CEO Coaching Script
CEO:
We measure output, deadlines, compliance.
We don’t measure relationships—not with staff, not with partners, not with rights-bearing peoples or government.
And honestly, the idea of relational strain makes me uncomfortable.
Advisor:
What truth is your discomfort trying to protect you from?
Scene: A Quiet Team, A Quiet Network
CEO:
We’re hitting every target.
But the team feels tight.
Partners are cautious.
Rights-bearing peoples have gone quiet.
Government contacts are formal, not warm.
Advisor:
Whose silence have you stopped deserving?
CEO:
So “no issues raised” isn’t a sign of health?
Advisor:
What conditions keep people from bringing hard truths into relationship with you?
Scene: The Hard Question
Advisor:
Do you want trust—or the appearance of trust that keeps settler systems comfortable?
CEO:
You’re suggesting we haven’t been listening.
Advisor:
When conflict rises, do you open space—or do you protect the institution?
Scene: The First Crack in Control
CEO:
An Indigenous rights-holder challenged our approach last week.
My instinct was to defend.
But I paused.
Holding the room without asserting power felt unfamiliar.
Advisor:
What leadership becomes possible when you stop needing to win the room?
Scene: The Pivot
CEO:
Here’s what we will do:
1. Add trust, clarity, and community accountability to executive evaluations.
2. Reprioritize workloads through listening, not defensiveness.
3. Surface relational risk early—team tensions, partner uncertainty, intergovernmental strain.
4. Stop rewarding overwork as loyalty.
5. Meet tension with curiosity instead of force.
Advisor:
Who might trust you more when your leadership becomes relational instead of extractive?
Scene: The Cost
Advisor:
What power are you willing to release so a different culture can emerge?
CEO:
The belief that emotional distance is strength.
The reflex to control every timeline.
The tendency to treat rights-bearing peoples and partners as stakeholders to manage rather than relationships to honour.
The instinct to retreat into authority when things get hard.
Scene: The Capacity Required
CEO:
I think I understand now.
Trust isn’t a strategy.
Trust is a relationship—and every constituency can feel when it breaks.
And relationship requires capacities we rarely teach leaders:
• To let people affect us.
• To be changed by what we hear.
• To stay in relationship when conflict emerges.
• To see tension as care, not threat.
• To show humanity without fearing it weakens authority.
(Pauses.)
CEO:
The real trust skill is choosing relationship when things get real.
Advisor:
If trust is the multiplier, what becomes possible when communities finally believe you?
CEO:
With trust, 80% of strategy becomes real.
Without it, barely 40% survives—especially when communities stop believing the story we tell about ourselves.
