The Marshall Goldsmith Approach: Stakeholder-Centred Coaching and the 7-Step Change Process

On why the world’s most evidence-based coaching methodology works, how it integrates with depth psychology, and what it looks like in the European C-suite.

Marshall Goldsmith is arguably the most influential executive coach alive. His methodology — Stakeholder Centered Coaching — has been used with over 150 Fortune 500 CEOs and is backed by one of the largest datasets in the coaching profession. The core principle is deceptively simple: real change is measured not by the leader’s self-assessment, but by the perception of the people around them.

This idea sounds obvious. It is anything but. Most executive coaching still operates on a model where the coach asks the leader what they want to work on, the leader identifies an area they feel comfortable exploring, and progress is evaluated by the leader’s own sense of growth. The result is coaching that feels good — even deeply meaningful in the moment — but changes nothing observable in the leader’s actual behaviour as experienced by others.

Goldsmith’s approach inverts this entirely. And it is the methodological backbone of my practice at TRUE Leadership — adapted for the European C-suite context, where directness, cultural complexity, and stakeholder dynamics operate very differently than in the American corporate world where the method was born. (For the broader context of executive coaching: The Complete Guide to Executive Coaching.)

Feedforward, Not Feedback

Goldsmith’s most counterintuitive contribution is the concept of feedforward — asking stakeholders not what the leader did wrong in the past, but what the leader could do differently in the future. This is not semantic trickery. It is a fundamental reframe that removes defensiveness from the equation.

Traditional 360-degree feedback processes often fail because they trigger exactly the psychological defences they are designed to bypass. A leader reads that three of their direct reports perceive them as dismissive, and instead of curiosity, the response is justification, minimisation, or — worst case — a quiet investigation into who said what. The brain interprets critical feedback about identity as threat. The amygdala fires the same alarm system as physical danger. The result is a leader who is now more defended than before the feedback was given.

Feedforward sidesteps this. The question becomes: ‘What is one thing I could do to be a better listener in meetings?’ The focus is future behaviour, not past failure. The leader is positioned as someone seeking improvement, not someone being evaluated. The data is specific enough to be actionable. And because the suggestions are forward-looking, the nervous system does not interpret them as attack.

In my own practice, I have seen the difference this reframe makes. I once worked with a Dutch CFO who had gone through three 360-degree processes in five years, each producing increasingly detailed reports about her interpersonal style, and each producing exactly zero behavioural change. When we switched to feedforward — asking her team what she could do more of in meetings — the dynamic shifted within weeks. She did not feel judged. She felt invited. And that distinction made the difference between compliance and genuine engagement with the process.

The 7-Step Change Process

In Let’s Talk Leadership, I present the 7-Step Change Process — my adaptation of Goldsmith’s methodology, integrated with depth psychology and systems thinking. It is designed to move leaders through what psychologists Kelley and Conner identified as the five emotional stages of change: uninformed optimism (‘This will be great’), informed pessimism (‘This is harder than I thought’), the valley of despair (‘This will never work’), informed optimism (‘Maybe I can make this work’), and finally integration (‘This is who I am now’). Most leaders quit in the valley of despair. The 7-step model is designed to carry them through it.

Step 1: Measure Reality. The engagement begins with confidential interviews with eight to fifteen stakeholders — direct reports, peers, board members, and sometimes key external relationships. The goal is not evaluation but perception mapping: how does the world actually experience this leader? Not their intentions. Not their self-image. The behavioural reality that stakeholders observe every day. This step alone is transformative for most leaders, because it is often the first time they have received unfiltered data about how they are perceived.

Step 2: Compare Reality and Perspective. The stakeholder data is placed alongside the leader’s self-assessment. This gap — between how the leader sees themselves and how others experience them — is where the real coaching begins. It is almost always larger than the leader expects, and almost always concentrated in areas the leader has not been looking at. As I write in the book: the company mirrors the leader’s own development stage. Change in the organisation begins with self-awareness.

Step 3: Design Behaviour Using Triggers. Based on the gap analysis, we identify two or three specific behavioural changes tied to situational triggers. Not abstract goals like ‘be more empathetic’ or ‘improve communication.’ Concrete, observable behaviours: ‘When someone disagrees with you in a senior team meeting, ask one clarifying question before responding.’ Or: ‘When reviewing quarterly results, ask each team member for their interpretation before sharing yours.’ This level of specificity is what separates effective coaching from motivational conversation.

Step 4: Design the Communication Programme. The leader publicly shares their development focus with stakeholders. This is deliberately uncomfortable — and that discomfort is the point. Public commitment creates accountability that no amount of private reflection, journaling, or coaching sessions can match. Stakeholders become active participants in the change process. They are watching. And knowing they are watching changes everything.

Step 5: Fuel Discipline. Monthly or bi-weekly check-ins with the coach track behavioural consistency. The leader conducts brief pulse checks with stakeholders: ‘How am I doing on what I said I would work on?’ This ongoing dialogue keeps the change visible and relational. Goldsmith’s data is unambiguous: leaders who conduct regular stakeholder check-ins improve in their stakeholders’ eyes 95% of the time. Leaders who skip the check-ins show improvement only 50% of the time. The mechanism is accountability through relationship.

Step 6: Find Meaning. Sustained behavioural change requires more than discipline — it requires connection to purpose. The leader must understand not just what to change but why it matters to them personally. Without meaning, discipline degrades into compliance. Without a connection to something the leader genuinely cares about — their legacy, their team’s development, the impact they want to have — the new behaviours feel artificial and eventually fall away.

Step 7: Inspire Others. The final stage is modelling. A leader who visibly works on their own development gives implicit permission for others to do the same. Individual coaching becomes cultural change. The leader’s willingness to be publicly imperfect — to say ‘I am working on this, and I need your help’ — transforms the psychological safety of the entire system.

Why Source Work Matters

Goldsmith’s methodology is powerful precisely because it is behavioural — it does not require the leader to understand the psychological origins of their patterns in order to change them. You do not need to resolve your childhood attachment wounds to change how you respond to critical feedback in a board meeting. You need practice, accountability, and a structured process.

But in my practice, I have found that integrating depth psychology makes the changes deeper and more durable. As I write in Let’s Talk Leadership: behaviour change without source work is like painting over rust. It looks clean for a while, and then the corrosion returns. The question is never ‘How do I stop micromanaging?’ but ‘What am I protecting myself from when I micromanage?’

The source of leadership — the deep emotional logic from which a leader operates — is shaped by attachment history, childhood narratives, and the survival strategies that once served the leader as a child but now govern them as an executive. A CEO who cannot delegate is rarely suffering from a lack of skill; it is a lack of trust, born from the belief that safety only exists when they control everything. A leader who avoids confrontation learned to keep the peace between volatile parents. A perfectionist executive is reliving the conditional love of a parent who praised only performance. These patterns are not weaknesses; they are sources. But they must be known, or they will unconsciously drive the system. (This is explored in depth in narcissistic leadership patterns.)

Goldsmith in the European Context

Goldsmith’s methodology was developed in the American corporate context — direct, results-oriented, and comfortable with public self-disclosure. The European C-suite operates differently, and those differences matter for how the coaching is delivered.

Dutch directness creates both advantages and complications. Leaders in the Netherlands are generally more comfortable with direct feedback than their British, French, or Scandinavian counterparts. But they are also more sceptical of structured processes that feel ‘American’ or overly programmatic. The coaching frame matters: this is not a self-help exercise or a corporate training programme. This is a rigorous, evidence-based methodology for behavioural change. (For the Dutch-specific context: CEO Coaching Nederland.)

German business culture brings its own complexity: a deep respect for formal qualifications and structured processes, combined with a leadership culture that sometimes equates strength with invulnerability. The coaching frame must account for these cultural realities while maintaining the methodological rigour that produces results. (For the German perspective: Führungskräfte-Coaching für die C-Suite.)

This is why I use the Critical Friendship approach rather than a traditional coaching frame. It signals intellectual partnership, not therapeutic support. A Critical Friend exists outside the loyalty economy — someone whose job is to tell the truth, not to reassure or validate.

From Methodology to Practice

Goldsmith’s contribution to the coaching profession is foundational. His insistence on measurement, stakeholder involvement, and behavioural specificity has raised the bar for what coaching should deliver and what clients should expect.

At TRUE Leadership, this methodology is not applied as a formula. It is integrated into a broader framework that includes the 5 Perspectives on leadership, the 4 Leadership Scripts from Red de Alfawolf, and the psychological depth that comes from understanding the leader’s source. The result is coaching that is both rigorous and human: evidence-based in its structure, psychologically deep in its execution, and uncompromising in its demand for real, observable change. (For the full framework: Leadership Coaching for Senior Executives. For the ROI evidence: Executive Coaching ROI.)

Arvid Buit is an executive coach and founder of TRUE Leadership. Author of Let’s Talk Leadership and Red de Alfawolf (with Martin Appelo). Certified by ICF, NOBCO, EMCC, and APECS. Marshall Goldsmith trained.