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Forbes
14-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
What Nobody Tells You About Being CEO: 8 Challenges
Nirmal Chhabria | Academic Director, Professor of the Practice, Executive coach, ex-CEO, Author. There's a cruel irony at the heart of leadership: The better you become at getting promoted, the worse prepared you are for what comes next. I discovered this truth during a conversation with a CEO who had just closed a $30 million funding round. "I should be celebrating," he confided, "but I've never felt more lost. I know how to build products and lead teams, but running a company? I'm improvising every day." After working with hundreds of CEOs, I've identified a disturbing pattern: The same eight challenges surface repeatedly, regardless of company size or sector. These aren't random problems—they're systemic blind spots revealing a fundamental gap between what we think CEO work entails and what it actually requires. Here are the eight silent killers that undermine capable leaders and the counterintuitive solutions that separate struggling CEOs from thriving ones. 1. The Revenue Mirage: When Growth Becomes A Guessing Game Nothing exposes a CEO's vulnerability quite like unpredictable revenue. You celebrate record months followed by inexplicable dry spells, making every planning session feel like reading tea leaves. The problem isn't market volatility—it's treating sales like an art instead of a science. Most CEOs inherit or create sales processes that depend on individual heroics rather than systematic predictability. The Solution: Transform your sales engine into a measurable system. Map every stage from initial contact to closed deal. Identify bottlenecks and conversion rates at each step. Create multiple acquisition channels so you're never dependent on one source. When revenue becomes predictable, everything else becomes possible. 2. The Leadership Bottleneck: How Your Chaos Limits Everyone Else Here's the hardest truth most CEOs refuse to face: If you're disorganized, your entire company operates below its potential. I've watched brilliant executives optimize every business process while their personal productivity remains a disaster. They'll invest millions in operational efficiency but won't spend 30 minutes planning their week. The result? They're perpetually reactive and unable to give their best thinking to critical decisions. The Solution: Create an "Ideal Week" template and protect it ruthlessly. Schedule thinking time like board meetings. Block time for reading, planning and deep work. What gets scheduled gets done—including your effectiveness. Your calendar is your strategy made visible. 3. The Board Room Theater: Mistaking Updates For Leadership Most CEOs turn board meetings into elaborate status reports, wasting their most valuable resource: collective wisdom from people who've solved similar problems. You send board materials hours before the meeting, then spend precious time reading through information that directors could have absorbed independently. Meanwhile, the complex strategic questions that keep you awake at night remain unaddressed. The Solution: Send board packages 48 hours in advance with clear labels: "Pre-reading only" versus "Discussion required." Dedicate meeting time to your most critical strategic challenges. Transform your board from an audience into advisors. 4. The Hiring Paradox: The Wrong Person At The Right Time "Hire ahead of the curve" has become startup gospel, but it's destructive when applied blindly. I've seen CEOs hire seasoned executives who expect fully-formed processes in chaotic early-stage environments and junior people who can't scale as the company grows. The real challenge isn't finding talented people—it's finding someone who can excel in your current reality while growing into your future needs. The Solution: Be brutally honest about what you need today versus 12 months from now. Hire someone who can dominate both phases. Look for adaptive intelligence over perfect credentials. 5. The Accountability Illusion: Why Good Intentions Aren't Enough "My team just doesn't deliver what they commit to," frustrated CEOs tell me regularly. But when I examine their management systems, I find sporadic team meetings, cancelled one-on-ones and no consistent tracking of commitments. You can't create accountability through wishful thinking and ad hoc check-ins. The Solution: Fix your meeting rhythm first. Weekly team meetings happen religiously. One-on-ones are sacred. Track progress against commitments systematically. As management expert Andy Grove noted, meetings are the medium of management. 6. The Communication Crisis: When Your Message Gets Lost Visit your website right now. Can a complete stranger understand what you do, who it's for and what they should do next within five seconds? If not, you're hemorrhaging opportunities daily. Unclear value propositions don't just confuse customers—they paralyze employees who can't prioritize effectively and investors who can't understand your competitive advantage. The Solution: Ruthlessly simplify your message. Test it with people outside your industry. If they can't explain your value back to you clearly, keep refining until they can. Clarity is competitive advantage. 7. The Conversation Deficit: How Avoidance Amplifies Problems Every CEO I know is postponing at least one crucial conversation. Performance feedback for an underperforming executive. Tough discussions about company culture. Strategic disagreements with co-founders. The cruel mathematics of leadership: Difficult conversations become exponentially more difficult the longer you wait. The Solution: Address issues while manageable. Learn structured communication frameworks that remove emotion from difficult discussions. Set a personal rule: No conversation gets delayed more than one week once you've identified the need. 8. The Strategy Fog: When Direction Becomes Confusion If you can't explain your strategy in one clear sentence, your team definitely can't execute it. This creates cascading confusion: Employees don't know what to prioritize, customers don't understand why they should choose you and investors can't see how you'll win. The Solution: Distill your strategy into one sentence that anyone can remember and repeat. Test it with your team. If they can't articulate it back to you consistently, keep simplifying until they can. The CEO's Hidden Superpower These eight challenges are predictable and interconnected. The CEOs who scale successfully don't have superior intelligence—they build superior systems for the fundamentals most leaders take for granted. Your company's ceiling isn't determined by market conditions, but by your willingness to master the unsexy basics that make everything else possible. The question isn't whether you'll face these challenges—it's whether you'll address them before they address you. Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
Forbes
03-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Feed Forward: How Great Leaders Communicate For Growth
Souzan Bachir is Executive and Team Coach at Mira Coaching & Consulting. getty Communication is about building trust, clarity and connection. The way leaders communicate shapes how teams collaborate, navigate challenges and grow. When feedback becomes part of everyday conversation, instead of being reserved for when things go wrong, it transforms into a powerful tool for development. As a leader, your communication becomes the blueprint others follow. Whether you realize it or not, people mirror how you speak, respond under pressure and handle challenges. That's why leadership begins with self-awareness. Your words and tone set the emotional temperature of your organization. I often see leaders skip over problems or issue directives without context, assuming everyone is on the same page. But assumptions create confusion, not clarity. Effective communication means pausing to ensure alignment, explaining the 'why' behind decisions and creating space for others to contribute. The goal is genuine dialogue. Leaders sometimes fall into patterns of talking at people rather than with them, turning communication into a one-way street. Or they overload conversations with detail, losing the purpose in the process. True influence comes when communication is intentional, open and grounded in mutual understanding. When leaders engage in multi-way conversations, they cultivate trust, psychological safety and a culture where people feel heard. That's the kind of environment where teams thrive and leadership communication moves from reactive to truly impactful. When done well, feedback is about guiding someone toward what they can do next. I believe feedback should be treated as a growth conversation, not a performance judgment. It's not just about what happened in the past; it's about looking forward, empowering the person and exploring what's possible. I often call it 'feed forward' because that shift in mindset helps people see it as an opportunity, not a critique. Instead of telling someone what they did wrong, I invite them to reflect. I might ask, 'How do you think that went?' or 'What would make it better next time?' That opens the door to self-awareness and accountability, without triggering defensiveness. I encourage leaders to let go of tired formulas like the 'feedback sandwich.' Most people see right through it—it feels scripted and can shut people down before they truly engage. Instead, I use the GROW model by Sir John Whitmore: define the goal, assess the current reality, explore options, and decide on the way forward. The GROW framework works across performance conversations, coaching moments and peer-level check-ins, creating structure and fostering ownership. At its best, feedback highlights strengths, explores next steps and builds confidence. It's a conversation, not a correction. And when delivered with curiosity and care, feedback becomes one of the most powerful leadership tools we have. Feedback shouldn't be limited to when something goes wrong. It should be part of the everyday rhythm of how teams operate. One of the most powerful things leaders can do is normalize feedback by modeling it themselves. That means not just giving feedback, but also actively seeking it from peers and team members. When leaders show they're open to growth, it signals to everyone that feedback is not a threat—it's a shared tool for learning. We need to shift feedback away from being tied only to performance metrics or moments of failure. A holistic feedback culture includes celebrating soft skills, mindset and effort, not just results. Too often, I see teams race from one goal to the next without stopping to acknowledge what went well. Leaders must create space to celebrate wins just as much as they coach through challenges. Recognition should happen publicly, boosting morale and reinforcing positive behaviors. But when it comes to developmental feedback, it's best done in private, where it can be delivered with care and clarity. Both acknowledgment and feedback are essential; we need the yin and yang. People thrive when they feel seen not only for what needs to improve but also for what they're doing right. Ultimately, we all want to grow. When feedback becomes a natural, respected part of the culture, it fuels that growth for individuals and for the organization as a whole. To make feedback meaningful and safe, leaders must start with intention. Before offering any input, it's important to clarify the purpose: Why are we having this conversation? What area of growth are we aiming to support? Setting that intention helps create clarity and reduces defensiveness. Equally important is the need to ground feedback in observable behaviors, not assumptions or personal labels. Saying, 'In the last meeting, I noticed you stayed quiet,' opens up a constructive dialogue. Saying, 'You're too quiet,' shuts it down. Feedback should be specific, situational and framed in a way that invites reflection rather than resistance. The most impactful feedback conversations are collaborative. Instead of simply pointing out what needs to change, ask, 'How can I support you?' That simple question shifts the tone from correction to partnership. It reassures them they're not alone, support is available and encouraged.. Ultimately, feedback isn't about having the answers as a leader. It's about facilitating growth by helping others see where they are now, where they want to go and how you can help them get there. That's when feedback becomes a catalyst for progress instead of a source of fear. Great leadership is about listening, connecting and creating space for growth. When communication is rooted in trust and feedback is reframed as 'feed forward,' people feel empowered to improve and contribute. By modeling openness and normalizing feedback, leaders build a culture where learning is constant and acknowledgment is valued. That's how organizations and the people within them truly grow. Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
Entrepreneur
22-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Intuition is the same as a Gut Feeling – and Five Other Intuition Myths
In my work as an Executive and Intuition Coach, I hear the word "intuition" bandied around a lot. Although some may view intuition as being spiritual, it has found more popularity amongst business leaders, in recent years, due to its grounding in neuroscience. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. However, whatever angle you happen to be exploring it from, a lot of common assumptions about intuition are incomplete and unhelpful. Because of that, what leaders think of as intuition is often something entirely different. I cover some of the most common myths below. - Intuition is the same as Gut Feeling The answer is yes, sometimes. However, this is far from the whole truth. Often, the gut can be misleading because when we experience emotions (even if we're not consciously aware of what they are), we feel them in the body. The gut is often where we feel anxiety or "butterflies" if we're excited. The problem is it can be difficult to differentiate between emotion or impulse and real intuition. Real intuition is not an emotional experience. It is a clear, quick knowing. Although it may be followed by an emotion (especially if you don't want to do whatever the intuition is telling you to do), the actual intuitive hit is emotion free. - If it "feels good" it's intuition Contrary to what may be talked about in the spiritual world, following your intuition may not always feel good. In fact, it may feel downright uncomfortable or painful. As I mentioned before, intuition is not an emotional download. Your real intuition will guide you to the right action at the right time. How you feel about it (whether good or bad) is not the point. So don't confuse feeling good about something with it being good for your growth. Impulsively eating junk food or drinking alcohol may feel good in the moment, but few could argue that it hurts you long term. - Only some "gifted" people have intuition In our "guru" obsessed culture, we are told to look outside of ourselves (to coaches, healers, therapists, experts etc) to help us find our own answers. While all these things can be helpful, it does not take away from the fact that we ALL have the capacity to develop intuition. We can literally train the intuition muscle for ourselves to help us to make better, quicker and more profitable decisions. - Intuition replaces your rational mind Simple put. No, it doesn't. It is an extremely useful accompaniment. Intuition can act as a primary filter, and you can then use your mind to do the "logic" behind it. This is what your mind is useful for – solving problems. As opposed to brain over-analysis, which is unhelpful in a fast-paced world. In a sea of information and data overload, your intuition works in conjunction with your rational mind to lead you to the best decision at the right time. Quickly. - Intuition is an uncontrollable, unconscious process Many leaders experience intuition as sudden flashes or downloads, when they're "off duty". It's extraordinary the number of leaders who have found the ideal solution to a problem or had an amazing idea while running, walking, taking a bath etc. Neuroscience explains why – mental downtime is crucial for intuition because The Default Mode Network comes online. It's during these quiet moments that our brains can make unexpected connections, leading to those sudden flashes of insight that seem to come out of nowhere. Having said that, rather than relying on answers coming by chance, we can train our intuition to be available to us on demand. So, we can use it precisely all the time. - Intuition is too spiritual or "woo" and I won't be taken seriously as a business leader. There's a reason why all the most successful leaders in the world, from Steve Jobs to Einstein, talk about intuition. It's what gave them the edge. Imagine knowing how to lead in all circumstances, knowing where to focus your attention to get a specific result and when and what decisions to make for the highest good. Intuition is grounded in neuroscience, and involves tapping into subconscious knowledge and experiences, as well as tapping into the electromagnetic fields that surround the human body. All of which we can consciously access with training. When we step outside of these six myths and start actively recognising and training precise intuition, it changes the game, in terms of the results you can achieve in all areas of your life.
