What we talk about when we talk about work
I've coached and advised people for years now, but I started seriously ramping my leadership coaching practice last year when I stepped down from being Textio's CEO. In that time, nearly all my clients have fallen into two categories: they are either 1) CEOs, or 2) other senior executives who want to work more effectively with their CEOs.
I have coached clients through all kinds of situations, but the vast majority of them have one thing in common: They are trying to manage conflict, and they are afraid.
Two kinds of coaching
People hire coaches for many reasons, but broadly speaking, they fall into two groups. Either people are trying to develop their career and their professional skills, or they're trying to develop their business. Many of my clients, especially CEOs and Founders, fall into both categories.
The line between the two kinds of coaching can be blurry. For instance, I commonly work with CEOs who are struggling with executive hiring. In these cases, we spend some of our time together working to get to the right job spec and interview process for the role; this is what I'd call business coaching. But in order for the CEO to implement their hiring plan successfully, we also need to spend time building the skills to interview effectively and manage the exec to the job description after the hire is made.
I keep detailed notes on my client sessions so that I can support them effectively from one meeting to the next, so I have a good record of the kinds of things people talk about in our coaching sessions. The data shows that over the last 12 months, my CEO clients have been 6x more likely to ask for business coaching than all my other clients.
By contrast, my clients who are not CEOs, even those who are very senior leaders with ostensibly similar titles and roles (such as COOs), are far more likely to focus their coaching sessions purely on their own professional skill development.
People's biggest problem is other people
CEOs ask for business coaching much more often than other leaders. So it's interesting that when I dive into the specific topics where my clients have asked for support over the last 12 months, CEOs and non-CEOs look much more similar than different. For both groups, the top thing on their minds is interpersonal conflict.
Across my CEO clients, their most common coaching topic is managing conflict with an executive or an investor; by comparison, the next most common topics come up far less often.
The pattern among my non-CEO clients is the same. By far the most common coaching topic for this group is managing conflict with their CEO, boss, or someone else they work with.
This data reminds me of a conversation I had last year with Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor, when I was first building my viral data storytelling course. I mentioned to Kim that it was pretty clear why Radical Candor had gone viral when it was released. It cut through to the mainstream in a way that few business books manage to do. She asked me why I thought that had happened.
In my view, Radical Candor went viral (and continues to sell) because it promises to help with a deep, visceral anxiety that literally everyone has had. Few of us have spent the night in a cold sweat panicked over our product design or our pricing structure. These are intellectual problems, and while they may keep us awake from time to time, it is rarely with fear. By contrast, every single one of us has lost entire nights stressing about a hard conversation we are dreading but know that we need to have.
Even in so-called business coaching, even for CEOs, the biggest problem is almost always people.
Kieran
I'm building my leadership coaching wait list for 2025! If you want an easy way to get started, I wrote down three of my tried-and-true prompts for team meetings that drive team connection and performance. No big budget required!
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