{"id":185,"date":"2026-09-29T12:12:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T10:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.re-lier.com\/?page_id=185"},"modified":"2026-10-12T21:55:54","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T19:55:54","slug":"coaching-codir","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.re-lier.com\/en\/coaching-codir\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership team coaching"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Leadership team coaching: helping your executive committee decide and move forward together<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

An executive committee brings together capable people. And yet it does not always work as a team: decisions drag on, trade-offs get pushed up to the chief executive, sensitive subjects are avoided, meetings inform rather than settle anything. Leadership team coaching works precisely on what happens between its members, so that the leadership team becomes a genuine collective that steers the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work is not about your strategy \u2014 you know it better than anyone. It is about the way your team discusses it, decides it and carries it. That is often where the energy of an otherwise solid leadership team gets lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Talk to us about your leadership team<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n
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When we are called in<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A chief executive rarely calls to \u201cdo some team coaching\u201d. They call because one specific situation will not shift. Here are the five we meet most often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new appointment.<\/strong> A new leader arrives and has to bring together a team they did not choose. The first few months decide a great deal: everyone is watching, testing how much room they have, waiting to see whether the stated rules will hold. Setting out explicitly how the team is expected to work is better than letting it settle by default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A reorganisation, a merger or a demerger.<\/strong> Remits shift, roles overlap, and trade-offs that used to be obvious become live issues again. The team has to rebuild its own way of working at the very moment it is leading the change for everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tension between functions.<\/strong> Sales, operations, finance, HR: each defends a legitimate remit, and cross-functional projects grind to a halt. These are rarely problems with people. They are almost always disagreements that have never been put on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meetings that settle nothing.<\/strong> The leadership meeting is long, informative, consensual in appearance \u2014 and the real conversations happen in the corridor straight afterwards. Decisions go up to the chief executive, who settles alone what the team should have settled together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A transformation to lead.<\/strong> The leadership team has to set the example before asking managers to change. If it does not work the way it preaches, the message does not land \u2014 and managers see that very quickly.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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What is blocking things is not always what you think<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Quand un comit\u00e9 de direction fonctionne mal, l\u2019explication spontan\u00e9e tient en quelques mots : untel est trop politique, l\u2019autre ne joue pas collectif, le dirigeant ne tranche pas assez. Ces lectures sont rarement fausses, mais elles sont rarement utiles : elles d\u00e9signent des personnes l\u00e0 o\u00f9 le probl\u00e8me est relationnel et syst\u00e9mique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most of the committees we work with, three mechanisms come up again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The unsaid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Each person keeps to themselves what they observe, think or feel \u2014 to save time, or to avoid a conflict. The information a decision most lacks is precisely what nobody says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Interpretations<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe said that to protect his budget.\u201d Perhaps. But until the assumption is checked, the team is working on a fiction it ends up sharing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Avoidance<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Without enough psychological safety, the more important a subject is, the more it costs to raise it. It then comes back in other forms: slowness, disengagement, decisions reopened three times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is exactly the ground covered by Clear Leadership\u00ae<\/a>, of which RE-LIER is one of the few certified providers in France. It gives a leadership team a simple language and the key skills to say what is really happening, without judgement, and to hold the conversations that allow people to learn and build together. That is often the turning point.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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What teams say to each other when the setting allows it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the end of a workshop, each member of the committee says what they observed, what they take from it, and what they intend to do about it. The lines below were taken down word for word during an alignment workshop between a parent company and its subsidiaries. Nothing was suggested or reworded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What the team sees<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of \u2018yes, but\u2019: debates that start over and over on points that could be fairly simple.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a great deal left implicit in how we put things and in what the words mean.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen someone states a need, it is not always very clear.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cApprehension. We watch each other, we size each other up.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA strong demand for precision on both sides.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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What it does with it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have reproduced the flaws of the organisation we came from. We have every interest in working together to avoid rebuilding the silos.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe vocabulary boxes us in and projects us into something we do not necessarily want.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI expect nothing from anyone, I am going to give to everyone: what I do not do, nobody will do in my place.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce we have a shared objective, we will enjoy doing it together.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe will is there; the answer will be in the execution.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That shift is the heart of the work. In the left-hand column, a team describes clearly what is stopping it moving forward \u2014 and does so without blaming anyone. In the right-hand column, it draws conclusions no consultant could have imposed on it. Between the two there is no miracle method: only a setting in which you can name what you observe without it becoming an accusation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This collective realisation becomes the engine and the fuel of an action plan each member commits to in front of their peers.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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What each person puts into words becomes material the team can move, group and discuss.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our approach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Every engagement is designed for the situation, but it generally follows five stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1. Framing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A conversation with the leader: what they observe, what they have already tried, what they expect and what they fear. We also check here that team coaching is the right answer \u2014 sometimes it is not, and that is better said before we start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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2. Diagnosis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A one-hour individual interview with each member, and observation of one or two leadership meetings. The aim is not to collect complaints but to understand the real dynamics: who speaks, who stays silent, how decisions get made. Allow three to four weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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3. Feedback<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A half-day with the whole team, in which it hears an anonymised summary of what was said and everyone can respond. It is the most demanding moment of the engagement, and often the most decisive. It ends with two or three shared objectives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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4. Team sessions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Half-day sessions, roughly one a month, on your real subjects rather than textbook cases: roles, decision rules, the quality of exchanges, handling disagreement. The work is done on live files, not alongside them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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5. Follow-up<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Concrete practices built into your leadership rituals \u2014 agendas, round-table turns, the way a decision is closed. Then a review against the objectives set at the feedback session, shared with the chief executive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The work takes place in Paris and the \u00cele-de-France region, elsewhere in France or abroad, at your premises or in an outside venue depending on what needs to be done, and can continue remotely between sessions. Engagements are delivered in French or in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on the need, coaching the leadership team can be combined with individual coaching<\/a> for some members, a launch team workshop<\/a> and a training course in Leadership par la Clart\u00e9 (Clear Leadership\u00ae)<\/a> to establish a shared language, and longer-term support to embed the transformation and spread it through the organisation.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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What your leadership team gains<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Faster decisions, owned collectively.<\/strong> When disagreements are voiced in the room, the trade-off is made once. Decisions stop being reopened in the corridor and then taken again at the next meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disagreements addressed rather than avoided.<\/strong> The team learns to name what is stuck without it becoming personal. That is the most useful and the rarest skill in a leadership team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearer allocation of roles.<\/strong> What the chief executive settles alone, what the team settles together, what is decided elsewhere. A great deal of slowness simply comes from the absence of that clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A team able to carry others with it.<\/strong> A leadership team that is aligned and credible in the way it works itself gets from its managers what a divided one cannot, whatever the quality of the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concrete action, in the service of the strategy<\/strong>. The leadership team acts collectively and in shared responsibility to align the whole organisation on executing the strategy.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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Concrete engagements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A new appointment that becomes a transformation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The context.<\/strong> A newly appointed chief executive wants to change the way their leadership team works: fewer silos, priorities that are genuinely shared, a team able to deliver and to carry the change to the whole organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we did.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n