Charmain Bogue on What Executive Coaching Actually Looks Like Behind Closed Doors

It's not motivational speeches. It's sitting with someone while they admit they don't know what they're doing.

There's a version of executive coaching that exists in people's imaginations that involves whiteboards, personality assessments, and a coach who dispenses wisdom like a vending machine. You put in your problem, out comes a solution, and you go back to your corner office feeling refreshed.

That is not what it looks like.

I worked as a strategic advisor and executive coach, mostly with leaders who were smart, accomplished, and quietly falling apart. Not in dramatic ways. In the ways that don't show up until you're alone with someone for an hour and they finally stop performing.

What Charmain Bogue learned in those rooms is that the higher someone climbs, the fewer people they have who will tell them the truth. Their teams are afraid to push back. Their boards want results, not vulnerability. Their spouses are tired of hearing about work. So they sit in these roles, making decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people, and they have no one to think out loud with.

That's the job. Not fixing people. Giving them a space where they don't have to have the answer.

The most common thing I heard from executives was some version of: "I know what I should do, but I can't make myself do it." Usually that meant having a hard conversation they'd been avoiding. Restructuring a team. Letting go of someone they liked personally but who wasn't performing. Setting a boundary with a board member. These aren't knowledge gaps. They're courage gaps.

My background helps here. I spent years in public sector leadership, managing large teams and complex programs. I know what it feels like to be responsible for outcomes you can't fully control. I know what it's like to sit in a meeting where the politics matter more than the data. That shared experience is what lets a client trust me. I'm not theorizing about leadership. I've been in the seat.

But coaching isn't about me sharing war stories. It's about listening for what's underneath the problem someone presents. A CEO tells me she's struggling with her COO. We spend twenty minutes on that, and then it turns out the real issue is that she's not sure she wants to be CEO anymore but feels trapped by the expectations of everyone who supported her getting there. That's a different conversation entirely.

I also work with leaders who are transitioning, out of government, out of corporate, into something new. The identity piece of career change is enormous and almost nobody talks about it. When your title has been your identity for a decade, losing it feels like losing a limb. I've watched brilliant women completely freeze because they don't know how to introduce themselves without their old role attached.

The practical side of coaching matters too. I help clients build decision frameworks, map stakeholders, prepare for board presentations, and think through organizational design. My training in Lean Six Sigma and strategic planning means I can go deep on process and structure when that's what's needed. But the human stuff always comes first. If someone doesn't trust their own judgment, no framework is going to save them.

One thing I wish more people understood about coaching: it's not a sign of weakness. The leaders who hire coaches aren't the ones who are failing. They're the ones who are honest enough to know they have blind spots. Every athlete has a coach. Every musician has a teacher. Somehow we decided that business leaders should figure everything out alone, and then we're surprised when they burn out or make avoidable mistakes.

The work I did in those years changed how I think about leadership. It made me more patient, more curious, and honestly, more humble. Every client reminded me that looking competent and feeling competent are two very different things.