Executive career coaching: plan your next senior move
At executive level the difficult question is not what next. It is what for.
Senior people rarely run out of options. They run out of criteria — and without one, you take the next available good thing, repeatedly, until you arrive somewhere you did not choose and cannot easily leave. That is the most common senior career failure, and it does not look like a failure from the outside.
There is also arithmetic nobody enjoys. If a senior role takes three to four years to do properly, there are not many more moves in a career. That is not a reason to rush. It is a reason to choose deliberately, which is the whole of this work.
This page is about the decision. Running the search is executive job search; doing the job once you have it is executive coaching; and the specific step into C-suite scope is C-suite transition coaching.
ICF ACC · MBA · Riyadh · Arabic and English
The four questions
Everything else is downstream of these, and most senior people have answered only the first.
1 — What am I for? Build, fix, scale or stabilise. Most executives have done two of these well and one under duress, and the one you are best at is not always the one you enjoy. This is the same distinction that decides how a board reads your CV: executive CV review.
2 — What do I want the next five years to buy? Money, scope, a particular kind of problem, proximity to family, a reputation, a runway to something else, or simply not having a bad year. All legitimate. The failure is not choosing — because a career optimises for whatever you did not name.
3 — What am I no longer willing to do? At this level the answer is usually specific and usually unsaid. A commute, a travel load, a sector, a kind of owner, a kind of board, a level of exposure. Naming it removes half the options quickly, which is the point.
4 — Who actually decides whether I get it? Search consultants, boards, nomination committees, one chairman, a sponsor. The answer changes what you do next far more than any positioning exercise.
Which of the three problems do you have?
They look similar from inside and need different work.
No criterion. Several viable directions, no basis to choose, and a growing suspicion that you are waiting for one of them to become obviously correct. It will not. This is the most common and the most tractable.
A plateau you cannot see the shape of. You are not progressing and you cannot tell whether it is the organisation, the market, the timing or you. The work is diagnosis before anything else, and the honest answer is sometimes that there is no seat: promotion coaching covers that version.
An ending you did not choose. A restructure, a new chief executive, a strategy you disagree with, or a quiet signal that you are being managed out. Common at senior level and rarely discussed. The work here is different: it is short, it is practical, and the first task is separating what is actually happening from what it feels like.
Is this the right purchase? Fit diagnostic
2 = clearly true, 1 = partly, 0 = not true.
| Score | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | I have more than one viable option and no criterion for choosing | |
| 2 | I can describe what I want to be doing in five years — and I am not sure I believe it | |
| 3 | I have been offered or approached about things and turned them down without being able to say why | |
| 4 | Something has changed — a new CEO, a restructure, an ending — and I am reacting rather than deciding | |
| 5 | The people I would normally think this through with all have an interest in the answer | |
| 6 | I have made the last two moves for reasons I would not defend now |
8–12: this is the work, and it is usually short — one or two conversations rather than a programme.
4–7: likely useful, and the value depends on whether you will be honest in the room about row 6.
Below 4: you may already know the answer and be looking for permission. That is a different and cheaper conversation, and worth having with someone who has no stake in it.
Row 5 is the reason this work exists. At senior level your spouse, your chairman, your head of HR and your best friend in the industry all have a position. A conversation with no stake in the outcome is genuinely scarce, and it is most of what is being bought.
What is in scope, and what is not
In scope:
- [ ] Deciding what the next move is for, before deciding what it is
- [ ] Testing an option you are drawn to against what you actually said you wanted
- [ ] Naming what you will not do, and what that costs you
- [ ] Working out who decides, and what they need to see
- [ ] Handling an ending you did not choose, and the sequencing around it
- [ ] The portfolio question — whether the next thing is a role at all
Not in scope:
- [ ] Running your search, making introductions or approaching employers for you
- [ ] Any promise about a role, a level or a timeline
- [ ] Executive search services — this is not a search firm and has no candidate pipeline
- [ ] Positioning the document, which is executive CV review
- [ ] Preparing for a specific process with a date on it, which is executive interview coaching
- [ ] The first ninety days of a role you have already accepted, which is C-suite transition coaching
Preparing for the discovery call
Bring these. It changes what one hour can do.
1 WHAT I AM FOR, in one sentence (build / fix / scale / stabilise — pick one) ________________________________________________ 2 THE OPTIONS ON THE TABLE, named ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ 3 WHAT I WANT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS TO BUY ________________________________________________ 4 WHAT I AM NO LONGER WILLING TO DO ________________________________________________ 5 WHO DECIDES, for each option ________________________________________________ 6 WHAT CHANGED RECENTLY (new CEO, restructure, an approach, a refusal, a birthday) ________________________________________________ 7 THE THING I HAVE NOT SAID OUT LOUD TO ANYONE ________________________________________________
Copy the block — nothing to download and no email required.
Item 7 is usually the session. Everything above it is context, and most senior people arrive knowing exactly what item 7 is.
How this works here
The relevant engagement is For Executives: Reach C-Level Roles — 6,000 SAR, two sessions over two hours, including a Work Personality Assessment and six months of follow-up.
Two sessions is the right shape for this rather than a limitation: the first establishes what the move is for, and the second tests a decision made with that criterion in hand. The six months of follow-up matter more here than elsewhere, because senior decisions resolve over quarters.
Sessions run in Arabic or English, in Riyadh.
Figures are the prices currently listed, and are confirmed before anything is agreed.
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In the Saudi market
The senior market is small and it is a network. Most executive moves here happen through people who already know your work, which makes discretion a practical constraint rather than a preference — and makes "who decides" (question four) more answerable than it would be in a larger market.
Government-linked entities, funds and their portfolio companies are a distinct set of options with their own governance, pace and reporting structures. Treating them as interchangeable with private-sector roles is the most common miscalculation at this level: government to private sector covers the operating-model differences in the other direction.
Sector growth has created more senior seats than there are people with the specific experience, which raises the value of being clear about what you are for. Vagueness costs more in a market with options than in one without.
A portfolio route — advisory, non-executive or a mix — is a legitimate answer and is more available than it was. Whether it is right for you is a question about what you want the next five years to buy, not a consolation prize.
Reputation travels faster than a CV. How you left the last role is known, and it shapes which conversations happen.
Common questions
How is this different from executive coaching?
Executive coaching works on how you operate in a role. This works on which role, and why. Different question, different length.
I do not want to leave, I want to know whether I should.
That is exactly this, and it is the more common version. A decision to stay, made deliberately, is a result.
Can you introduce me to search firms?
No. This is not a search service and there is no candidate pipeline. What it can do is make sure you know what you are looking for before those conversations start, which is what makes them productive: executive job search.
I have been approached about something and I have two weeks.
Then it is a decision, not a programme, and one conversation may be enough. Bring the discovery-call prep filled in.
I think I am being managed out.
Then the first task is establishing what is actually happening, separately from how it feels, and the sequencing matters more than the strategy. Bring item 6 and item 7.
I am not sure I want another executive role at all.
That is a real answer and it is more common than it is said. It belongs in question two, and nothing here assumes the next move is upward.
Is two sessions enough?
For a decision, usually. For an extended repositioning, the honest answer is that you will know after the first one, and that is a better basis for committing to more than a package bought in advance.
Start with question one
What are you for — build, fix, scale or stabilise? One word. If you cannot pick one, you have found the thing that has been making every other decision hard, and it is the cheapest problem on this page to solve.
A useful next step, matched to this topic
If you want support applying what you just read, start with the option closest to the problem in front of you.
Saad Al-Wuqayan
Career & Executive Coach — ICF ACC, MBA
Saad Al-Wuqayan coaches professionals and executives in Riyadh. Nearly two decades across engineering, business development, financial leadership as a CFO and government transformation sit behind every session.
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Work on this with a coach
If the decision in front of you is specific, a session is usually faster than another month of reading. Bring the situation as it actually is.