Recently, an aquataince of mine asked me what I do for work & what exactly is executive coaching.

This person is a professional. Sharp. Successful. & Genuinely curious. & they had absolutely no idea what executive coaching actually is.

That conversation stuck with me, not because they didn't know, but because it confirmed something I see all the time: If smart, accomplished professionals don't understand executive coaching, we have a communication problem. We want everyone that is a growth minded individual to understand what executive coaching is.

& we’re here to close the communication gap.

Executive Coaching, Clearly Defined

Executive coaching is a strategic partnership for growth-minded individuals who want to improve how they think, decide, and lead as responsibility increases.

It sits at the intersection of:

Leadership development
Strategy and systems thinking
Behavior and mindset change

The goal isn't self-awareness for its own sake. The goal is better decisions, stronger leadership behaviors, and results that scale.

As Marshall Goldsmith famously wrote in What Got You Here Won't Get There, "The higher you go, the more your problems are behavioral." Executive coaching addresses exactly that gap, helping leaders evolve their behaviors to match their expanding responsibilities.

This isn't about "fixing" leaders. It's about evolving leadership capacity as the stakes rise.

Why Leadership Breaks at the Next Level

Most leaders don't struggle because they lack talent, intelligence, or work ethic.

They struggle because:

The instincts that got them here no longer scale
Expectations live in their head instead of the organization
Decisions get heavier, faster, and more visible
The cost of misalignment grows quietly until it explodes

What once worked: moving fast, jumping in, relying on personal drive, eventually creates bottlenecks, burnout, and confusion.

According to the International Coaching Federation's 2020 Global Coaching Study, 86% of companies report they recouped their investment in coaching and more. But beyond ROI, 80% of people who receive coaching report increased self-confidence, and over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships, and communication skills.

That's the moment executive coaching becomes valuable.

A Real Example: From Chaos to Clarity

A client of ours, co-founder of two restaurants, came to us at a breaking point.

They told us:

"My Co-founder and I are on completely separate pages in how to run the business. We're so divided I'm not sure we'll get past this."

Her reality looked like this:

Constant conflict between founders
Managers approving unauthorized overtime
Staff lying about schedules
One location sitting at over $80,000 in losses
Emotions running so high that productive conversations felt impossible

She believed she had a people problem.

What she actually had was a systems problem.

What Coaching Actually Changed

We didn't coach people to "care more." We didn't mediate personalities.

We made invisible standards visible.

"Be welcoming" became a 5-second customer acknowledgement
"Be fast" became 10-minute ticket time targets
"Trust but verify" became clear verification checklists
Vague expectations became measurable metrics

Leadership stopped living in emotion and started living in structure.

This aligns with what Dr. Brené Brown identifies in Dare to Lead: "Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind." When leaders fail to be clear about expectations, they create confusion, frustration, and underperformance, not because people don't care, but because they genuinely don't know what success looks like.

Ten months later, our client said:

"Oh my gosh. This is amazing and so organized. We're starting to see how valuable having specific metrics really is."

That's executive coaching.

Not inspiration. Not therapy. Translation. Structure. Execution.

What Executive Coaching Is NOT

Let's clear up some common misconceptions:

It's not therapy. Therapy focuses on healing past wounds and mental health. Coaching focuses on present performance and future goals. As the Harvard Business Review notes, "Coaching is about improving performance and developing skills, not about treating psychological issues."

It's not mentorship. A mentor shares their path. A coach helps you find yours.

It's not magic. It's strategic thinking, behavioral science, accountability, and honest conversations about what's actually happening versus what you think is happening.

The Two Ways We Do This Work at LTO

At LTO Consulting, executive coaching shows up in two distinct lanes, depending on whether the work is individual or organizational.

Individual Lane: For Growth-Minded Individuals

1:1 Executive Coaching For senior leaders and executives who have outgrown their current leadership approach. The focus is clarity, decision-making, and leading at scale without white-knuckling growth.

Format: Retained engagement, $25K minimum
Timeline: 3 months to 1 year+

Stakeholder-Centered Coaching (Marshall Goldsmith Method) Leadership change only matters if others experience it. We incorporate stakeholder feedback and feedforward so behavior change is visible, measurable, and sustained, not theoretical.

Marshall Goldsmith's research shows that leaders who involve stakeholders in their development process are significantly more likely to demonstrate lasting behavioral change. As he writes, "We cannot change what we cannot see."

CPG Coaching for Growth-Minded Professionals Designed for leaders in beverage, CPG, and adjacent industries. Built on the same leadership foundation, applied to real industry challenges: distributor relationships, market shifts, rapid growth, and expanding roles.

235+ combined years of real CPG leadership experience, not generic coaching

Team Lane: For Organizations Ready to Scale Leadership

Team Training & Coaching For teams with talent but misalignment. This work integrates leadership development and sales training so expectations, execution, and accountability actually connect.

Compass School of TX Leadership Training

When this matters:

Talented teams stuck in dysfunction
High performers burning out or working in silos
Leadership transitions that need to stick
Broken trust impacting results

Patrick Lencioni's research in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team shows that absence of trust is the foundation of team failure. Our team coaching directly addresses this by creating clear standards, verification systems, and problem-identification frameworks.

Leadership Table (Launching 2026) An ongoing leadership community offering structure, accountability, and peer learning for leaders committed to continuous development.

$197/month
Monthly sessions, accountability partners, resource library

What All Effective Coaching Has in Common

Regardless of lane, effective executive coaching creates:

Clear standards instead of vague expectations
Systems that replace constant firefighting
Leadership behaviors that others can feel and respond to
Measurable progress, not just insight

If you're leading smart people but the business still feels harder than it should, that's not a motivation issue.

It's a structure issue.

How to Know If You Need Executive Coaching

You might benefit from executive coaching if:

You're great at your current role but struggling with the next level
You keep having the same problems with different people (spoiler: it's probably not them)
You're making decisions in isolation and second-guessing yourself constantly
You're successful on paper but feel like you're just surviving
You know what you should do but can't seem to make yourself do it
You want to grow your business without sacrificing your life to do it

Research from the Center for Creative Leadership shows that 40% of new executives fail within the first 18 months, not due to lack of skill, but due to inability to adapt their leadership style. Executive coaching helps leaders make that transition successfully.

Final Thought

Executive coaching isn't about becoming a different person. It's about becoming a more intentional leader, one whose thinking, behavior, and systems match the level of responsibility they carry.

If you're growth-minded and ready for that level of clarity, this work tends to find you.

Ready to explore which lane fits you?

→ Book a free discovery call to discuss 1:1 executive coaching
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What Executive Coaching Actually Is (And Why Most People Get It Wrong)