You can have a leadership team full of capable people and still watch progress stall. Decisions are made in the room, then questioned in smaller conversations afterwards. Two teams solve the same problem. Another delivers excellent work that no one uses because priorities shifted without a shared discussion.
When that happens, coaching can help. The question is where to focus it. At the individual or at the group?
At The Culture Equation, we build courageous cultures where no topic is off the table. In 2025, we worked with more than 400+ leaders, the vast majority of whom experienced group coaching, executive coaching, or both. That experience has taught us to look closely at where the difficulty lives: within a leader’s own thinking, or in the way leaders work together.
Executive coaching gives a leader room to say what they may not yet be ready to say to their team. They can examine what matters to them, where their confidence has shifted, which assumptions are shaping their decisions, and what kind of leader they want to be now and in the future.
That deeper introspection is especially valuable for someone newly appointed to an executive team. It also helps someone approaching the next phase of their career, whether they are considering a bigger role, redefining success, or working out what they want their next step to be.
As leaders, most of us can recall a time when you have a leader who matters enormously to the business. You want to retain them. They are putting in the effort, but you can see they are struggling. Coaching gives them a confidential place to understand what is happening before the struggle becomes a resignation, a loss of confidence, or a pattern that affects others.
The aim is clarity of purpose and the confidence to articulate what matters, make decisions and lead from that place. Six months into a new role, one client came to us struggling to find her footing in an unfamiliar environment. Over six coaching sessions, she reconnected with her strengths, sharpened her understanding of the impact she could make and clarified where she wanted to grow. The result: renewed confidence, more purposeful leadership and a clear sense that she was back in the driver’s seat of her career.
Group executive coaching is useful when the problem appears in the space between leaders.
You may recognise the storming phase. People have strong views, but the team cannot turn those views into clear decisions and collective action. Functions operate in silos. Their teams receive mixed messages about priorities. Work is duplicated, delivered too late to be useful, or completed and then deprioritised.
The leadership team says it wants alignment and cohesion. Yet the conversations that would create them are the very ones it avoids. Smaller alliances form. Meetings after the meeting reopen decisions. You find yourself frustrated by how much time and talent the team has, and how little progress it is making.
That calls for more than giving each executive a private place to reflect. The team needs to: name the tension, test assumptions, agree what matters most, decide who owns what, and hold one another to those agreements.
Our recent work with the Naked Wines ANZ leadership team built on their already strong culture, allowing them the space and time to intentionally decide what kind of a leadership team they wanted to be and specifically what standards they would hold themselves accountable to. Like a fine wine, courageous conversations like these need time to breathe, to be explored progressively and to be tested and adjusted as needed.
At The Culture Equation we have conservatively estimated the cost of silos as being roughly 16% of revenue. Take a look at our Silo Calculator tool and play around with it!
The more useful question is: what are silos costing your business? Trace the decisions that are reopened, the work done twice, the opportunities missed and the effort spent on priorities that never came together. Speak to the people downstream of the executive team. They will often tell you where a lack of alignment becomes a delay, a confused brief or a piece of work that goes nowhere. Look at exit interviews, especially regretted exits and see if you can find a common thread.
Once you can see the pattern, the coaching decision becomes clearer.
If one leader needs to understand their purpose, confidence or next step, begin with one to one coaching. If several leaders need to change how they speak, decide and deliver together, coach the group. If both are true, use private reflection to prepare leaders for the conversations they need to have as a team.
Before you decide whether individual or group coaching is necessary.
1. What kind of culture do I want this company to be known for?
Look at the behaviours of your leadership team, especially when a decision is difficult or people disagree. Do they reflect that ambition? Your team sets the standard through what they say in the meeting, what they leave unsaid and what they do afterwards.
2. What is the consequence of doing nothing?
Consider the work being duplicated, the decisions being revisited and the people carrying the frustration downstream. What will another six months of this pattern cost your business? What might it cost the people you most want to keep?
3. Where does the pattern need to change?
The answer becomes clearer when you look at what is happening, who it affects and what needs to change. The most important step is to begin before the pattern becomes the culture.