Executive transition coaching for your next leadership role

What is executive transition coaching?

Executive transition coaching focuses on how a leader becomes effective in a new or substantially expanded role. That can include an internal promotion, joining a new organization, taking on an enterprise function, or becoming CEO. The work addresses expectations, stakeholder relationships, decision authority, and the leadership behaviors the role requires.

At Leadership IQ, the transition can be the focus of Mark Murphy’s 90-day, one-to-one executive coaching sprint. It is distinct from a job-search or placement service: the focus is how you lead in the role.

Four questions to answer early

What does success mean to the people who matter?

Your manager, board, peers, and direct reports may describe success differently. Ask what must improve, what must be preserved, and which decisions cannot wait. Compare the answers before turning them into a plan. An apparent disagreement about your performance may begin as an unspoken disagreement about the job.

What do you now own, and what should you stop owning?

Write down the decisions that belong to you, those that belong to your team, and those that require joint agreement. A newly promoted executive can become a bottleneck by retaining the approvals of the former role while adding the responsibilities of the new one.

What do you need to learn before changing things?

Distinguish a problem you have observed from a story you have inherited. Ask for examples, constraints, and previous attempts. Listening does not require postponing every decision; it helps you decide where to act, where to investigate, and where a premature solution could create avoidable resistance.

How will people know what you expect?

Explain how you want risks raised, decisions prepared, and commitments followed up. Invite people to identify where the expectations are unclear. Your team should not have to infer a new operating system from your reactions.

A practical first-90-days planning framework

The sequence below is a planning example, not a fixed coaching curriculum. Your situation may require urgent action much earlier or a different order of priorities.

1. Establish the baseline. Map the role’s commitments, interview key stakeholders, and identify the few decisions that cannot wait. Write down assumptions that still need testing.
2. Make priorities and authority explicit. Agree on the most important outcomes, clarify decision ownership, and discuss the tradeoffs among competing requests.
3. Practice the leadership behaviors the role needs. Test clearer delegation, more concise recommendations, or a different response to disagreement in real situations.
4. Review the evidence and adjust. Compare your initial assumptions with what you have learned. Identify what to continue, what to stop, and what needs another conversation.

A useful output is a short operating agreement: the outcomes you own, the decisions your team owns, the issues that require escalation, and the way progress will be reviewed.

When you are promoted over former peers

Familiarity can hide a changed relationship. Colleagues may expect the same access, exceptions, or informal decision process they had before. Name the change respectfully. Explain what responsibilities you now hold, where they retain authority, and how you will handle disagreements.

Consider an illustrative example: a new VP continues rewriting every proposal from former peers because that was a valued contribution in the old role. The team waits for edits and the VP has little time for broader priorities. A useful coaching focus could be setting quality criteria and review points so the team can own the work. The aim is to change the pattern, not simply to work faster.

Working through the transition with Mark Murphy

The sprint begins with a 90-minute strategic intake. Your role, current challenges, and priorities shape the work. Mark brings Leadership IQ’s leadership research and frameworks, including the FIRE Model and Team Players, to the decisions and conversations you face. Week 12 provides a structured point to review progress and plan continued development.

Our leadership blind spots research can help frame questions about the gap between intention and impact. If your main challenge is communicating at a new level, explore executive presence coaching. If you are taking the chief executive role, the CEO coaching page examines enterprise decisions and executive-team accountability.

What should you review at the end?

Assess whether expectations are clearer, the right people own decisions, and difficult issues surface early enough to address. Review a few real examples rather than judging the transition only by how busy you have been. Also identify what remains unresolved: a 90-day review is a useful checkpoint, not a claim that every transition is complete.

Do I need to start before my first day?

That is a timing question to discuss on the strategy call. Bring the stage of your transition and the decisions immediately ahead of you so we can assess fit and availability.

Is this only for external hires?

No. Internal promotions and expanded responsibilities can change expectations, authority, and relationships just as substantially. The coaching focus should match the specific transition.

What does it cost?

Quote after the complimentary strategy call. See our executive coaching cost guide for the questions to use when comparing engagements.