Executive Coaching · Pittsburgh, PA
One-on-One Coaching for Leaders at a Turning Point
Executive Coaching · Pittsburgh, PA
One-on-One Coaching for Leaders at a Turning Point
Personalized executive coaching for directors, managers, and senior leaders across Pittsburgh and the Northeast.
There is no playbook for the hardest parts of leading. The tough calls with no precedent that you alone have to make. The team that is not clicking in the field the way they should on paper. The persistent sense that you are capable of more and cannot name what is in the way.
Executive coaching is a standing, confidential time to work on exactly these things, with someone whose only agenda is you becoming a better leader.
Why Leaders Bring in a Coach
The higher you rise, the fewer people there are to be direct with you. Your team manages its words around you. Many of your industry peers are your competition. You’ve passed your mentors on the org chart, or outlasted them.
A coach sits outside all of this. No reporting line, no territory, no stake in the outcome except your growth. It is the one relationship in your working life built entirely around you getting better. Which is why more and more very senior, seasoned, and accomplished leaders work with an executive coach.
What the Work Looks Like
It starts with an honest read of where you are and where you are trying to go. After that, the time is yours.
Many sessions center on what is live for you that week: the decision on your desk, the relationship that has regressed, the conversation you have been avoiding, the role you are preparing for.
Other sessions are strategy focused, where you build an action plan for a pivot you want to make, an idea you want to pitch, a product you want to develop, a team you want to build.
Still others take a look inward, at the assumptions you’ve always held and the habits you’ve always kept. These are the things that drive both your day-to-day and your big-picture plans. If you want to change how either of those are going, the internal work is critical.
Heidi Sadecky works with you across all these facets of your leadership. The outward parts: how you run the room, handle the conflict, make the call, build a legacy. And the inward parts: the thoughts and behaviors behind the approach you take and the results you’ve been getting. She is known for direct, candid feedback. If you’ve been a leader for any length of time, that’s exactly what you’ve been missing, and you may not even realize it.
Is One-on-One Coaching the Right Fit?
Coaching with Heidi works best for leaders who are:
- Newly promoted, and finding that the strengths that earned them the role are not the ones it requires
- Successful by every external measure, but stalled and unable to identify why
- Sitting on a decision, a conflict, or a transition they cannot talk through with anyone on their own team
- Preparing for a larger role and wanting to make an impact soon after they’re in the seat rather than months or years later
One-on-one executive coaching is the right place to start when your goal or challenge is highly specific, role-based, personal, or confidential. In these cases, executive coaching delivers the targeted development you’re looking for.
If what you are really after is phased development alongside hand-selected peers with similar goals and challenges, the Townsend Leadership Program and the shorter E4 program are designed for exactly that.
Through a discovery call, Heidi will help you determine which type of program best suits your needs.
WHY HEIDI
The Difference Between Coaching and Advice
After a strong run in business, a lot of people pivot to offering executive coaching. What they are really offering is advice: here is what I would do in your shoes.
Although there is a place for this, it is not coaching, and it tends to leave you always waiting on the next conversation to take action.
Heidi, in contrast, asks questions that lead you to your own answer. What you leave with is not a copy of someone else’s judgment or blueprint. It’s your own better judgment and the ability to create your own blueprint for executing it.
Heidi’s range is one that most solo coaches do not have. She is credentialed through the International Coach Federation, trained in several evidence-based methods, a Townsend Leadership Program director, and a corporate trainer. Hers is one of the longest-standing executive coaching practices in the Pittsburgh area, and the leaders she has coached include the decision makers at companies like Alcoa, Medbill, Westinghouse, PolyOne, and EQT.
Heidi will see exactly the impact your leadership can make, even when you can’t quite yet. But she won’t bring it out of you. She’ll coach you to bring it out yourself.
What Clients Say
Executive Coaching FAQs
What is executive coaching, exactly?
A confidential, one-on-one partnership focused on you as an organizational leader with responsibility for others and the potential to impact them in profound ways. It is not consulting, mentorship, or life coaching. Heidi will not devise strategies for you, or run them. The work is to help you think more clearly, identify obstacles and limiting beliefs more quickly, lead more deliberately, and make the calls in front of you with more confidence.
How is it different from getting good advice?
Advice hands you someone else’s answer. Coaching helps you find your own, and develop the judgment to find the next one without help. Heidi will offer a relevant perspective when it serves you, but the point is your capability, not your reliance on hers.
How long do leaders usually work with you?
It varies with the goal. Some come for a focused stretch around a specific transition. Others keep a standing session going for a year or more because a regular outside perspective turns out to be worth holding onto. You are not locked into a long commitment to begin.
Is it confidential?
Completely. What is said in a session stays there. When an employer is sponsoring the coaching, you and Heidi agree at the start on what, if anything, is shared with them, usually broad goals or themes, never the details of a conversation.
Do you coach in person or virtually?
Both. Heidi meets leaders in person around Pittsburgh and across the Northeast, and virtually for those who prefer it or are farther afield.
What does it cost?
It depends on the length and shape of the engagement. See the investment page for how pricing works and what is included, and a discovery call is the quickest way to get a figure for your situation.
How do I get started?
With a discovery call.