A founder transitioning to a CEO role
Twelve-month coaching engagement supporting a founder transitioning into a CEO role with an external chair and a new institutional shareholder.
A founder of a successful mid-sized company had agreed, as part of a recent investment round, to formalise the transition from a founder-led to a company-led structure: an independent chair, a wider board, and a CEO role with the kind of operating discipline an institutional shareholder expects. The founder was committed to the change and aware that the transition was as much personal as structural.
We ran a year-long coaching engagement, fortnightly sessions, ninety minutes each, in person where geography allowed and remote when not. The work was not curriculum-driven; the founder brought what they were working through and we shaped the conversation around it. Recurring themes included how to delegate operational decisions to a leadership team that had been used to deferring upward, how to use a board that was now contributing rather than rubber-stamping, and how to maintain the founder identity within an evolving role.
The engagement closed at twelve months. The CEO transition has held; the company added two senior hires during the engagement and the board cadence has stabilised. We do not bill for follow-up calls and the relationship is now closed unless the client initiates a future engagement.