Executive
Counsel
Senior counsel for CEOs, founders, and executives who must remain credible, decisive, and coherent when the stakes are high, the pressure is sustained, and responsibility cannot be delegated.
The work is shaped around your reality, not a curriculum. A confidential space to strengthen judgement, discipline decisions, and hold the leadership signal you intend — especially under scrutiny.
Some leaders engage both advisory and counsel, but the distinction matters. The Advisory Partnership handles the what — decisions, capital, structure. Executive Counsel handles the how: judgement discipline, communication, and leadership coherence under pressure.
For most leaders, one or the other is sufficient. For some, the work moves naturally between both. The structure follows what you need.
Some leaders begin with Executive Counsel and find that as the work develops, the focus shifts toward the structural and strategic — at which point it moves naturally into an Advisory Partnership. The structure follows what you actually need.
Structure
- Cadence: Typically twice monthly, adjusted to what the period requires
- Duration: 60–90 minutes depending on what is being worked through
- Mode: Virtual or in-person depending on location
- Length: 3–6 months around a specific moment, or sustained across years
- Confidentiality: Absolute
Pressure does not create new problems. It reveals the operating system.
The patterns that run beneath conscious awareness until the stakes rise and the conditions tighten. These are the patterns this work addresses.
Avoidance Disguised as Keeping Options Open
The decision that needs to be made but is being deferred — often with rational-sounding justifications about gathering more information or waiting for the right moment.
False Certainty Used to Calm the Room
Projecting confidence to stabilise others when the internal picture is less clear than the external performance suggests. This works until it does not.
Over-Control Under Pressure
The instinct to tighten grip when circumstances feel unstable. Effective in the short term. Corrosive over time — to the team, to trust, and to decision quality.
Decision Fatigue and Loss of Signal
The accumulation of small unresolved calls that degrades the capacity to make the consequential ones well. When everything feels urgent, nothing receives the attention it requires.
Misalignment Between Belief and Behaviour
The gap between stated values and actual behaviour under pressure. Not hypocrisy — drift. And drift compounds.
Pressure reveals the operating system. Counsel recalibrates it.
Focused on the decisions, communication, and pressures you are actually navigating
Not a curriculum. Not a structured programme with predetermined outcomes. The work responds to what is live, what is building, and what is about to become consequential.
- Decision preparation and pressure-testing — mapping consequences, surfacing assumptions, stress-testing conclusions before they are committed to
- Clarity on trade-offs, priorities, and constraints — what you are actually choosing between, what is negotiable and what is not
- Language discipline — what you say, what you avoid, the gap between how your communication is received and how you intend it
- Board, investor, and stakeholder readiness — preparation for the moments where your thinking is under examination
- Leadership coherence — holding the alignment between what you say matters and what your behaviour signals
- Sustainability — leadership without slow self-erosion. Discipline that can be maintained over years, not months
This work is for
- CEOs, founders, and executives carrying final accountability
- Leaders navigating sustained pressure and scrutiny
- Those who want clarity, not reassurance
- Leaders committed to behaviour change, not insight without action
This work is not for
- Performance optimisation or high-performance mindset work
- Exploratory conversations without consequence attached
- Leaders seeking validation rather than honest assessment
- Situations where the primary goal is comfort rather than discipline
If your primary goal is comfort, this will be the wrong kind of work
If it is clarity — describe what you are carrying and we will establish whether this structure fits.
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