Leadership Coaching vs. Executive Coaching for Organizations | CAS
Leadership coaching vs executive coaching through one leader's story
The leadership coaching vs executive coaching question often starts with a title: is this person senior enough for executive coaching? I would start with the people affected by their leadership. What are they experiencing that the leader does not see?
Marcus was an operations director responsible for a team that had begun missing deadlines and pulling away. He knew the business, set goals, explained the work, and followed up. He couldn't figure out why they weren't responding to instructions he thought were clear.
When he and I looked at what was happening in meetings, the issue wasn't only the words. Marcus arrived with urgency in his voice and tension in his body. People could feel the pressure before he got through the agenda. He was trying to drive performance. The room was getting quieter.
The part the org chart missed
If you had approached this as leadership coaching vs executive coaching based only on Marcus's title, you would have missed the actual work. He needed to notice how he entered a room and whether his team could bring him problems before they became emergencies. A frontline manager could have the same need. A CEO could too.
I asked Marcus to take a few minutes before meetings to pause and decide how he wanted to show up. He didn't love the idea. At first he tried it to prove it would do nothing. Then he noticed how often he had been arriving already wound tight. He kept practicing. According to the account in my book, a team member eventually told him they felt more seen. The goals and the agenda hadn't changed. The experience of working with him had.
Where coaching needs to reach
Marcus could practice his own behavior. Imagine, though, that his senior colleagues had reversed his decisions every week or punished him whenever he gave the team room to think. One person's coaching would still matter, but the wider leadership system would need attention too.
That is how I would make the choice. Name the behavior and trace where its impact travels. A manager may need repeated practice with their team. A senior leader's choices may require colleagues and sponsors to change alongside them. The leadership coaching and development services page explains the available support, including the Leadership Alignment Intervention™ for a wider alignment problem.
Before you choose a label, ask the people in the room with that leader what they experience. Marcus needed to hear something his job title could never tell him.
