Executive and Leadership Coaching

Experienced executives rarely arrive at a learning programme with an empty notebook and no prior view. They bring years of decisions, difficult conversations, successes, mistakes, organisational politics, customer problems and judgement developed under pressure. That experience should not be treated simply as background. It is part of the learning resource. Recent work on action learning in leadership development provides a useful example. Sanyal, Hartog and Haddock-Millar de

Leadership development often starts with a shopping list. "We need a leadership programme." "Our managers need an AI course." "We should run a strategy day." "We need coaching for the senior team." Any of these could be useful. The difficulty is that each statement has already jumped to a solution. Thus, there is a more useful question to ask first: What actually needs to change in the organisation? That is not only a leadership-development question. It is a strategy, people

At Lemke & Lemke, much of our work begins with a simple observation. The first question someone brings to a conversation is not always the question that deserves answering. That is true in coaching and advisory work. It is also true in research. Many conversations about research impact begin surprisingly late. The study is complete. The findings are written up. Perhaps the journal article has already been accepted. Only then does someone ask: "How do we bring this research to

Senior executives are rarely short of information. The harder challenge is finding enough distance from daily business pressure to question assumptions, encounter different perspectives and consider what may need to change. University executive education can provide that environment. Executive education can create opportunities for leaders to encounter research, faculty and peers from outside their own organisation. In 2026, executive education representatives from 45 schools

I spend a lot of time in two professional worlds: academia and business. They are clearly different. The work is different, the language is different, and success is assessed in different ways. But there is one similarity I keep noticing. Managers and academics spend a remarkable amount of their professional lives evaluating, being evaluated, and helping other people improve. Managers review performance, discuss targets, give feedback and receive it. Academics assess student

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer reports that seven in ten people worldwide are unwilling or hesitant to trust someone whose values, information, approaches to solving problems or cultural background differ from their own. For business, the implication is clear. Organisations cannot make progress only with people who think alike. Leaders must bring together different experiences, perspectives and priorities. They must also help people work constructively across those differen

Many leaders reach management because they are good at solving problems. They know the work. They move quickly. They care about quality. When something becomes difficult, people turn to them. And they usually know what to do. Then the role changes. The leader is no longer responsible only for producing excellent work. They are responsible for creating the conditions in which other people can think, decide and perform well. That transition sounds straightforward. In practice,

When you’re good… but (informally) not yet “leadership material” You can be excellent at your job and still feel invisible in the rooms that matter. You bring the detail. You deliver. You do the thinking. And then, in the senior meeting, you hear yourself doing one (or more) of these: over‑explaining to prove you’ve done the work speaking quickly, filling silence, softening your point backing down too early when someone senior pushes saying nothing… and kicking yourself after