Beyond the Case
A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies.
This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.
Beyond the Case
30+ Years of Executive Coaching: Patterns & Frameworks Behind Leadership Success - Linda Miklas
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Working with Linda Miklas, my executive coach during the OPM program at Harvard Business School, was one of the most formative experiences in how I think about leadership.
In this conversation, we go beyond frameworks and into the lived reality of leadership under pressure. Linda brings over 30 years of experience coaching senior executives, founders, and CEOs through moments of transition when stakes are high, roles are expanding, and internal clarity often lags behind external expectations.
What stands out in her perspective is not complexity, but simplicity applied at depth: leadership challenges are rarely about intelligence or intent. They are about clarity, communication, execution, and self-awareness. Through stories and patterns drawn from thousands of coaching conversations, she explains how leaders evolve as they scale, and why their greatest strengths often become their most subtle constraints.
We also explore the quieter side of leadership that is rarely discussed openly: the loneliness of decision-making, the constant recalibration of pace and passion, and the internal doubt that even highly successful leaders carry into new environments. Ultimately, the conversation returns to a central idea: leadership is not defined in moments of ease, but in how you show up when things are uncertain, unexpected, or uncomfortable.
Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:
- Executive coaching provides a rare, judgment-free space for leaders to think, reflect, and gain clarity under pressure.
- The most valuable coaching moments often come from simply articulating thoughts out loud and hearing them clearly for the first time.
- Speed and passion are double-edged strengths, they create momentum but can distort judgment when uncalibrated.
- Leadership effectiveness consistently depends on three pillars: clarity, communication, and execution.
- One of the most common blind spots is when leaders assume alignment instead of explicitly communicating direction and expectations.
- As leaders scale, the capabilities that once made them successful must evolve to match new levels of complexity.
- The strongest leaders are defined less by confidence and more by curiosity and self-awareness in unfamiliar situations.
- Leadership can feel deeply isolating, making trusted reflective relationships essential for sustained performance.
- Even highly accomplished leaders experience moments of doubt when stepping into new or high-stakes roles.
- True leadership character is revealed in unexpected moments - crisis, failure, or sudden success when instinct replaces preparation.
Okay, welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Case. This is a podcast which I believe has been enabled by my guest today. I spoke to her at one point during my OPM program about the challenge of public speaking that I uh would face. And so I want to introduce her. She is someone who has made a direct impact on how I think, how I lead. She helps me show up, not just in business, but also in life. And Linda is an executive coach at the OPM program with Howard Business School. She's someone I've had the privilege of learning from firsthand. From what I understand, Linda, you help leaders move forward through reflective dialogues, some of which you and I have been part of together. You build practical frameworks for them and you focus on intentional action, especially when the stakes are high. Because you're dealing with business leaders who run companies of a certain scale. So, Linda, I'm very excited to have you here on the show today and thank you for making yourself available.
SPEAKER_00So thank you so much for inviting me to be a guest on your podcast. We're in some ways living parallel lives from a podcast standpoint, because as you know, I just had the opportunity to co-create and uh co-host uh a podcast myself with a colleague of mine, Lisa Strutt. So it happens to be called the Forever Change Podcast, if anyone's interested. And we'll talk about that further personally and privately uh after after the thanks so much for having me. And you're right, you know, I've been serving as an executive coach for, gosh, a little over 30 years, to be honest, in a wide range of organizations and industries. I typically find myself working with leaders who are moving into the to the biggest role they've had yet, right? In some cases. Some of them, like you, are entrepreneurs and launching their own, you know, new organizations or innovations. Some are within organizations and, you know, moving up the ranks either within their own organization or moving to new organizations, often kind of making that leap from senior leader to the C-suite. Some are taking on their, you know, first C-suite roles. Some are not quite there yet, but are building toward that, toward that. So there's a lot of joy that comes for me in working with leaders at those stages. I'm founder and principal of my own practice called Radiant Coaching and Consulting. As I mentioned, have some fun experimenting and exploring the podcast world this year and in the couple of years to come or the years ahead. And as you well know, and the reason that we came together is that one aspect of uh of my practice is that I get to uh serve as executive coach and facilitator in a wide range of programs offered by executive education programs offered by Harvard Business School. And um I am kind of new to the OPM class, so you were among my first cohorts to get to work with. Such a joy, such a joy. So thank you again for for this connection and for the kind of words that you offered up front. I'm glad that our conversation means a lot to me that our conversations have been impactful in helping you achieve forward motion, incremental or vast. It doesn't really matter as long as forward motion is in play.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And just to share some insights into how powerful each session with Linda has been. The first time we had a session together, my living group and Linda, the intent was to help us open up with each other, trust each other, bond together. And by the end of that session, I know I was in tears, maybe a few others as well. Um, and I think uh, you know, that that moment stayed with us for the rest of the three weeks of Unit One at OPM. And I think we bonded like we've never bonded with most folks. And so, Linda, I think what you're doing is very powerful. And before we get into the kind of work we do work you do, I want to understand why, or at what point did you feel like you want to be a coach, a business coach?
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, that's a great question. It's it kind of was sparked very early on in my own career as a leader and manager. Really loved that aspect of working, of assembling teams and building teams and building collaborations and and all of those kinds of things. And the more that I kind of took on as a functional leader or as administrative leader, the less kind of one-on-one time I was was available to me, right? With uh with whether it was my team or others across organizations. So at some point in time I thought, you know what, I'm gonna build toward gaining the experience, gaining the knowledge, right? Maybe gaining the confidence at at different points in time to uh really work with with people one-on-one full-time, because that happens to be where my biggest joy, you know, kind of comes from. So why not spend my time in my biggest joy moment, right?
SPEAKER_01Okay. Uh, and then how did you get associated with your own practice and eventually with HPS?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great questions. I worked, as I mentioned earlier, I kind of worked across a number of industries, whether that's records and information management, aviation, thinking and investments, financial management, those kinds of things of you know, kind of my organizational life before going on my own spanned a number of different organizations and a number of different leadership roles in those organizations. Kind of my last in-house uh role, if you will, or internal role was within the Harvard University community. So I worked across the 11, you know, professional schools that uh that that reside under the Harvard umbrella. And I had started to really do really focus energies on coaching internally in the Harvard community, whether that was in management of IT and HR and financial management and those kinds of things, or whether it was in the more academic settings, uh, working with deans, working with faculty members, working with scientists, working with physician leaders, had really started kind of transitioning, you know, into primarily coaching and facilitation uh in my role there. And along the way, I uh began to collaborate and work with the woman who at that point in time in the early 2000s was actually forming the coaching component within executive education at the Harvard Business School. And so, you know, we met over coffee a couple of times and it really became clear that my background and energy probably was a great match for a number of the programs offered uh that were starting at that time to offer coaching uh within some of the some of the programs. And now coaching is just, you know, blossomed and offered uh across um almost the full range of programs that are offered by uh exec ed. So that was I worked, I I coached my first cohort in 2009. So yeah, yeah. So I've been doing it for a while now.
SPEAKER_0117 years.
SPEAKER_00I know. I know it's crazy. It's crazy. It feels like yesterday.
SPEAKER_01Linda, business owners have teams, they have board members, they have family members, and so they're surrounded by so many individuals. They could reach out to anyone they want to get advice. But what is it that an executive coach would give them that the peers or the set of individuals they share workspace with or a house with, a family with could not sure.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think all of those people who populate a leader's stakeholder map play a significant role, certainly in their lives and in their leadership. I think specifically an executive coach offers something that none of those do, right? We are have the opportunity to kind of offer perspective. We we don't live in the business, we don't live in the family, we don't live, have this unique opportunity to meet the leader where they are, right? So I think that's that's one piece. We're kind of a neutral observer of how things are progressing for the leader. I think beyond that, at the close of coaching engagements in in my own practice, I often ask that, like, okay, so what was the most meaningful thing that we did over the last you know several months or or the course of our engagement? And almost without exception, it's providing a space for the leader to think out loud, right, without judgment, right? Like sometimes they just need to, I think, you know, as as a leader grows in their role, often the number of people that they can actually kind of talk to and be their be themselves with fully without judgment gets pretty small. And so I think at times, right, it eps and flows, but at times, and I think the coaching relationship just gives the opportunity for the leader. Sometimes they just need to hear themselves say what they're thinking out loud and then hear a perspective on it. Either sometimes there's a lively debate that happens, like, I don't know if that's working for you so well. Maybe, you know, maybe, maybe there's another way to look at this, you know, or whatever, or to kind of help further their thinking, or to just give them a moment to, you know, an hour every couple of weeks to just reflect and really start to connect the dots in different ways and ways that they haven't before. So it's kind of a walk-along side thing that I think is the benefit of an executive coach.
SPEAKER_01Right. And then after coaching so many successful founders, you mentioned you started this in 2009. So 17 years must be thousands of founders and CEOs that you've worked with. Could you list a few personality traits that you see most often which could harm a leader's ability to bring out their peak performance or could be harming the companies in some way?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think probably some of the things that that you and your colleagues and maybe some of your uh guests already uh are finding is that often, more often than not, it's the the things that we do really well as leaders that when it's too much of a good thing get in our way. So I think, you know, a couple of things that I've observed, you know, certainly in my own practice and and with some of the cohorts like yours that I've had the opportunity to work with, is one thing that can really be such a leverage point is uh a leader's approach, especially entrepreneurs, CEOs approach to the work through the lenses of pace and passion, right? Pace and passion are the things in many ways that serve us well as leaders in those roles, especially early on and building an organization and things like that. It's exactly those things that can get in our way, right? Sometimes our need for speed is not exactly what the situation or the team or the organization needs at that point in time, right? We we need the drive, but maybe we need to calibrate that pace a little bit. Same thing with passion, right? Of course, passion is at the core of any leader, and certainly specifically entrepreneurs and senior leaders, you know, it's at the core of what they bring to the table. And sometimes that can be too much of a good thing, right? It can go from enlisting followership to being a little more directive or a little bit more in the weeds than or a lot more in some cases, than the situation could really benefit from. So those are kind of two pieces. We'll get to some of the other pieces here in just a few minutes, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01I'm so I'm so tempted to turn this into a session that you and I would have because one of the biggest conversations that my father and I disagree on is he feels I try to move too fast. And he tells me if you look at the trend, you have to go back in time and then try and cross the T's and dot the I's. Why not take a little slow? And I think it resonates a lot with what you've mentioned.
SPEAKER_00You're like, yeah, but if we wait, we won't we'll miss the opportunity, right? So yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so could you also speak about a blind spot that you consistently see in some of these successful uh business owners?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I think it's related to that pace and passion piece. But in the data that I have from my work with my own clients, you know, over the years I've uh conducted many dozens, hundreds, maybe, uh 360 interview-based assessments for leaders at all different phases of their development. And there are really three components or three aspects of what they bring to the table that can often both be leverage points and get in the way. So those three things are clarity, communication, and rigor. And a deficit or the absence of one or more of those things is what can often start to derail a leader's effectiveness. So for instance, clarity is so important. But if if I'm so far out there pace-wise with the clarity that I have about where we're going, but I haven't communicated or conveyed it in a way that enables people to, in my organization, to jump in, to dive in, to follow and to create as well that I'm that I'm missing something. And to your point, with what your dad said to you, you kind of have to go backwards. And nobody wants to go backwards. The point is forward motion, right? And sometimes the pace of forward motion is what can get in the way of that clarity. Communication, the same thing. You know, often I'll, you know, work with leaders who are like, but they should know that. It's like, okay, but did you say it? Did you articulate it? Well, no, they should just know. And I'm like, okay, well, how will they possibly know if you don't actually communicate what it is that you're aiming for or what it is that your expectation is, higher or lower, or, you know, those kinds of pieces. And then rigor is all about execution, right? You know, sometimes we we get ahead of ourselves in the ideation and ahead of ourselves in terms of what we're aiming for. But, you know, as entrepreneurs, there's a point in time where we have to do it all. We have to do all the clarity, all the communication, all the rigor, right? Our hands are in everything. But there comes a point in time where now we have a business to run and I can't possibly have my hands in everything. So I need to care about execution in many, in many cases as a leader, but I don't necessarily have to be the one who does it. But I do need to communicate what positive execution is going to look like, right? So clarity, communication, rigor, that's kind of my theme song in many ways when I work, when I work with my clients, based on, you know, what I've learned from them over the years.
SPEAKER_01Spoke about the T60 degree analysis. Is that the same as the baseline report that you know we all benefited from? Is it the baseline report?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And that it is not the same. It is not the same. So in that case, the tool that we enlisted is called the Cantor assessment. And um, you're the only one who completed that, right? Nobody else, you know, kind of provided input into those results. You you completed those assessments. So that was really a form of self-assessment in a way that gives us insight into strengths, opportunities, leverage points, blind spots, you know, led to some of or was informative to uh some of uh some of our conversations. But a 360 is really gaining insights uh uh around our impact and our way of going about working from a number of people all around us. Ideally, people who report to us, clients, collaborators, peers, those kinds of things. And then someone we may have worked for at some point in time at, you know, for the, you know, entrepreneur and CEOs, maybe that's, you know, the board, things like that. So that's really to get insight into well, what have you noticed about this person that, you know, you want to see more of and that they could really leverage? And, you know, what if you experience with this person that, you know, one of the questions I ask is, okay, if there's one thing that they never did again that you would be so happy that they never did again, what would that be? Right. Because that'll get us to that set of things that might really be barriers to that pursuit of forward motion.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um, going back to your experience with the with the powerful leaders, what happens psychologically in your experience to leaders once they become the most powerful person in the room?
SPEAKER_00So I'm not sure that I'm the person to be able to specifically answer the question around the psychological piece, right? That is that is not my domain. It is not my expertise. Um, from a behavior standpoint, I can I can offer a couple of things, you know, and it's not so different, I think, than, you know, maybe what we experienced in those first couple of hours or those first couple of days of our cohorts being on campus at the, you know, at the at the business school. But this is also true for leaders, you know, in their own organizations or entering new organizations. There are, there are points where I'm gonna be questioning a bit, right? I'm gonna be questioning, am I cut out for this? Am I, am I gonna be enough for this role? Am I gonna be able to compete, right, with with those around me? Am I going to be able to lead those around me? So there's a little bit of just questioning that happens, right? I'm not even gonna go so far as to call it insecurity because it's not that. It's just kind of questioning and getting a lay of the land, so to speak. Like what's, you know, who who else is around and how do how do I leverage them or, you know, those kinds of pieces. Um, and then over time, pretty quickly, then we start to identify. If I'm working with them, you know, we start to identify, okay, so what are the things we know? What are the things we don't know? What are the things that that got you to this place that you leveraged to get to this place? And are those the same things that you can leverage moving forward? Probably not. It's a subset of those things that we can leverage moving forward. But what else do I have to learn? What else might I need to be open to, right, moving forward? So I think one time, you know, we talked about is it self-awareness and confidence, right? Or is it one or the other that really differentiates a successful leader? And I think I would adjust that a little bit because I think to be honest, and if and if we're honest with ourselves as leaders, confidence ebbs and flows a little bit, depending on situation, right? Whether it's a success situation or a failure situation, my confidence can ebb and flow ever so slightly or deeply, depending on the situation. But what really differentiates leaders who are able to, across a complex stakeholder map, across a variety of situations and types of organizations that they might be building is really that combination of both curiosity and self-awareness, right? Um, those leaders who feel like they're all set. I've learned what I need to learn, now everybody can just follow me, have created already some blind spots for themselves. But those leaders who come in and say, Yeah, we've never been in this place before, right? What do we have to learn? Who knows, you know, about this particular barrier? Like who's faced this before? Great. How do we want to face this, right? That's a great example. I don't know if that's gonna work for us, but how do we want to face uh face that? And then certainly the self-awareness of, you know, what do I bring to the table that enables forward motion? And what do I bring to the table that might be a barrier to forward motion? So curiosity and self-awareness, I think, are big.
SPEAKER_01Linda, when you put a number of successful business owners together in programs like the OPM, which I was part of, what are some of the insecurities or doubts that you start recognizing which are surfacing amongst the leaders? Could you speak a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, I think in those specific situations um where uh there I'm gonna be spending the next, in your case, what was it, two or three weeks with, you know, a cohort here? I think there's a little bit of uh wonder when uh individuals get to campus. I wonder what it's gonna be like. It's not uncommon for participants to come to Harvard Business School for these exec ed programs who don't actually have a formal college experience, life at a university experience. And so in some cases, it's new, it's new for everybody to be on that, you know, particular campus, but it can be even more new for those who haven't had um an on-campus experience yet in their in their careers. So I think there's there's you know, kind of a couple questions that I've noticed float around. First, like, well, who else is here, right? You know, and and what do they do and what do they bring to the table and you know, what companies are they from or you know, what what have they founded, you know, you know, those kinds of things. So there's a little bit of, I don't know, kind of maybe position and how do I fit into that, right? And then that's there, there's a little worry around, well, what's the classroom gonna be like? Am I gonna be able to perform, so to speak, you know, in the classroom, uh, participate in the classroom to the degree to I want that I want to, you know, am I worried about that, et cetera. But to your point, one of the magic um uh elements of uh of the approach that I have witnessed, uh, you know, I've witnessed a lot of different programs uh over the years across a number of different uh organizations, but the there's there's a magic that happens very early in um the appearance, you know, or the getting to campus, right? And that is you're you're matched with a living group. So, you know, you have a cohort of, you know, eight-ish people who will be your study partners, et cetera. And in order for that to work, and they'll be your consultants, right? Uh, while you're there, in order for that to work, you have to get to know each other quickly and deeply. And you alluded to that, um, kind of described that experience that that you and your cohort had in your first, in your first experience on campus.
SPEAKER_01From your conversations, what do you recognize as how how lonely is it to actually run a company?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. It can be, right? It can be because, you know, for some of the the things that we talked about earlier, why, you know, why is executive coach or what does executive coaching bring to a leader? It brings them that space to think, to create, to reflect, to articulate, to debate, you know, all the things that they need to do to feed their energy toward building an organization and achieving forward motion. But I think, you know, so I think it's related. Um, I think it can feel very lonely because, you know, there aren't a lot of people sometimes who are doing what you do, right? And so finding connections, finding people you trust in different industries, in similar roles is absolutely critical, I think, for leaders in your situation and those that you're interviewing now and as part of your podcast and coming across is um, you know, build that sense of connection and put ourselves in situations that enable us to build that sense of connection. It's not necessarily our first thought. Our first thought is build my company, move fast, right? Um, uh, you know, be the innovator, be the entrepreneur, those kinds of things. But that sense of connection, taking the time to create that sense of connection will assuage that feeling of loneliness that that will ebb and flow over time.
SPEAKER_01Last question before I let you go. Could you speak about the kind of moments that truly reveal a leader's character?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, I think that being faced with the unexpected, right, can Really bring it because sometimes it's a complete failure, sometimes it's, you know, compelling success, you know, whatever that is. But but dealing with the unexpected, right? If I am a leader who, when presented with the unexpected, defaults to volatility, defaults to insecurity, defaults to kind of a blaming stance or things like that, looking for fault, things like that, then that says a lot about me as a leader. And so kind of working through that from a coaching standpoint will welcome the unexpected and really leverage that natural sense of curiosity and that natural sense of self-awareness to say, okay, I know what maybe my go-to is in this situation, but how do I actually want to show up as a leader across these stakeholder groups?
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. Linda, thank you very, very much. I know you have a schedule and you took the time out to speak with me. So I appreciate this a lot. I hope this conversation encourages a lot more business owners to consider coaching as well. And I look forward to seeing you again soon.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Sohan. So such a pleasure to be with you today. And it's an honor to be asked. Thanks. And I will talk to you soon.
SPEAKER_01Talk to you, Smith. Bye.
