Original writing
from inside the work.
Two founders. Two editorial voices. One commitment to the kind of leadership that actually changes institutions — and the coaching practice that makes it possible.
Series · Coaches Becoming
The practice of becoming.
Shannon O'Neill, Ph.D., PCC · AoEC FacultyOn coach training, the unlearning it demands, and what rigorous development actually asks of you — written by someone who did it twice and now teaches it.
Becoming a Coach
What I Had to Unlearn: On Becoming a Coach When You've Spent 25 Years Being the Expert
The habits that made you effective in leadership are precisely the habits coach training asks you to examine and set aside. What that actually costs — and what it builds.
Becoming a Coach
Developing Your Craft: Why Executive Coaching Must Be More Than a Toolkit
Model-agnostic training produces a fundamentally different kind of practitioner — and why that difference matters to every client you will ever sit across from.
Becoming a Coach
What Model-Agnostic Actually Means in Practice
Model-agnostic isn't a lack of methodology — it's the judgment to know which framework a client actually needs, and the range to reach for it. A session vignette and what it reveals about how this kind of training works.
The Coaching Conversation
The Executive Coaching Client: Why This Work Is Different
Executive coaching is preparation for a specific encounter — with leaders who are high-functioning, structurally isolated, and carrying real institutional weight. What that encounter requires of a coach.
Series · From Inside the Partnership
What transformation actually looks like.
Mathew Johnson, Ph.D., PCC · Executive Coach & ConsultantComposite vignettes and practitioner reflections from inside real coaching and consulting engagements, on executive coaching, team dynamics, mediation, and organizational transformation. Written in first person, from the room where the work actually happens.
Executive Coaching
The Question Nobody Asks a President
The loneliness of senior leadership is structural, not personal. On what the coaching container makes possible for leaders who have nowhere to bring their hardest questions.
Executive Team Coaching
The Conversation That Was Never Supposed to Happen
Every leadership team maps what is discussable and what is not. On what team coaching builds in the months before a breakthrough becomes possible, and why that work is the work.
Executive Mediation
Two Vice Presidents, One Broken Partnership
Two capable, committed leaders. Three months of silence. On what executive mediation actually does, and the question that makes possible what direct confrontation cannot.
Executive Consulting
We Don't Deliver a Report and Hand You the Keys
A consultant delivers a careful diagnosis. Six months later, nothing has changed. On why sound reports so often produce no movement, and what a sustained partnership offers that a fixed-scope engagement cannot.
Executive Coaching
When Your Strengths Become the Problem
The decisiveness that earns a senior role can quietly stop fitting the role she has actually grown into. On why a signature strength becomes the problem it once solved, and what coaching makes available across stages of leadership.
A Structured Series · 11 Parts
Leadership @ Scale
A structured eleven-part series on building a coaching leadership culture inside complex institutions — for senior HR leaders, provosts, and foundation program officers navigating real organizational change. Not a pitch. A partnership.
Explore the series →The Roundup
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