From Senior Director to VP: Leading Through Organizational Change
LEADERSHIP COACHING · SENIOR DIRECTOREddy* was a Senior Director with a clear vision for where he wanted to take his organization. He came to me wanting to become a stronger communicator and bring his team along with that vision. As we got into the work, we discovered there was a bigger opportunity.
It started with communication.
Eddy had inherited a team he didn’t feel deeply connected to, and he was struggling to communicate a compelling vision for where the organization was headed.
That was the problem we initially set out to work on.
But during a leadership vision offsite, something else became clear: the organization itself was no longer structured to support the vision.
Better communication mattered. But communication alone wasn’t going to get them where they wanted to go.
The work became bigger than the original question.
Over the next six months, we looked at what needed to change for the organization to support the direction Eddy wanted to take it.
We redesigned the team structure, clarified roles, merged teams, and built a stronger rhythm for leadership communication.
The work wasn’t simply about finding better words for the vision. It was about creating an organization that could actually move toward it.
What changed
The organization shifted integrated search functionality into the most strategic product bet for the app at the time, and leadership communication improved.
Eddy continued growing alongside the organization and was later promoted from Senior Director to Vice President.
The larger lesson
““Communication alone can’t overcome a structure that no longer supports the work.””
Eddy came to me wanting to become a better communicator. That mattered, but it wasn’t the whole story.
Sometimes the question someone brings to coaching is exactly where the work begins. It just isn’t always where the work ends.
*Names changed to honor confidentiality
