The higher you climb, the less honest feedback you receive. Your team filters what they say to protect themselves. Your peers are competitors. Your board sees the numbers, not the leader. And most coaches will tell you what you want to hear because you're paying them.
That's not coaching. That's expensive validation.
Real executive coaching is uncomfortable. It surfaces the patterns you can't see yourself — the habits that got you here but are limiting what's next, the blind spots your team is quietly working around, the leadership identity that served you as a manager but doesn't serve you as an executive.