Direct reports have stopped telling you the truth
Not because you are cruel. Because challenge has a cost with you, and they learned it.
Leadership Coaching for the Patterns Underneath the Role
Brian BachmanExecutive Coach · MA, LPC
Most leadership problems are personal patterns wearing a suit.
You have had the 360. You know the feedback: too controlling, too defensive, hard to bring bad news to, or too nice to make the hard call. You have probably known it for years. What you have not had is someone who can show you where the pattern came from and why it survives every attempt to change it. I coach senior leaders privately, and I bring a decade of clinical practice to the question most leadership coaching skips: why do capable people keep doing the thing they know they should not?
Does this sound like you?
You know the feedback. Knowing has not changed it.
You over-control or over-accommodate
One or the other, sometimes both depending on who is in the room. Either way, the reflex is faster than your judgment.
The feedback repeats across jobs
Different company, different team, same 360. If the pattern follows you, the common variable is not the environment.
Pressure changes who you are
Calm and generous most of the time. Under real stress you become someone your team manages around and your spouse recognizes.
Your home life is affecting your leadership
A strained marriage, a kid in trouble, or a parent’s decline is consuming the attention and emotional capacity the role depends on. Nobody at work knows.
You can make the big call and avoid the small conversation
A multimillion-dollar decision in an hour. One honest conversation with a peer or a spouse, avoided for six months.
What leadership coaching means here
Competency coaching treats the behavior. I treat the system producing it.
If you come in saying you need to delegate more, we can work on delegation. But I also want to know why delegation is unusually hard for you. Perfectionism? A fear of looking weak? A belief, formed a long time ago, that mistakes are not tolerated? Or an organization that genuinely makes it hard? Those lead to different work, and generic leadership frameworks cannot tell them apart.
This is what I mean by psychology-informed coaching. I put your complaints on a whiteboard, trace the loop that connects them, and find the leverage point. Then we practice a different response under real pressure, because the new behavior has to survive contact with a difficult board meeting and a difficult Tuesday night at home.
A story I see often
A senior executive’s 360 said “intimidating.” He thought they meant “strong.”
Details changed. He had been told for a decade that people were afraid of him, and he heard it as respect. When we traced the pattern, it went back to a house where vulnerability was mocked and power decided who got heard. He had learned to never look weak, and it had made him extremely effective and exhausting to be around, at work and with his teenage sons.
The work was not making him timid. It was separating actual authority from the emotional need to prove it. Once he could see what the armor was protecting, he gained options he had not had: directness without humiliation, standards without contempt. His team noticed first. His sons noticed second.
How an engagement starts
Four steps from “something is off” to a plan you can actually run.
A 20-minute call about fit
You tell me what is actually going on. I tell you honestly whether it is the kind of problem I help with, and whether coaching or clinical care is the right door. No pitch, and no pressure to decide on the call.
We pick the right depth
One defined problem is Focused Coaching. A problem that crosses work and home is Integrated Coaching. If you want a full working model of how you operate, that is Private Advisory. I will tell you which one fits, including when the answer is the cheaper one.
I build the map
Integrated and Private Advisory engagements start with assessment and a written synthesis: strengths, blind spots, the patterns connecting your complaints, and the two or three leverage points that will change the most. See a sample Whole-Person Profile
We test it against real life
Meetings roughly every other week. Between them you run specific experiments: a conversation you have been avoiding, a decision, a boundary, a different response under pressure. The map gets corrected by what actually happens.
Three depths of engagement
The engagement should match the problem, not force every client through the same process.
Focused Coaching
$2,750 · 2 months
One defined problem, four private meetings, specific experiments between them, and a written continuation plan. For people who already know what needs attention.
Integrated Coaching
$4,500 · 4 months
Most clients start here. A problem that crosses several areas of life, a targeted whole-person assessment, a written synthesis, eight meetings, and a check-in between them.
Private Advisory
$7,800 · 6 months
A comprehensive Whole-Person Profile, twelve meetings, priority access, optional spouse perspective, and a final synthesis of what changed. For a select few who want the full model.
“Brian’s guidance is invaluable. He quickly assessed the stuck points and I found a sustainable path. Imposter syndrome was holding me back in my performance. Brian helped me unlock my fullest potential.”
Questions
What people usually want to know before they book.
How is this different from the executive coaching my company provides?
Company-sponsored coaching usually works on competencies and is reported back, at least in part, to the organization. This is private, confidential to you, and works on the person: the patterns underneath the behavior and the way work and home are affecting each other.
Will you use a 360 or assessments?
When useful, yes. Integrated and Private Advisory engagements include a structured whole-person assessment and, when appropriate, established instruments. The value is not the scores. It is the synthesis: what the pieces mean together.
Is this therapy?
No. It is coaching, provided under a coaching agreement, organized around patterns, decisions, and implementation. My license as a counselor means I can recognize when something is not a coaching problem, and I will say so.
Do you coach women leaders?
Yes. The patterns, the pressures, and the way home and work interact are not gender-specific, and the work is not either.
Keep reading
Related pages.
Private whole-person coaching
If the same feedback has followed you across three companies, the next leadership book is not going to fix it.
A 20-minute private conversation. No pitch. We look at the pattern and decide together whether it is worth working on.
Book a private 20-minute consult