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12 hours ago • by Uwe Napiersky in Coaching Corner
Published June 5, 2026 in Coaching Corner • 6 min read
Jan is the global VP of transformation for a manufacturing multinational headquartered in Paris. He has held the role for 18 months, and it feels like a good fit for his capabilities. In his 10 years at the company, Jan has built a stellar reputation for getting things done. An engineer by training, he is an analytical thinker adept at finding innovative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. However, the challenge now facing Jan and his team is considerable.
The organization is targeting a comprehensive digital transformation. Integrating AI-powered capabilities across multiple functions will require major structural changes as key business functions are automated. As competitive pressures intensify, the need to reduce overheads will make staff cuts inevitable. Jan and his team are tasked with leading these efforts while minimizing disruption and sustaining workforce morale. The spotlight is on him, and the stakes are high.
Jan defaults to the leadership tools that have served him well up to now. He brings authority and a sense of urgency to team meetings, setting clear expectations and emphasizing the need for fast results. Accustomed to performing under pressure, Jan is deft in his decision-making and uncompromising about the swift impact he wants to see. He is explicit about holding his team members to the same high standards as himself. But something is off.
Even as the pressure mounts, his team feels sluggish and unenthusiastic. Meetings with direct reports feel like a solo show, with Jan doing most of the talking, decision-making, and cognitive legwork with minimal input from anyone else. Negotiations with different parts of the business are not yielding the results he expects, and it’s taking too long to reach a consensus. His requests are often met with passive resistance; broader decision-making is mired in politics and endless discussion.
Jan’s frustration is becoming mixed with anxiety. He knows that senior leadership and the board are looking to him to deliver. His response is to intensify control mechanisms: more meetings, more directives, push people harder. But it feels like a vicious circle: control, blame, action, misalignment, and repeat.
Making his way from another fruitless meeting, Jan overhears a remark made by a colleague from R&D: “When he (Jan) comes in, it’s like the oxygen goes out of the room.” Startled and confused, he asks himself what this means about his presence, energy, and leadership. He realizes that he’s close to hitting a wall while the clock is ticking. He decides to consult an executive coach.
The coach starts with two questions. The first is to describe how he typically approaches challenges. Pushed to reflect on this, Jan uses words that feel surprising and misaligned with his deeper intentions as a leader. His approach can be rushed, he says. His default response in the face of uncertainty is to act fast. Jan realizes that his impulse for instant solutions characterizes everything he does. When one solution fails to deliver, he quickly pivots, seeking new tools to achieve the “certainty” that he craves. Certainty to Jan is the same as knowledge. Delving deeper with his coach, Jan realizes that, to him, knowledge and certainty equate to success. These are breakthrough realizations. Questioning his leadership style for the first time yields a new understanding. Jan has pursued leadership as a competitive sport. This approach has taken him to the upper echelons of his organization, but at this new level, when his success depends on that of others, it no longer serves him.
The second question centers around the impact that Jan’s leadership behaviors have on his colleagues. He is asked to consider how his energy might influence and shape other people’s responses, perhaps in ways he does not anticipate. Fixated on results, he has never found it necessary to reflect on his own role in the human formula of teamwork and leadership. Jan realizes that his discomfort with uncertainty or a lack of knowledge leads him to rush others into decisions or, worse, into silence. He begins to see that his own inability to pause and sit with perplexity – to hold uncertainty – is having unintended consequences for his team and colleagues. In his rush to find answers, he is closing the space for input and collaboration, and stifling the creativity needed to drive the transformation agenda.
With his coach, Jan is able to frame this positively. These “negative capabilities” form a critical part of his identity, energy, and success as a leader. But unless they are held in check by the concomitant ability to hit pause and to invite conversation and dissent from others, they have the effect of blocking trust.
Armed with this understanding, Jan asks himself new questions. Instead of jumping in and giving direction, what new outcomes might he achieve by pausing, staying a little longer with the ambiguity in the room? What might emerge if he makes room for his team and his colleagues to do the same?
With his coach’s encouragement, Jan decides to experiment in the workplace. Not to deliver radical change nor to become a different person, but to control his well-worn (but now visible) impulse to rush in with answers and directives. Instead of looking outwards and judging others when they fail to perform, he will consciously examine his own behavior to build greater self-awareness. A set of exercises will help bring his unconscious impulses to light. In meetings, he practices being the last to speak, allowing others to outline their thinking while observing his own urge to intervene. Whenever he feels the impulse to take control, he introduces a brief pause, a few seconds to notice what is happening within him, before choosing how to respond.
Jan’s coaching journey yields another insight as the dialogue with his coach surfaces a vulnerability. For the first time in years, he feels he’s not the only expert in the room. As they continue talking, he learns to feel more comfortable with this. As his self-awareness grows, he begins to appreciate how he has been programmed by his success to be fast and decisive, and that systemic anxiety in the organization has contaminated his leadership. With this knowledge, he is better equipped to step back, pause, and self-regulate to avoid the blame-and-control dynamic that has stifled his team leadership.
Jan is learning to check impulses that were unconscious and invisible. Where control, blame, and action were dominant dynamics, he is making space for co-creation and collaboration. In the process, his own personal and professional transformation has begun.
Executive coach
Uwe Napiersky is a trusted executive coach who has worked with CEOs, directors, and VPs worldwide. He holds a PhD in business psychology from CA University Kiel, Germany, and is a Senior Fellow at the UK’s Higher Education Academy.
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