about it.

That gap grows with experience and seniority. You have a track record. You have been right, often. So why doubt yourself anymore? This is how you get a leader who is technically strong, and who slowly loses sight of who they are.

The ego that protects itself

To understand why this is so stubborn, it helps to look at the ego. We all build an identity. A story about who we are. The sharp strategist, the connecting leader, the one who always solves it. We defend that story with everything we have.

When feedback comes in that clashes with that image, it feels like an attack. Your body reacts as if there is danger. The defenses go up and the curiosity disappears. This is how constructive criticism, really a gift, gets treated as a threat.

The painful part is that this very reflex holds your development back. The leader who pushes criticism away to keep their self-image intact pays for it over time. They stay at the level where they once became successful, while the world around them moves on.

Development of senior leaders is personal

Many senior leaders look for that one point. That single skill gap that, once closed, solves everything. In practice it rarely works that way.

Leadership development at this level is deeply personal. There are shared themes. The move from operational toward more strategic leadership. The realization that clear communication and giving context matter more as you climb the corporate ladder. But which theme comes first for you differs a lot from person to person.

For one leader the growth is in communicating with more empathy. For another it is in being more concise and direct. For one it is thinking more strategically or commercially. For another it is about more confidence and leadership presence. And someone else grows mostly by daring to let go and delegate better.

What all these leaders share is the entry point. Anyone who dares to look at themselves with an open, curious attitude finds where the growth is on their own. That attitude is the opening to everything that comes after.

Good as you are, and still developing

There is a tension here that many people find hard. Two things are true at the same time.

You are good as you are, as a person. You do not need to be repaired. And at the same time, every one of us has parts of our personality and skills that can grow further. Those two go together fine.

Anyone who keeps both in mind stops hearing feedback as a verdict on their worth. It becomes plain information. Useful information about where the next step is. In that attitude, development gets moving again, even at the highest level.

Hiring a coach is a sign of strength

Some leaders think that bringing in a coach means something is wrong. As if it exposes a weakness. The opposite is the case. It is a sign of strength.

Look at elite sport. The better the athlete, the more likely they have a coach. The best in the world work with several coaches at once. They know a sharp outsider sees what they can no longer see themselves. In leadership it works the same way.

With executive coaching I work with senior leaders on exactly this point. We look at how your ego operates, where you protect yourself, and how you find that open attitude again. If you want to train specific skills in a focused way rather than a broader track, a 1-on-1 leadership program is a logical next step. Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation. We look together at where your development is right now.

Communicating With Executives Without the Nerves

David Buirs | Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Communicating With Executives Without the Nerves

Leadership and executive coach David Buirs, based in Amsterdam, explores why so many professionals feel anxious when communicating with executives and senior leaders. Drawing on psychology and coaching practice, this article explains how the stories we build about ourselves and others drive that anxiety, and what a more grounded starting point looks like.

You notice your hands are clammy. Your stomach feels tight and your breath goes shallow. Tonight will be another night with little sleep. You never sleep well the night before presenting to your department's Vice President.

It's actually strange, when you think about it. One person can have this effect on our body, while others don't. You might have never questioned why, and assumed that's just how things work.

Let's question it.

The Story You've Been Telling Yourself

Without realizing it, we spend our whole lives building and living a story about ourselves. And it starts young.

As a child, you made a beautiful drawing and saw how happy and proud it made your parents. That felt good. In that moment, a story began forming. "I'm good at making drawings." Months later, the same thing happens after you painted something in class. The story develops: "I'm good at making things. I'm creative."

For someone else, they might have come home with a low mark on a math exam, and their parents were visibly upset. There, a different mental story begins: "I'm bad at math." Which later expands into: "I'm probably less sharp than most people."

In our adult lives, these stories have become very elaborate. Some boost our confidence. "I'm a successful CEO and visionary. My time is precious and every second I spend on trivial things is a waste."

Or: "Most people don't like me. I can't do things well. My opinion doesn't matter much, because other people probably know more than me anyway."

We often forget one important detail. These are just stories. Stories that feel completely real.

Why Communicating With Executives Feels So Different

Picture that CEO. If people started telling her she's a failure, day after day, her inner story would change, even though nothing about her actual ability did. And the insecure man, if he kept hearing how sharp he is, would slowly start to believe a different story about himself. The person stays the same. The inner narrative changes.

So how can this insight help you?

In corporate life, many of us get nervous around senior people at work. This comes up in coaching for executives time and time again. Part of it is real. This person has some influence over our career and our job security. But part of it comes from the inner story we build about ourselves and about them.

Often, without realizing it, we treat certain people as more important. In our internal story, they are up "there," and we are down "here." That creates tension and anxiety.

Yes, in a corporate hierarchy, some people have more responsibilities, experience, and knowledge. But on a fundamental level, we're all the same.

The Story Works Both Ways

The same dynamic works in the other direction. The intern who just started, the person at reception, the new hire who seems unsure of themselves. We can subconsciously place them "below" us, just as we placed the VP "above." The intern is probably nervous around us, telling themselves the same kind of story we tell ourselves about the VP.

Same story, same mistake.

So here is the thing to try. Imagine walking into that meeting with your VP, and you see them as another human being. Someone with more experience, yes. But a fellow human, the same as the person driving your bus this morning, or the one who made your coffee. You have some information you believe is useful, and you want to share it. That's the whole interaction.

Communicating from that calmer place changes how you come across. People read it as confidence, and they listen more openly.

Change Begins With Insight

None of this happens overnight. We all walk around with conditioning and assumptions that have been with us for decades. Reading one article won't make you free from nerves before your next big meeting. But change begins with insight. And the insight is that the senior person across the table has the same fears and doubts you do.

That can be the start of a new story about yourself. One where you are confident, valuable, and worth listening to.

Start believing that, and others will too. And the next time you have a meeting with your VP on the calendar, you might notice you sleep a little better the night before.

If this is something you're working through, coaching for executives can be a practical place to do that work. For organizations that want to develop this capacity across their leadership teams, leadership training offers a structured path. And if you want to talk through where you are right now, plan a free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Coaching for CEOs | The Leadership Team Sets the Tone

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

The Leadership Team Sets the Tone. Whether You Like It or Not.

David Buirs is an executive coach based in Amsterdam who works with senior leaders and executives. This article explores why more organisations are investing in coaching at the executive level, which themes come up most frequently, and how friction within the leadership team affects the entire organisation.

When an executive team isn't functioning well together, the rest of the organisation feels it faster than you'd expect. Decisions become unclear. Priorities keep changing. Team leads receive conflicting signals. And slowly, an undercurrent of uncertainty builds that nobody names out loud, but everybody senses.

The reverse is equally true. An executive team that collaborates well, communicates clearly, and moves in the same direction creates a stability that ripples through the entire organisation. People know where they stand. There's direction. And that alone makes teams more effective.

It's no surprise, then, that more organisations are investing in coaching at the executive level. 39% of CEOs currently work with a coach. And 87% of organisations that invest in coaching report a positive ROI. The complexity at that level calls for a confidential space to think freely. A sounding board that sits outside the internal dynamics and politics.

Three Themes I Keep Seeing as Executive Coach

Communication

It sounds basic. But at executive level, how you communicate has an outsized impact on how well your organisation performs.

I see two patterns. The first: executives who think faster and see more than the people around them. They communicate too briefly. Too concisely. In their mind, everything is crystal clear. But for the organisation, it feels like jumping from one thing to the next. The result: teams disengage or start charting their own course.

The second pattern: vague, woolly communication. No clear direction. No concrete expectations. After a meeting, people walk away with different interpretations of the same conversation.

Both patterns are recognisable. And both can be resolved with deliberate effort.

Strategy and Vision

Having a vision is one thing. Translating it into something people understand and can execute is another. Many executives think in broad strokes but struggle to make it concrete. How do you translate a strategic ambition into quarterly goals for your teams? How do you prevent your strategy from becoming a nice document that sits in a drawer?

This is where it helps to think alongside someone who stands outside your system. Someone who doesn't go along with the assumptions that have become normal inside your organisation.

Delegation

Recent research confirms what I see in practice: delegation is the most common theme in executive coaching. Not because executives don't understand the concept. But because letting go runs counter to everything that made them successful in the first place.

You reached this position because you're good at what you do. Stepping in feels productive. Doing it yourself feels safe. But at executive level, that approach stops working. Your impact is determined by how well the people around you perform. And that requires something different from you than operational excellence.

A Logical Step for Executives Who Are Growing

Most of the executives I work with are performing well. They're being coached because more is being asked of them. Because their role is expanding. Because they want to actively steer their own development rather than leaving it to chance and experience alone.

Do you have an executive on your team who is ready for that step? Or do you sense that something at executive level isn't quite working, but you can't put your finger on it? I'd be happy to schedule a no-obligation conversation to explore whether executive coaching fits the situation. No pressure. Just an open conversation. Plan your free introduction here.

From manager to director: the transition nobody explains

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

From manager to director: why the step up is bigger than you expected

David Buirs is an executive coach based in Amsterdam. This article describes the six biggest challenges in the transition from manager to director: letting go, strategic thinking, operating through others, navigating uncertainty, and the gradual disappearance of honest feedback. It explains how executive coaching helps make this transition effective.

You had been thinking about this moment for years. You knew what would be expected of you. You had watched it up close.

And yet. The first months as a director felt different from what you had imagined.

Not worse, necessarily. But unfamiliar. As if the rules of the game had changed and nobody had told you.

They had.

Research by IMD, based on interviews with 1,350 HR professionals, shows that leadership transitions are the most difficult moments in a leader's professional life. Not the hardest projects. Not the most complex reorganisations. The transition itself.

These are the six things new directors most commonly run into.

1. What got you here will not get you there

As a manager, you won by knowing. By doing. By solving problems before they escalated.

That behaviour made you successful. At director level, it becomes your biggest liability.

A director who keeps operating like a manager stays too close to the content. Makes decisions their managers should have made themselves. Without meaning to, builds a team that looks to them for answers instead of thinking independently.

The transition demands something that feels almost unnatural: letting go. Precisely when everything is new and uncertain.

2. You are now paid to think, not to do

As a manager, your day was full. Meetings, decisions, fires, people. At the end of the day, you had done something.

As a director, your calendar might look similar. But the real value you deliver lives somewhere else. In the quality of your thinking. In the questions you ask your managers. In the direction you set.

That takes adjusting to. Productivity feels less tangible. It becomes harder to point to what you actually accomplished.

And so many new directors drift back into operations. Not out of stubbornness. Out of habit. Because it feels familiar.

3. Most strategies are not a strategy

At director level, strategy suddenly becomes your responsibility. And that is precisely where many leaders struggle.

Because what most organisations call a strategy is actually a list of goals. Higher revenue. Better retention. More market share. Worthy ambitions. But not a strategy.

A real strategy is something different. It is a creative and smart choice about how to deploy people and resources to bridge the biggest obstacles standing between you and those goals. It defines what you will not do. It makes choices that hurt.

That requires a way of thinking most managers have never had to develop. Not because they are incapable of it, but because it was never asked of them.

4. Your influence now works through others

As a manager, you had a team. You knew who was good at what. You could course-correct, coach, step in.

As a director, you work largely through your managers. Your impact has become indirect. Your weekly one-on-ones with your managers are now where most of the real work actually happens.

That is a fundamentally different way of creating impact. And outside your own department it becomes more complex still. You need results through people who do not report to you. That requires alliances, trust, political awareness. Skills you were barely assessed on in your previous role.

5. There is no handbook anymore

As a manager, there was always a framework. A strategy from above. Goals that had been set. A leader you could consult.

As a director, you are that framework for others. You help set the direction. You answer questions that you do not always know the answer to yourself.

That requires something few people have explicitly learned: being comfortable with uncertainty. Making decisions on incomplete information. Holding course while the situation keeps changing.

And doing all of that while appearing calm and clear to your team. Because your uncertainty is felt by others. They look to you for direction. Even when you are still figuring it out yourself.

6. Honest feedback dries up

As a manager, you still received reasonably honest feedback. From your own leader, from colleagues, sometimes from your team.

At director level, that largely stops. People filter. They say what they think you want to hear. Or they stay silent. You hear less and less about what is actually happening.

You gradually build a distorted picture of how you are functioning, how you come across, where your blind spots are. Without realising it.

Why this is the moment to find a thinking partner

These are not personal failings. This is the transition. Anyone who is honest about their first years as a director will recognise something in this list.

But recognition alone does not solve it.

Because all of these challenges have something in common: they are difficult to resolve from the inside. You are too close. You have too little honest feedback. You are missing someone who asks the questions you are not asking yourself, because you are in the middle of it.

That is exactly where executive coaching makes the difference.

Not as therapy. Not as a course in strategic thinking. But as a fixed, confidential space with someone who understands the territory. Someone who helps you let go of the right things. Who keeps you honest about your blind spots. Who thinks alongside you on the questions you cannot raise inside the organisation.

Whether it is learning to step back from operations, building a real strategy, navigating complex stakeholder dynamics, or simply finding steadiness in a role that demands a great deal from you. In a coaching engagement, you work on the concrete situations that are live right now. Not abstract leadership theory.

The difference between who gets stuck in this transition and who grows through it rarely comes down to talent. It comes down to whether you have someone helping you ask the right questions at the moment it matters most.

For organisations looking to develop leaders across multiple levels, an in-company leadership program is a logical next step.

Have you recently stepped into a director role, or are you about to? Plan a free introductory conversation. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about where you are now and what you need.

Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Loneliness at the top: why executives carry it alone

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Loneliness at the top: why so many executives carry it alone

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach based in Amsterdam. This article describes the loneliness many executives and senior leaders experience at the top of an organisation. It explains how executive coaching offers a professional sounding board so leaders no longer have to carry that weight alone.

You have what you worked for. The title, the responsibility, the influence.

And yet there is something you rarely say out loud.

That it is actually quite lonely.

Everyone wants something from you. Nobody sees the full picture.

Your team wants higher salaries. You understand. But the budget is limited and the trade-offs are more complex than they appear from the outside.

Three people deserve that promotion. You can only choose one. The other two will be disappointed, maybe frustrated. You already know that. And you carry it for weeks before the decision is made.

Your CEO expects growth. The board wants margins. Clients want attention. Shareholders want returns. And you stand in the middle of all of it, every single day, trying to hold course without losing anyone.

On top of that: the dynamics within your own management team. Clashing egos. Communication problems you have seen coming for months but have not been able to resolve yet. Someone overplaying their role. Someone playing it too small.

You want to set a clear strategy. A vision people genuinely get behind. But first there is another fire to put out. And then another one after that.

You cannot fully share it.

The difficult thing about your position is this: you cannot discuss everything with the people around you.

Not with your team. They do not know all the interests at play. Some information is confidential. And you are their leader. They look to you for direction, not to absorb your doubts.

Not always with peers at the same level. Sometimes they are involved parties too.

Not always with friends or a partner. They do not have the context, or they worry in ways that do not help.

So you carry it. Largely alone.

That is not weakness. That is the reality of leadership at this level.

You are not the only one who feels this way.

Research from Stanford Graduate School of Business confirms it. Nearly two-thirds of CEOs do not receive any coaching or leadership advice from outside their organisation. At the same time, almost 100% of them said they are open to it and willing to make changes based on feedback.

The willingness is there. The support is not.

And according to the Corporate Executive Board, 70% of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaching as part of their leadership development strategy. At the highest levels of business, having a coach is no longer a luxury. It is standard practice.

Not because those executives cannot handle it. But because they understand that you cannot fully see yourself from the inside. That blind spots are not a sign of incompetence. They are a sign of being human.

What a good sounding board actually does.

An executive coach is not an advisor who tells you what to do. And not a therapist who puts your feelings at the centre.

It is a professional thinking partner who keeps you sharp. Someone who asks the questions you are not asking yourself, because you are too close to it. Someone who holds up a mirror without having an agenda.

You can say what you cannot say inside the organisation. Think out loud about a decision you have been carrying for weeks. Notice patterns in how you respond to pressure, conflict, or uncertainty.

Sometimes you need someone who asks: "What makes this so heavy for you?" Sometimes you need someone who says: "Here is how you can approach that conversation." Sometimes you just need someone who gets it.

That is what executive coaching offers. No fixed formula. A fixed space.

On the value of an outside perspective.

One of the hardest things about a senior position is this: you receive less and less honest feedback over time.

People around you filter. They say what they think you want to hear. Or they stay silent, because it feels too risky to criticise someone who has influence over their position.

As a result, you build a distorted picture of how you come across. Of how your decisions land. Of where your blind spots actually are.

That is not a personal failing. That is the structure of most organisations.

A coach has no stake in your good mood. They say what is there. That is exactly why it works.

For organisations that want to address this structurally and develop leaders across multiple levels, an in-company leadership program is a logical next step.

The loneliness does not disappear. But you do not have to carry it alone.

Leadership at your level comes with a weight that others do not see. That is part of it. That does not go away.

But there is a difference between carrying that weight alone, and carrying it with someone next to you who understands.

If you are curious whether executive coaching is right for you, plan a free introductory conversation. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about where you are now and what you need.

Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.