Coach Me! Your Personal Board of Directors

49 Future-Proof Yourself for Complex, Disruptive Times: Learning Faster Than the Pace of Change

David B. Peterson PhD

David B. Peterson, PhD, Chief Transformation Officer at 7 Paths Forward, LLC and CEO of Peterson Leadership, LLC has been recognized as a world-class executive coach and thought leader for over 25 years. From 2011 to 2020, he was head of Google’s Executive Coaching & Leadership team, where he built one of the world’s most innovative and high-impact coaching programs, and was selected as the #1 Corporate Coach in the world.

“When successful leaders fail, what is the #1 reason?”

Of course, there are many possible factors, but the primary reason successful leaders go off the rails? It is not micromanaging, arrogance, complacency, or even failing to listen, although those are certainly not rare. The #1 reason successful leaders fail is they do not adapt when things change. Decades of research on derailed leaders drives this point home (Hogan et al., 2011). Rising star leaders can get blinded by their success and fail to adapt as they advance, as they deal with new stakeholders, as economic factors shift, and as the competitive landscape evolves.

Let us consider a classic scenario: Arjun, brilliant and beloved by his team, was the CEO of his third startup when his company was acquired by a large tech firm. He believed that joining a larger organization would help them scale faster, with fewer distractions. He wanted to focus on technology and product issues rather ...