A newly appointed Managing Director of the largest business unit of a listed company came to us with a clear request. He had a strategy, yet he could not create buy-in with the Board. He framed it as “I have a stakeholder management problem.”
During the intake, something else became visible. His framing of the strategy created confusion. Each explanation added noise. The more he tried to convince, the less traction he got.
The issue was not buy-in. It was a loss of certainty in an extremely volatile chemical sector. The pressure to decide without solid ground. The gap between what the organization expected and what the environment allowed.
In such contexts, fixed strategies collapse fast. Leadership becomes exposed. Through our coaching, he shifted from defending a plan to holding that exposure and working with it. The path forward became an agile strategy. A clear long-term intent. Explicit choices and trade-offs. Short decision cycles. Real feedback from the system. Adaptive use of resources. Leadership behavior that consistently links today’s decisions to tomorrow’s direction.
Once the framing was settled, half of the work was done. Coaching then focused on turning orientation into decisions others could stand behind.
This was another reminder that leadership work starts by identifying the problem behind the problem behind the problem.
That’s what we do.
Dit bericht hoort bij een serie coachingvignetten waarin de ‘Ruthless Compassion’ van NGL verschillende facetten van leiderschap belicht.
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