Executive coaching · Rich Smith
The move from doing the work to leading the people who do it.
It is the hardest transition a strong operator makes, and the skills that earned the seat are not the ones it requires. Two kinds of leaders come here.
Succession planning
You’re building someone.
Someone on your team is good, not yet ready for what’s next. Develop and backfill them, so the person you are counting on is ready when it matters.
For sponsors and companies →Your next step
You’re making the move yourself.
You earned the role by being the best at the work. Leading people is a different job. This is the coaching for that move, whatever your field.
For the leader making the leap →About Rich
The command, the certainty, the reflex to have the answer: the things that made you the expert are the things that get in the way once you’re leading people. Rich Smith coaches leaders through exactly that, and he’s been there himself.
He’s an operator who coaches. An Army career: West Point and an infantry command in combat. A business career: Wharton, a finance director at Amazon, then a CFO who chose to reorganize a failing company rather than shut it down. He knows the pressure you’re under because he was under it, and he made the same move you’re making: from being the one with the answers to leading the people who have to find them.
That’s his edge. He can work the tactical problems of the job, the hard conversation, the team that isn’t performing, the decision you keep avoiding, and the deeper ones underneath: why you hold on, what you’re protecting, who you think you have to be. Most coaches can only do one. He does both, because he lived both.