Succession is rarely about changing titles. It’s about passing real authority to the next person, and finding your own way to let go.
SPACE TO THINK CLEARLY, WHEN THE CALL IS YOURS TO MAKE.
Confidential executive coaching for business owners and senior leaders. TC Group’s coaching service, delivered by Graeme Copestake.
Running a business has rarely asked more of the people leading it. More decisions, made faster, with less certainty, and fewer people you can think out loud with.
Executive coaching gives you a confidential space to step back, think clearly, and lead the way you want to, through the moments that matter most.
Who is executive coaching for?
Owners, managing directors, founders and senior leaders. People who are good at what they do, carrying real responsibility, and facing a moment where good advice alone isn’t quite enough.
The moments coaching is for
Coaching tends to matter most at a particular point. You might recognise one of these:
Having the role and feeling like the leader are two different things. Stepping fully into authority is its own piece of work.
In a family business, no decision is ever only a business decision. The hard part is keeping the two roles clear.
Nobody’s arguing any more. People agree in the room and do something different outside it. Challenge has started to feel like exposure, and disagreement no longer lands as disagreement.
The higher you go, the fewer people you can think out loud with, because they need you to be sure.
It isn’t any single call that wears you down. It’s the volume of them, and the quiet guilt that can come with it.
If everything still comes back to you, the business can look as though it has moved on when it hasn’t quite.
WHAT CHANGES?
The work is contracted around outcomes, agreed at the start and reviewed as you go. Depending on where you begin, it might look like this:
- A successor starts making decisions without routing them back through you.
- You say what the business needs without first managing everyone’s reaction to it.
- The senior team disagrees properly again, and something moves as a result.
- You stop being the point every decision has to pass through, including the ones that were never yours.
- You know the next right move, even when the ground keeps shifting. Control today is less about certainty than about clarity.
WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT ISN’T
It is a confidential space to think clearly about the leadership side of things: the calls that are yours to make, and how you lead through them.
It isn’t consultancy, training, therapy, or being told how to run your business. The work helps you see, think and act with more clarity. It doesn’t take the decision away from you.
HOW IT WORKS
It starts with a conversation. Half an hour, confidential, no charge and no obligation on either side. It works both ways: you’re deciding whether this would help, and I’m checking that coaching is the right response to what you’re carrying. If it isn’t, you’ll hear that from me.
From there, a structured programme, typically six sessions over four to six months, contracted directly with you and shaped around the moment you’re in. What you want to be different is agreed in writing at the start, looked at again in the middle, and closed out against what has actually changed.
Nothing said in coaching is shared with anyone else.
WHY NOW?
TC Group’s research, Success Without Stillness, asked more than 1,500 UK business leaders how they are really experiencing the pace of running a business today. Only one in eight feel fully in control. Over half say the business couldn’t run effectively for six months without them.
The same research asked how they now measure success. Personal growth came first. Ahead of financial success, ahead of developing their people, ahead of family security, creating something of their own, and legacy.
That is the quieter finding, and the more useful one. The people running these businesses are not looking for a way to work harder. They are looking to become the leader the next stage of the business needs. When the role settles, the person grows, and that growth is what makes the rest of it possible.
None of that is a sign of weak leadership. It’s the reality of leading at pace, and it’s exactly what coaching is for.
ABOUT GRAEME
I’m a Partner at TC Group and the executive coach behind this service.
I’ve spent more than 20 years in senior business roles, as a Chartered Accountant, Finance Director and Partner, so I know what it’s like to carry responsibility for a business and make the calls under pressure. I trained as an executive coach at Hult Ashridge, to Master’s level, and I work to EMCC Global standards, with confidential supervision throughout.
It’s the combination that matters: someone who understands the commercial world you’re in, and who’s trained to help you think clearly within it.
CONFIDENTIALITY
What’s said in coaching stays in coaching. It’s confidential from your business and from the firm, with clear contracting from the start.
Where your organisation is paying, what they will and won’t hear is agreed in writing before the first session. Usually that means attendance, the objectives you set, and whether you’re making progress against them. Never what was said.
That confidentiality isn’t a detail. It’s what makes the work usable.
START A CONVERSATION
If any of this sounds familiar, the next step is simply a conversation. Not a sales call: a chance to think clearly about a senior question, and to see whether coaching is the right response.
If it’s the right thing, you’ll know reasonably quickly. If it isn’t, you’ll have spent half an hour thinking clearly about something that matters.
FAQs
We’ve put together a selection of questions that people ask about executive coaching:
Is this therapy?
No. Therapy attends to your history and your inner life. This works in the present tense, on the role you’re in and the decisions in front of you. If something surfaces that belongs elsewhere, you’ll be told plainly and helped to find the right support.
Will any of this come back to my accountant?
No. Coaching is contracted separately and held separately. If your business is a TC client, your relationship partner will know an engagement exists, because of invoicing, and nothing else. Ever.
How long does it take?
Typically six sessions over four to six months. Some engagements are shorter. Some continue.
What does it cost?
It depends on the scope, which is why there’s no price list here. The fee is agreed in writing before anything begins, and the first conversation is free.
What if it isn't the right thing for me?
Then you’ll hear that in the first conversation, and where it helps, a suggestion of what might be a better fit.
