This selection of cases captures those moments when senior leaders step back to ask the hard questions: How do I stay relevant? How do I realign? How do I move forward with purpose?

Each example comes from real coaching work, with details adjusted for confidentiality. These aren't templates to copy—they're windows into how executive coaching works, showing how reflection turns into strategic action and tangible progress.

My methodology is structured. We start with Assessment to map your current context and challenges. In Inquiry, we explore the patterns, beliefs, and dynamics that shape how you lead. Based on that, we define focused Actions—concrete steps tailored to your role and situation. Finally, through Measurement, we track the impact to ensure the results are sustainable and aligned with your goals.

The process is personal, strategic, and grounded in the realities of senior leadership. It's about clarity, action, and results.

Cases from the coaching room:

1. Strategic Leadership for CEOs: Letting Go to Drive Growth
2. Career Transitions for Executives: Strategic Positioning to Stay Visible and Relevant

1. Strategic Leadership for CEOs: Letting Go to Drive Growth

Introduction

When markets shift, your structure must follow. I often coach CEOs who are brilliant strategists but struggle to turn vision into an operational setup that works. What's holding them back? Habit, loyalty, or simply the mental load of keeping the business running.

This case explores how stepping back, reflecting, and taking targeted action allowed one CEO to stay relevant, redirect his energy, and embed a leadership shift across the organization.

Challenge

The client leads a stable business in a fast-moving, competitive industry. Following a major structural transformation, the company now has two pillars:

• The legacy business, which still generates revenue but no longer aligns with market trends.
• A newer growth stream, accelerated post-COVID, showing strong potential for future success.

Despite the new structure, the CEO remained focused on reviving the legacy business, trying to squeeze results from an old model. The real issue?

He was trying to grow the past instead of investing in what was already growing.

The challenge wasn't just strategic, it was personal: how to let go of control and lead the organisation into its future?

Let me be clear: past experience continues to generate revenue, while new opportunities drive long-term success, align with the vision, and support the transition to new revenue models. And that is precisely where the coaching challenge arises.

Coaching Insights & Actions

Once the root issue became clear, the CEO made decisive moves:

• Took ownership of two high-impact client opportunities within the new business stream to generate momentum and signal commitment.
• Focused on development of the leadership team members using Saville assessments to match roles with capability and potential. The new top team focused on:
  
  
  • Business development
  • Customer support
  • Sales aligned with future demand

The impactful role of this step was for the CEO to understand the “before and after” of the team´s structure and competencies. When we started we identified compatnecy profiles and after the indiviuaal feedback the CEO had insight into his managers strengths and was abel to reorganise the organisational structure to fit their fortune business needs.

To understand what his role was in the operational bottlenecks, and how coaching can support him to make the organisation more agile and aligned.

The power of this step was in giving the CEO a clear ‘before and after’ view of the team’s structure and competencies. At the start, we mapped out competency profiles and uncovered gaps. After individual feedback sessions, the CEO gained a sharper understanding of each manager’s strengths and was able to reorganize the structure to meet the company’s business needs more effectively.

Crucially, he recognized his own role in creating operational bottlenecks and how coaching could help him free up capacity, making the organization more agile and aligned.

The shift was clear: before, he was trying to hold everything in his own hands; after, he invested his energy where it truly drove growth.

Results & Leadership Reset

This wasn't just a structural change—it was a leadership reset. By redirecting his energy to growth areas and reorganising the team around future potential, the CEO:

• Built relevance into his leadership habits, not just strategy.
• Made the organization more agile and aligned.
• Regained the cognitive space to lead at the right level.

Key Takeaways for CEOs

Your role isn't just to deliver results—it's to stay relevant. That means:

• Restructure for future growth, not past performance.
• Support and empower your team to take ownership of customer relationships and sales.
• Step back when necessary to focus on strategy and leadership impact.

This case shows that leadership isn’t about holding everything in your hands. By letting go of control where it no longer serves the business, you create space for your team to take ownership, your organization to adapt, and yourself to lead with focus and clarity. Staying relevant as a CEO means investing your energy where it truly drives growth and embedding leadership habits that last.

2. Career Transitions for Executives: Strategic Positioning to Stay Visible and Relevant

Introduction

Every senior leader reaches a moment—sometimes planned, sometimes not—when the question arises: What's next for me? What legacy do I leave behind? What do I carry forward? What kind of leader do I want to be next?

This case explores how coaching helped one CEO navigate a career transition while staying visible, relevant, and in control of her next steps, even as her company underwent a major merger and acquisition.

Challenge

From the outside, her position looked strong. Her track record, board experience, and leadership had secured a solid role in the new structure. Yet internally, she felt disconnected from the company's future.

"If I stay, I'll fade. I won't be seen for what I bring."

The challenge wasn't just about the role—it was about visibility, alignment, and meaning. She needed to decide whether her next move would be outside the company or within it, on her own terms.

Coaching Insights & Actions

In the first two sessions, we mapped her career portfolio:

• Her strengths and areas of expertise
• The types of roles, industries, and company stages that suited her

The real shift came in session three. She realised she had never consciously positioned herself, internally or externally. It wasn't something her former CEO had encouraged, and it wasn't something she had claimed for herself. So she did.

Her actions included:

• Building peer-level relationships within the company
• Showing up visibly in strategic discussions
• Sharing her vision and capabilities openly

Results & Leadership Reset

Energy returned. So did possibility. She decided to stay—not by default, but by repositioning herself to lead from choice, not compromise.

She didn't need a new job; she needed a new narrative and a more visible presence. By showing up in the right conversations with clarity, she created opportunities where she already was.

Key Takeaways for CEOs

Your career transitions aren't just logistical—they're deeply personal and strategic. Staying relevant means:

• Clarifying your value both internally and externally
• Positioning yourself strategically before considering a move
• Investing your energy where it drives the greatest impact

“A top manager seeks growth—if they don't find it, they create it. And it always begins with clarity."

What this case shows

A career transition doesn’t require leaving a company. Sometimes, it’s about taking ownership of your narrative, stepping into visibility, and aligning your actions with the future you want to create. Coaching provides the clarity and structure to make that shift intentional and sustainable.

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Some transitions don't start with change. They start with clarity.

Sometimes the structure needs to shift. Sometimes it's your role. And sometimes it's about how you see your own value, how you show up, and what you're ready to take on next.

In coaching, I see a clear pattern: leaders don't struggle because they lack knowledge. They struggle because they haven't had the space to pause, reframe, and decide with confidence.

This is what coaching provides: not theory, not advice but clarity with direction, tailored to your situation. In the cases you've just read, CEOs were able to realign priorities, reposition themselves, and regain focus on what drives impact.

If this resonates with where you are now, we can start there. Book a 1:1 coaching session, and together we'll define what's next, what matters most, and what needs to shift immediately, not someday.

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To your success,
Simona

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I'm the founder of BOC Institute, one of the renowned consulting agencies for international companies operating in Slovenia and South-East Europe.

I coach CEOs and top managers 1:1 worldwide. I'm here to save you time, energy, and money through your objectives, decision-making, and leadership development. I understand we can change the world one coaching session at a time!

Do you feel like having a call? You can reach out here and let me guide you from there.

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Simona Špilak www.simonaspilak.com