Coaching sharpens specific skills short term and inspires growth. Mentoring nurtures long term growth through shared experience. A good coach blends clear communication, adaptability, and integrity. A good mentor combines wisdom and guidance to foster a long term, personal and professional evolution. 

Both coaching and mentoring are powerful. Coaching involves working through scenarios and reaching the answer yourself, says Sandy McKenzie, a Managing Partner of Amrop in the UK. “But that place where you can pour everything out and be put back together again with powerful questions is undervalued.” Organizations too often fail to provide structural support, leaving it up to the CEO. “It feels very haphazard, with limited consistency.” Fredy Hausammann, Managing Partner of Amrop in Switzerland, agrees. “Ensuring coaching is spontaneously available to CEOs is important for sustainable performance.”  

“CEOs should have mentors,” adds Joseph Teperman, Managing Partner of Amrop in Brazil. He says that a client recently exemplified the practice by hiring support for three Brazil CXOs in Brazil, and two country General Managers.  

Missing in Action 

Sandy McKenzie recently placed a divisional Managing Director in a FTSE 250 business. “It was their first time in a CEO role. They've been with the firm for 10 years, but the mandate is now to restructure and change the culture.” Like so many, the new leader had no coach or mentor.  

He recommended that providing one “would probably have a huge and immediate impact on that person's resilience and stress levels.” The provision of coaching and mentoring is something he looks out for in the executive hiring process: “that ability to provide leadership frameworks. Some organizations do it well, in other cases it's surprising how ad hoc or unthought out it is, even for sizeable businesses.” 

“It’s a sign of weaknesses to hire a coach,” says Emilie Boullet Lacoste, a Partner at Amrop Ness in France. High expectations are often unmet, because senior leaders often fail to engage. “If they don't really work during the process, nothing changes: they revert to their old behaviors and habits.” Naohiro “Nakki” Furuta is the Managing Partner of Amrop Jomon in Japan and a global Amrop Board Member. CEOs need to take responsibility for self-monitoring, he says. “Only you, not the people around you, can detect that you’re in difficulty or danger. You have to neutrally observe yourself.”  

Absent any structured mentoring or coaching provision, CEOs often seek informal counsel from Amrop Partners – even outside the C-suite hiring process. “Some people want a change. I see that they are not 100% in shape, or certain about they want to do next,” says Joseph Teperman. He gently advises them to take a breath: a hiring organization will sense that not all is well. “I think I’m attractive because I’m human, not an opposer.” CEO candidates regularly call Emilie Boullet Lacoste to air their troubles. Roland Theuws, a Partner with Amrop in the Netherlands, emphasizes the importance of checking up on a CEO during the first 100 days after the leadership hire. 

Purpose is also a critical mental health factor – and an important coaching theme. It needs to be aligned with the CEO’s day-to-day professional life. “If you don't like selling diapers, don't do it,” says Roland Theuws. It will make you unhappy, the flame will die, and you won’t go the extra mile. So, there has to be purpose, but also affinity with the service and the product. Otherwise, you're constantly struggling.” 

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Read our full report: The CEO Struggle - Part 3: Sustaining the Leader