Succession coaching with Rich Smith, Thetis Consulting
You have someone good. Let’s get them to great.
They’re not there yet, and you can see it more clearly than they can.
It usually isn’t skill. It’s the habits that got them here and won’t carry the next role: holding onto the work, managing the room instead of leading it, performing certainty instead of saying what they don’t know. What would help is real support to get them ready, someone working with them directly, which is hard to be when you’re the one they report to.
The work starts with an assessment. If it’s a fit, six months, mostly the leader and me, measured at both ends so you can see the value we’ve created. Some of it is tactical. Some is in the systems they own. Most of it is deeper: why they hold on, what they’re protecting, who they think they need to be to keep the seat. The company gets a more effective leader. The leader gets clearer about what they want.
When the person you’re counting on is ready, you’re the one who gets freed. It worked that way for me every time.
Rich is a tremendous asset for any finance executive looking to crystallize their mission. I came to Rich in the midst of an incredibly turbulent time, struggling to manage work, life, and self. Rich was a lighthouse in that storm, helping me see obstacles that I was creating for myself, cutting directly to the root cause of issues I likely would not have discovered until much later, and holding me to account on resolving those with purpose. After working with Rich I am a materially better leader, show up better for myself and family, and am better prepared with a sense of mission.
Rich got me out of my own way. Instead of focusing on short-term challenges and plans, I learned to realize the big-picture end result and wasted less time as a result. He helped me find more space for creating by partnering to implement structure only where it was truly needed, not just to fill space.
About Rich
The command, the certainty, the reflex to have the answer: the things that made you the expert are the things that get in the way once you’re leading people. Rich Smith coaches leaders through exactly that, and he’s been there himself.
He’s an operator who coaches. An Army career: West Point and an infantry command in combat. A business career: Wharton, a finance director at Amazon, then a CFO who chose to reorganize a failing company rather than shut it down. He knows the pressure you’re under because he was under it, and he made the same move you’re making: from being the one with the answers to leading the people who have to find them.
That’s his edge. He can work the tactical problems of the job, the hard conversation, the team that isn’t performing, the decision you keep avoiding, and the deeper ones underneath: why you hold on, what you’re protecting, who you think you have to be. Most coaches can only do one. He does both, because he lived both.
Working on your own next step rather than developing someone else? See coaching for your next step