Episode 1: Why Every Executive Needs an Executive Coach

In a world shaped by AI, economic uncertainty, and constant change, leaders need more than expertise, they need clarity. In this first episode of Mitchell’s Moments Coaching Podcast, executive coach Mitchell Schuckman explains why coaching has become one of the most valuable tools for senior leaders today.

In the first episode of Mitchell’s Moments Coaching Podcast, Mitchell Schuckman introduces the purpose of the show and explores a question many leaders are asking today: Why does executive coaching matter more than ever?

Drawing on nearly 40 years of business experience, including decades as a senior partner at PwC, Mitchell explains the real difference between advising and coaching. Coaching isn’t about telling leaders what to do. It’s about creating the space, curiosity, and clarity that help them find their own path forward.

Through real examples from his coaching practice, Mitchell discusses how executives are navigating challenges such as artificial intelligence reshaping expertise, increased pressure to develop business, and difficult career decisions in a rapidly changing business environment. He also shares how coaching helps leaders move from technical expert to trusted relationship builder and provides a safe space to think through high-stakes decisions.

In a world shaped by economic uncertainty, global change, and accelerating technology, the ability to pause, reflect, and gain clarity has never been more valuable.

This episode explores:

• What executive coaching really is (and what it isn’t)
• Why technical expertise alone is no longer enough
• How coaching helps leaders grow as business developers and decision makers
• Why having a trusted, experienced sounding board can make all the difference

Mitchell’s Moments delivers short, focused conversations designed to provide practical insights you can apply immediately.

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Each episode delivers short, practical insights on leadership, coaching, business development, and navigating today’s changing business world.

You can also learn more about Mitchell Schuckman and his coaching and leadership programs at
www.theschuckmangroup.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to episode one of Mitchell's Moments Coaching Podcast. I'm Mitchell Shuckman. My company is called the Shuckman Group, and I provide executive coaching, leadership development, training, business development consulting, team training, team coaching to my clients. You can find everything about me at theshuckmangroup.com. First episode of my podcast. Here's my plan. My podcasts are going to be under 20 minutes. They're going to cover one topic. They're going to give you a bite-sized learning, and you can go on with the rest of your day. So here's episode one. And the main theme or title of this episode is why every executive needs an executive coach, especially today. So I'm going to tackle a few things. Thing one, what is a coach? And you know, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what a coach is. And I have to be honest, when I first got into coaching, I thought I knew what a coach was, and I thought being a coach was telling people what to do, telling them how to do it and why to do it. I quickly learned that coaching is not advising. Coaching isn't telling people what to do. Coaching is helping people learn for themselves with a guide, their coach, how to improve or how to tackle the things they want to improve or tackle. That's coaching. I did my coaching training a couple different places. And I was skeptical. My first coaching trainers were Mary and Andy Britton, Coaching Pacific, based in New Zealand, hired by my firm to coach, to train people who were in roles that provided coaching to teams, how to really be a coach. And I was skeptical because my view was I had a lot of experience, and my role as a coach was to tell people what to do. I quickly learned that wasn't the case. Later, I went to the Hudson Institute of Coaching, which is a higher level of coaching, more training, more practice, more hours in the classroom. And it was clear that coaching is not telling people what to do. It's being with them. Most importantly, it's being present, internally present, being curious, and holding a safe space for the person you're coaching to explore the areas they want to grow. So that's coaching in a nutshell, and that's the difference between coaching and advising. And I soon learned that that area of being present was really the most important thing. Now, um, I will say since since so I'm about at as of the date of this recording, about eight months into my coaching business, I spent most of my career, as people who know me know. I was a experienced and senior partner at Pricewaterhouse Cooper's. I spent most of my career serving tax clients as a certified public accountant. But in about the last 10 years of my career, I pivoted from client service to business development and business development coaching and consulting. And that though, and I and frankly, that was my true calling. So I love business development and I love helping people and coaching people way more than I loved providing tax advice and preparing tax returns. So I got into coaching and really have a ton of experience in the whole business world. And what I found, now that I'm coaching people, is that they really do appreciate the two the combination of the two things they just described. They appreciate someone who comes who they can be really authentic with, who they can share pretty much anything with, who is going to be there as a safe container, a safe place for them to talk about issues and explore areas of opportunity and growth for themselves. But they also appreciate, especially since I'm a business coach and an executive coach in the business setting, they do appreciate the experience. They appreciate that I've been in the seat as an executive, that I've run businesses, that I've managed PLs, that I've you know done business development, that I've coached business development. I know the market, I know the importance of storytelling, they appreciate all that. So when I coach someone, what you will find is someone who does all the coaching things well: the presence, the curiosity, the open-ended questions, the being there for the coache and someone who has an immense amount of experience. So I will often sit there when I'm coaching someone and say to them, hey, I've seen the situation similar to this before. Would you want me to share it with you to see if there's something we can learn there? You don't have to. It's not a requirement, but there's an experience thing that we might be able to learn from. And if they say yes, then we I raise it. Not as this is you should learn from this and do it this way. It's here's here's how this experience played out in another setting. Is there something to learn here? Is there something worth taking from that experience and that insight? If not, it's totally fine. But the point is the people who I coach really appreciate the combination of coaching training, coaching presence, and business experience and business acumen. So I thought what I would do is spend a few minutes talking about a couple of people. You know, I want to talk about one person in particular that I coached. I'll tell you probably another story later. Um, so you can get a sense of what some of the issues that are being faced today. So one of the people I coach is a very experienced person at a big professional services firm, and this person is a deep subject matter specialist. They know their business very, very well, and they serve their clients extremely well. Clients love her, they love her. Um, but she's she came to me and she said, Hey Mitchell, I'm concerned. I'm a great client service person and I know my business very well. I'm a very strong technician. However, I'm very worried. In 2026, in an age where artificial intelligence is taking over a lot of the basic tasks in my business, knowledge is the playing field as it relates to knowledge is really leveling. Almost anyone, if they ask AI the right questions or even the almost right questions, they can have almost the same amount of knowledge as I can have. So I, the person I'm coaching, said, I need to be a better business developer. I need to be in the market, meeting new people and selling more work. And how do I do that when I don't want to be a salesperson? I don't want to, I keep thinking of the person in the in the in the car dealership. I don't want to be a car salesman. What do I do? And what we did together is explored how she viewed selling. What were her fears about being in the market, meeting people that she might not know well, having conversations with them that may or may not land with them? She was very nervous about it. And that's where my coaching came in. I was able to help her kind of hold the mirror up to herself and get a sense of what were her fears, what did she, what was she viewing as a worst-case scenario, and what would some best case scenarios look like for her. And once she started to see those, we were able to begin to think about how to get there. And over time, she was able to come to a place, which frankly is a really good place to be, not just for her, but for anyone who needs to be a better business developer. And where she landed was I just need to have conversations with people about things that are important to them. And if I don't know what's important to them, I need to ask. And now, I mean, look, there it wasn't quite such a simple insight, but that was the crux of it. And over with by coaching, by coaching her and working with me and working together, this person was able to realize and able to kind of grow into this comfort level that being a salesperson is really just being a person. And selling isn't selling, selling is relating to someone and understanding what's important to them, and then helping them get what's important to them. So, in the case of professional services, if your client needed, I don't know, they needed great legal advice in a particular area, and you understood why they needed that legal advice, and you were a lawyer, you could give them the advice in a way that they needed it for purposes that were important to them that they could act on. So the coaching really helped my client figure out that she didn't have to be a car dealer salesperson to be a great business developer in her field. And so, so what's the point of that? The point is coaching today is really sorry, business today, not coaching today, business today is a highly stressful place to operate. I just the story I just told you is about the fact that AI was taking over tasks to be relevant, she needed to be in the market. That's just one example of all of the immense changes that are happening in the business world today. And the reason there's so many changes happening in the business world today is because there's so many changes happening in the world today. And we all know this, right? Geopolitics, economic uncertainty, global unrest, global um climate change, you name it, add AI on top of that, and you've got a probably more change than I've seen in my career, and I've been in business almost 40 years. It's a lot, and people are stressed. And in the case of the person I just talked about, we were able to get her, I was able to help her get to a point where she could be, she could go from being mostly a subject matter specialist to being a business developer and still feel comfortable. Another great example, you know, I I always use I always use this saying, and I it's not, you know, I didn't make it up, but where there's chaos, there's opportunity. So another area where I've done a lot of coaching right now is helping people consider their opportunities. Now I'm coaching uh a person right now who is a very senior person at a big accounting firm, and he's at a pivot point in his career. He feels like he's on the path to have a significant leadership role in his firm at some point in the next two to four years. However, he can also have equally and maybe more appealing leadership roles in firms in other firms. Leave his current employer, a place he's been at for I'd say probably almost 20 years, and leave for other opportunities that could be even more appealing than the opportunities in his own firm. And honestly, today that exists for top-notch talent and for top executives, the opportunities to kind of pivot, leave your employer, go somewhere else, there are a lot of opportunities, but it's scary. It's scary. How do I leave a place where I've built all these relationships, where I've built a reputation and I have a brand, where I know how to navigate things, and then and go somewhere else where the opportunity may sound great on paper, but I really don't know the people. I really don't know the culture, and I really don't know where their company, their firm is going. And there's another example of where I've been doing a lot of coaching. I mean, I hate to say it, but out of the 30 to 40 people I'm coaching, a solid 20 to 30 percent of them are at least considering leaving their current employer and looking for opportunities elsewhere. And that is tough stuff. And that's another place where we where coaching comes in. And I can be a safe place, look, you could talk about this with your friends and your family, but they don't, if they don't understand the business that you're operating in, it's very hard for them to coach you. And you certainly can't talk about it at work because you can tell your your people at your current employer that you're thinking of leaving, but you can always tell a coach. And if there's a coach who understands the environment where you work and understands the situation that you're living in, having that sounding board to think through your options and make a decision you're comfortable in is incredibly valuable. And I'm finding a lot of people who are really thanking me for being their coach and helping them think through these tough decisions. So, in summary, coaching isn't advising, coaching is leading from behind or leading walking alongside the person you're coaching and helping them find the answers. That's thing one. Thing two, having experience that is similar to the person you're coaching is helpful because you can relate more and you can talk things through at a level where they're at. And thing three, the environment we're working in today is so hard and there's so much going on. Having a safe place and a knowledgeable place to talk things through and find a way forward is incredibly helpful. So, in conclusion, um the Shuckman Group, my firm, Mitchell Shuckman, I still have some capacity to take on some coaching. It's a lot less than it was. There are a lot more people asking for coaching, but I am available. You can always reach out to me at theshuckmangroup.com. And if it turns out that I'm too busy, or if it turns out that perhaps we're not a perfect match, I have a network of coaches who absolutely one of those network of coaches is going to be a good match. So either way, it's great having, it's it's definitely worthwhile having a conversation and figuring out how coaching might be right for you. So, with that, that's the end of episode one of Mitchell's Moments Coaching Podcast. Thank you for joining and have a great day.