Field notes
Coaching Sessions Versus a Full Succession Project
Leadership coaching and succession planning share vocabulary—roles, readiness, handoff—but they solve different problems. Coaching changes how an owner leads today. A succession project decides who will own and lead tomorrow, and on what timeline.
Choose coaching when the firm’s ownership path is already clear and the bottleneck is the owner’s habits: answering every escalation, delaying hard feedback, or struggling to trust a general manager. Sessions focus on specific situations from the past fortnight.
Choose a succession engagement when equity, family expectations, or partner agreements are unsettled. The output is a roadmap with decision points, not only a more reflective owner. Many clients do both in sequence: roadmap first, then coaching to live the new authority matrix.
If you book coaching hoping it will quietly fix a contested buyout, you will be disappointed. Name the ownership question directly and pick the consultation that matches.