Case Study: GM of Growth at a Market leading fintech
Coaching for executive presence, sustainable high-performance, and strategic influence in a founder-led, high-growth environment
Outcomes
Led a major transformation with record sales results, earning global recognition, multiple new opportunities, and a deeper sense of personal satisfaction and confidence.
Sustainable performance systems (boundaries, recovery, prioritisation) that reduce overextension without reducing impact, while creating more space for hobbies, relationships and wellbeing.
More strategic influence with founders and peers, shifting from “reliable holder” to a genuine shaper of direction and a key voice in growth decisions.
Cleaner responsibility and clearer expectations across the team, building capability, reducing over-dependence and supporting successful leadership through restructure and change.
A stronger internal and external network of senior allies, creating a greater sense of belonging and recognition, and tangibly contributing to further success and opportunity.
A next chapter chosen from confidence rather than scarcity: accepting a global role, with increased scope, visibility and upside.
“It feels like my team and my vision now, not just me trying to keep everyone else happy.”
The Organisation
A start-up operating a multi-brand, multi-channel model with a complex distribution footprint and constant pressure on margin, service and growth.
Senior leaders are expected to deliver commercial outcomes while steering continuous change; restructuring teams, modernising systems, and keeping clients engaged in a competitive market. Influence is shaped not only by results, but by proximity to founders, perceived resilience and the willingness to carry heavy responsibility across the group.
The Leader
My client is now a Chief Growth Officer role leading a US expansion. She’s had multiple promotions during our time together, and for the majority, she led national teams through strategic transformations.
Colleagues describe her as sharp, principled, warm, commercially astute, direct, relational and highly dependable. Her values include fairness and transparency, care for people and their growth, high standards and follow-through, integrity over politics, and courage in accountability.
At her best, she leads with calm authority: using data and clear thinking to simplify complexity, building genuine relationships with stakeholders, telling the truth, looking after her team. By the time we began, much of that steadiness had been eroded by constant change and accumulated strain.
The Challenge
“I feel like I’m doing an endless marathon with no finish line and no real off switch.”
When we started coaching, she was handling multiple significant pressures at once.
A founder-led culture meant big ambition, fast decisions and a high bar. She had been asked to reshape a distribution function that had grown unevenly, with gaps in capability, legacy structures and unrealistic expectations. A major restructure was emerging without adequate practical support for how to lead it well.
Her instinct was to take responsibility. Under these conditions, it often became over-responsibility. She was acting as the buffer between founders, stressed peers and a stretched team. She was constantly “on”, carrying far beyond her formal remit.
Confidence and self-trust: she knew she was capable, but still second-guessed herself around senior leaders and felt she needed to over-deliver to justify her seat.
Thinking and clarity: fatigue, context switching and emotional load pulled her into reactivity and away from strategic thought.
Behaviour and leadership: responding at all hours, picking up dropped work, absorbing more than was sustainable.
Relationships and influence: seen as dependable, but too often as the one who would “hold it all”, rather than a peer shaping direction.
She wanted to keep leading at this level, but not at this cost.
Our Coaching
We began with a 6-month engagement, with fortnightly 75–90 minute sessions, plus additional check-ins around critical moments. Due to her progression since our work together, this has become a 3-year partnership with monthly sessions and additional ‘as-needed’ support.
Our work centred on four linked outcomes:
Executive presence: moving away from approval-seeking and comparison to an authentic leadership approach rooted in her values and strengths, helping her trust her intuitions and be more decisive in judgments.
Boundaries for sustainable performance for growth potential: designing ways of working that honour her incredible capacity and role requirements, but with clear decision rules. Continually assessing where her efforts would add most value.
Navigating high-demand start-up dynamics without self-abandonment: meeting intensity with grounded, assertive responses. Acknowledging ambition without absorbing urgency or sacrificing integrity and wellbeing.
Strategically building a high-leverage network of support (internal and external): shifting from “carrying the team through change” to owning the vision, sharing leadership load, and using restructure as a reset of expectations, rhythms and culture.
Practical Methods:
Mapping beliefs about responsibility, success and conflict
Separating value-driven care from fear-driven over-functioning;
Using live situations to practise resetting expectations, leading difficult conversations, and holding firmer lines.
Key Shifts
1) Identity and authority
“It feels like my team and my vision now, not just me trying to keep everyone else happy.”
Early on, a lot of her bandwidth went into trying to match what she believed a senior leader “should” look like in that environment: always available, endlessly resilient, saying yes to influential people, absorbing whatever landed. It created a split between how she was being and who she wanted to be.
Over time, she stopped relating to herself as the person who had to fix everything, and more as the person setting direction. As her leadership stance became clearer, her humour, empathy and humility became assets for influence rather than traits she had to downplay.
2) Boundaries and energy
“I’m still giving a lot, but it doesn’t feel like self-erasure anymore.”
A national roadshow made the cost of her overextension undeniable and also proved the world didn’t collapse when she stepped back. We turned that into deliberate experiments: clearer rules for evening/weekend responses, more consistent redirection of solvable problems, and saying no to optional activities that drained her.
She began inserting micro-pauses and asking: “Am I responding because this is needed, or because it will calm my anxiety or guilt?” That alone reduced resentment and improved her presence when she did engage.
3) Relationships, power and influence
The close founder dynamics were a central challenge. The urgency and volume of ideas often triggered guilt and reactivity; she would sprint to keep up and then feel frustrated and unseen.
We worked on acknowledging intent, naming constraints, and holding boundaries with firm, neutral language - especially around timing and priorities. Over time, she found an approach that worked for their dynamic: clarity with calm, owning capability but without taking on impossible timelines or sacrificing weekends.
Similar shifts happened with her team. She stopped rewarding over-dependence and invited self-assessment: “Is this validation, permission, or something you genuinely can’t solve without me?” That grew capability around her and rebalanced her time.
“I’m not the emotional shock absorber for everyone anymore.”
Where is she now
Leading with calmer authority and increased self-trust, with less second-guessing in proximity to founders.
Operating with clearer boundaries and a more sustainable cadence, protecting judgment, health and relationships.
Showing up as a strategic advisor and executive leader, no longer the “yes” person, and “fix-it” dependable one holding everything together.
Leading with stronger shared ownership, boundaries, and conviction in her ability
Leaving a tough chapter with a strong track record, loyal team, and genuine appreciation for how she navigated change.
Stepping into an incredible new global opportunity with expanded optionality and a distinct step up.
