When I was interviewing other CEOs about their onboarding experiences, one piece of advice surprised me: negotiate for an executive coach in your contract. I had spent time thinking through salary, vacation, and renewal terms. The idea of negotiating for support had never crossed my mind.

I have written before about the particular loneliness of the CEO role. You do not have a peer inside the organization. There is no one on your team to whom you can bring a half-formed strategy, an uncomfortable board dynamic, or an honest question about your own leadership without the conversation carrying some organizational weight. An executive coach fills that gap. Mine is external to the organization, which means she can be both a confidant and a challenger in ways that no one on my staff or board can be.

I have used coaches before, but always for career transition work: figuring out my next step when I left a board role, thinking through my move into my first CEO position, working through the interim period before this role. That kind of coaching is necessarily inward-facing. The questions are about me: what I want, what I am ready for, where I am headed.

This engagement is different. Yes, some of the work is still about my own development. Through assessments and structured reflection, I am building a much clearer picture of where I am strong and where I have room to grow. I am optimistic that I will be a stronger leader for this organization at the end of the year of coaching than I would have been without the work.

One of the most valuable elements of this engagement is a structured process my coach is building with my executive committee across the full year. We began with an initial conversation focused on goal-setting and gaining their support for the coaching work. Later in the year, once they have had meaningful time to observe my leadership, my coach will conduct a mini 360 with them. At the end of the year, we will come back together for a debrief conversation. All of it happens within the confidentiality of the coaching agreement, which creates conditions for honest input.

If you are considering an executive role at any level, I would offer two recommendations. First, use coaching. It does not have to be reserved for moments of transition or crisis. Having a skilled outside perspective during a period of growth is genuinely valuable. Second, think about negotiating for it. I had never considered that before. Now I cannot imagine not having done it.