THE PROCESS
How a twelve-month executive coaching engagement actually worksMost coaching websites are deliberately vague about process, because vagueness allows every visitor to imagine whatever they hope to find. I prefer precision. If you are considering working with me, you should know exactly what you are agreeing to, how long it takes, who else becomes involved, and what it demands of you. What follows is the process as it has taken shape over twenty years of working with CEOs, board members and owners. It is not a menu. It is the way the work is done.
Before anything begins
1. A confidential call
We start with a conversation via Zoom. You ask whatever you want to ask; I will do the same. This call is not a sales conversation and not a coaching session. It is two professionals establishing whether there is enough substance, and enough chemistry, to justify the next step. Roughly ten leaders a year decide to work with me, and I decide equally. If either of us concludes this is not a match, the call was still worth having, and it remains confidential either way.
2. The biographical intake
If the first call sparks something, we meet face to face for two and a half to three hours and draw out your entire biographical timeline. Not because your childhood is more interesting than your P&L, but because the way you hold authority today was formed long before you held any. Every pattern that now shapes your leadership, in strength and in constraint, has a history. Executive coaching that skips this step is treating symptoms. We do not skip it.
Designing the work
3. A tailor-made process design
There is no standard programme, because there is no standard leader. Based on the intake, I design a process around your situation, your organization and the specific way your authority is currently being carried. You will see the design before we commit. It is the last generic thing you will read about this work, because from here on everything is built for one person: you.
4. Behavioural interviews around you
Most processes begin with structured interviews of fifteen to twenty people who work with you and around you: board colleagues, direct reports, supervisory board members, sometimes a partner at home. Leaders are usually the last to hear what everyone else already knows, not because people are dishonest, but because power filters what reaches it. These interviews remove the filter.
5. The report, and your choice
The interviews become a report: a precise, unvarnished picture of how your leadership is actually experienced. From it, you choose the two themes that matter most. Not I, not HR, not the board. You. The work only holds when the agenda is authentically yours, and a leader who is handed his development goals by someone else has already learned the wrong lesson.
The twelve months
6. A continuous working relationship
The change process itself runs for twelve months. We meet face to face every month, or via Zoom when you prefer. We speak by phone every week. And you can reach me at any moment in between, because the situations that matter most rarely schedule themselves two weeks in advance. This is not a sequence of sessions; it is a relationship of critical friendship, with loyalty and confrontation in equal measure.
7. Your stakeholders can reach me too
The people around you, board colleagues, direct reports, others involved, can contact me directly throughout the process: to ask questions, or to report signals they believe are relevant. Leadership does not change in a sealed room while the organization watches from behind glass. Involving the system around you is part of what makes the change real, and what makes it hold.
8. We measure the outcome
Toward the end of the twelve months we assess what has actually changed, in your own experience and in the experience of the people interviewed at the start. Where you wish, we involve HR, so the development becomes anchored in the organization rather than remaining a private project of its CEO.
What emerges
9. Change that outgrows the leader
What arises from this process is not a better-managed version of you. It is a durable shift in how authority is held, and because everything in a company flows downstream from how its leader carries power, the change does not stay at the top. Decisions become cleaner. Relationships become less conditional. The organization gets a different company to work for, run by the same person.
10. A trusted advisor, if you wish
After twelve months of successful work, some clients choose to continue the relationship in a different form: not a coaching process, but a standing critical friendship. Someone outside the hierarchy, with full knowledge of your history and your system, who has permission to say what nobody on the payroll can afford to say. That relationship is available to those who have done the work. It is never available instead of it.
Who this process is for
I work with CEOs, board members and owners of companies from one hundred million euros in revenue upward, and I take on around ten clients per year. Those two numbers say more than any brochure could. This is not a programme you purchase; it is a year in which your company invests in the one asset it cannot restructure, replace or automate: the psychology of the person leading it. If your organization is at an earlier stage, start with my book Let’s Talk Leadership. It contains the thinking; the process above is what happens when the thinking is no longer enough.
And a word on what this is not. It is not for leaders seeking motivational reinforcement, a quick intervention, or a coach who will admire them professionally. Twenty years of this work has taught me that the leaders who benefit most are the ones who arrive slightly skeptical, thoroughly successful, and privately aware that something in the way they carry authority has become more expensive than it looks.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the executive coaching process take?
The core process runs twelve months. The patterns that shape authority at board level were formed over decades; addressing them responsibly is not a quarterly project. Some clients continue afterwards in a trusted advisor relationship.
Is the process confidential?
Completely. That includes the first call, whether or not we proceed. The stakeholder interviews are conducted with care: people around you speak candidly to me, and what reaches you is the pattern, not the attribution.
Do you work internationally?
Yes. Clients are based across Europe and beyond. Face-to-face meetings are part of the process; geography is a logistics question, not an obstacle.
What does the process cost?
There is no rate card, because this is not a service purchased by the hour. Engagements are a monthly commitment at a five-figure level per leader, calibrated to the scale of the company you lead; my clients lead companies from one hundred million euros in revenue upward. The precise figure is part of the first confidential conversation, where every serious question belongs.
Contact Us
If your leadership still works, but feels heavier than it should, this conversation may matter. I work with executives who are willing to look beneath performance and explore how authority is carried under pressure. If that resonates, reach out.