CEO Coaching

CEO coaching addresses a specific structural problem: the chief executive is the only person in the organization with nobody above them to think out loud with, and everybody below them has an interest in what they conclude. Sessions are led by Samira Saberi, ICF PCC, at $285 per session.

The isolation is structural, not personal

Chief executives frequently describe the role as lonely, and it is usually diagnosed as a personality issue. It is not. It follows from the position.

You cannot discuss the real state of the business with your leadership team without affecting how they behave. You cannot discuss it with the board without affecting confidence. You cannot discuss it at home without transferring the weight to someone who cannot do anything about it. Every available audience has a stake in the answer.

A coach is the only person in the picture with no interest in the outcome, which is the entire value. It is also why most CEO engagements begin with a strategic question and turn out to be about having somewhere to think.

What actually gets worked on

Decisions with no clean answer. Most decisions that reach a CEO are there precisely because they could not be resolved a layer down. The work is rarely about finding the right answer and usually about deciding well under genuine uncertainty, then committing.

The leadership team. Nearly every CEO has one person on the team who should probably not be there, and has known it for longer than they would admit. That decision is deferred more than any other, and the delay is usually more expensive than the decision.

What you no longer see. As authority rises, the cost to others of telling you something unwelcome rises with it. People do not become less observant about you; they become more careful. Your information about your own organization degrades exactly when the consequences of being wrong grow.

Board and investor relationships

Where there is a board, a substantial share of the work concerns that relationship: what to bring early, how much uncertainty to show, and how to disagree with a director without spending credibility you will need later.

Founder-CEOs with investors face a sharper version. The people who can remove you are also the people you must be candid with, and calibrating that is a skill nobody arrives with.

Confidentiality

Nothing discussed leaves the session, and the ICF Code of Ethics makes that a professional obligation rather than a courtesy. Sessions are not recorded. Where a board or company is funding the engagement, what is reported is agreed in writing beforehand and is limited to whether sessions are happening and whether goals are progressing, never content. Details are in coaching confidentiality.

How engagements run

Sixty minutes every two weeks at $285, usually over six to twelve months, because the questions a CEO brings tend to resolve on quarterly rather than weekly timescales. Scheduling flexes around board cycles and travel.

In person in Marina del Rey and across Los Angeles, or over Zoom, in English and Farsi. See also why CEOs use executive coaches for the research background.

Frequently asked questions

What does CEO coaching cost?

Novator Coaching charges $285 per 60-minute session. CEO engagements typically run six to twelve months at one session every two weeks. Corporate and board-funded engagements are quoted per engagement, because they include intake and agreed reporting on goal progress.

Do CEOs actually use coaches?

Widely. Coaching at chief executive level is now standard rather than remedial, and is more often framed as a thinking partnership than as development. The isolation of the role is structural, and a coach is the only party in the picture with no stake in the outcome.

What is discussed with the board?

Only what is agreed in writing before the first session, and that is normally limited to whether sessions are taking place and whether the agreed goals are progressing. Content is never reported. A board that asks for more than that should be declined.

How is this different from an advisory board or a consultant?

A consultant supplies answers and an advisory board supplies experience. Coaching develops your own judgment on decisions where the right answer is genuinely unclear. Most CEOs benefit from all three; they solve different problems.

Can coaching help with a decision I have already made?

Yes, and it is a common use. Pressure-testing a decision before you commit surfaces the assumption you have not examined, and that is cheaper than discovering it during implementation.