Three years ago, I sat across from a CEO of a mid-sized manufacturing firm in Penang. He had agreed to coaching reluctantly, mostly because his board chairman had insisted. Within the first ten minutes, he leaned back in his chair and said, ‘So, are you going to ask me about my childhood?’ He was half-joking, but the question revealed something I encounter constantly in my work across Southeast Asia: a fundamental misunderstanding of what executive coaching actually is.
I have been coaching senior leaders for over twenty years. I hold an EMCC Senior Professional Coach accreditation. I have worked with more than thirty executives across industries ranging from fintech to family-owned conglomerates. And still, the most common question I get when someone hears I am a coach is some variation of, ‘So it is like therapy?’ The short answer is no. The longer answer is worth exploring, because the confusion is not harmless. It keeps leaders from seeking the very support that could transform how they lead.
Therapy, at its core, looks backwards. It helps you understand and heal from past experiences. Coaching looks forwards. It takes where you are now and builds a bridge to where you want to be. Therapy asks, ‘Why are you this way?’ Coaching asks, ‘What will you do next, and what is getting in the way?’ Both are valuable. But they serve fundamentally different purposes. And confusing the two means leaders either avoid coaching because they think it signals weakness, or they enter coaching expecting emotional excavation rather than strategic acceleration.
The Real Challenge
The real challenge is not that leaders do not understand coaching intellectually. Most of them can recite the difference between coaching and therapy if pressed. The problem is deeper: they do not know what it feels like. They have never experienced a structured conversation designed purely to sharpen their thinking, challenge their assumptions, and hold them accountable to their own stated goals.
What I see across boardrooms in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Jakarta is a pattern. Leaders surround themselves with people who either agree with them or who have an agenda. Their direct reports filter information. Their peers are competitors. Their spouses hear a curated version of reality. The result is that the most consequential decisions in the organisation are being made inside a bubble. And nobody tells the person inside the bubble that the bubble exists.
Another thing leaders get wrong is expecting coaching to be prescriptive. They want the coach to tell them what to do. ‘Just give me the answer,’ a COO in Singapore once told me in exasperation during our second session. But a good coach does not give answers. A good coach asks the questions that reveal you already have the answer, you have just been too busy, too distracted, or too surrounded by noise to hear it.
What Executive Coaching Actually Looks Like
It Starts With a Diagnostic, Not a Diagnosis
Before any coaching engagement begins, I conduct a thorough diagnostic session. This is not a psychological assessment. It is a strategic conversation. We look at where the leader is right now: what challenges they face, what goals they are pursuing, what patterns keep showing up, and what blind spots they suspect but cannot name. I gather context about the organisation, the team, the market pressures. In many cases, I speak with key stakeholders, the board chair, the HR director, sometimes a trusted lieutenant, to get a 360-degree view. This is not therapy’s intake form. It is more like a strategic audit of the leader’s operating system.
Sessions Are Structured, Forward-Looking Conversations
A typical coaching session lasts sixty to ninety minutes. We meet fortnightly or monthly, depending on the engagement. Each session has a structure, but not a rigid script. The leader sets the agenda: what is most pressing, what decision is keeping them up at night, what conversation they are avoiding. My job is to listen at a level most people never experience. Not just to the words, but to what is underneath the words. The assumptions. The fears masquerading as logic. The patterns that repeat across different contexts. Then I reflect, challenge, reframe. I might ask, ‘What would you do if you were not afraid of the board’s reaction?’ or ‘You have described three different problems, but I hear one theme connecting all of them. Do you see it?’ These are not therapeutic interventions. They are strategic provocations.
Accountability Is Built In, Not Bolted On
Every session ends with commitments. Not homework in the school sense, but genuine commitments the leader makes to themselves. ‘I will have the conversation with my co-founder by Friday.’ ‘I will spend thirty minutes each morning on strategic thinking before checking email.’ ‘I will delegate the regional operations review entirely to my VP.’ The next session begins by revisiting those commitments. Not with judgement, but with curiosity. What happened? What got in the way? What did you learn about yourself? This accountability loop is one of the most powerful elements of coaching, and it is entirely absent from therapy.
The thread connecting all three elements is this: executive coaching treats the leader as a whole, capable person who has the resources to solve their own challenges but needs a structured space and a skilled thinking partner to access those resources. It is not about fixing what is broken. It is about sharpening what is already strong.
A Story From the Field
I worked with a Group CEO of a Malaysian conglomerate who was preparing for a major regional expansion into Vietnam and Thailand. On paper, everything was in place: the capital, the team, the market research. But something was off. He could not articulate what, exactly, but decisions that should have been straightforward were taking weeks. His leadership team was growing frustrated.
Over the course of four coaching sessions, we uncovered something he had not acknowledged even to himself: he did not trust his newly appointed COO. Not because the COO lacked competence, but because the CEO had not fully let go of the operational identity that had built the company in the first place. He was unconsciously undermining delegation by inserting himself into decisions the COO should have owned. Once he saw the pattern, everything shifted. We worked on what letting go actually looked like in practice, not as a concept but as a series of specific, daily behaviours. Within two months, the expansion timeline was back on track, and his COO later told the HR director it was the first time he felt genuinely trusted.
That is what coaching looks like. No childhood stories. No lying on a couch. Just a leader gaining the clarity to see what was right in front of him.
Key Takeaway
Executive coaching is not therapy, mentoring, or consulting. It is a structured, forward-looking partnership that helps leaders think more clearly, act more deliberately, and lead more effectively. If you are a senior leader making high-stakes decisions in an environment where honest feedback is scarce, coaching is not a luxury. It is a strategic necessity.
Your Next Step
Most leaders I work with tell me they wished they had started coaching two years earlier. The executives who gain the greatest advantage are the ones who act before the crisis, not after. I offer a complimentary 60-minute diagnostic session, valued at RM 1,000, where we will identify your most pressing leadership challenge and explore whether coaching is the right fit. No sales pitch. No obligation. Just a genuinely useful conversation. Only a limited number of these sessions are available each month, and I work with a small number of clients at any one time to ensure depth over volume. Visit being-specific.com/contact to book your session.
