Coaching Real Leaders: Recent Episodes
HBR Presents / Muriel Wilkins
We all want to get to the next level of our career, but so many of us get stuck. Longtime leadership coach Muriel Wilkins takes you inside real-life leadership coaching sessions with high performers working to overcome professional challenges and grow as leaders. Listen in on real conversations and leave with new insights and practical guidance for your own career.
The views expressed on this podcast are those of its hosts, guests, and callers, and not those of Harvard Business Review.
He leads a large team that has grown quickly. Now he’s struggling with senior members on the team whose work isn’t meeting his expectations. He’s not sure how to hold them more accountable and drive higher performance. Host Muriel Wilkins helps him evaluate his options and understand the different ways he can enforce boundaries to move his team forward.
Further reading:
- Overcome Your Fear of Giving Feedback
- How to Give Negative Feedback: Our Favorite Reads
- Managing an Underperformer Who Thinks They’re Doing Great
- 3 Ways to Compassionately Hold Your Team Accountable
After finishing business school, he landed several leadership positions and was fast-tracked into the executive level of his organization. But he’s been struggling to find his footing in his new leadership role, especially when he doesn’t agree with his boss. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how to come to terms with leadership decisions he doesn’t agree with while staying true to himself.
Further reading:
- Why We Should Be Disagreeing More at Work
- 3 Ways to Live Out Your Values at Work
- How To Respectfully Disagree With Your Boss
- The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
She has ambitions to reach the C-suite, but her career has hit a plateau. Opportunities in her current role have stalled, and she feels her options are limited as she tries to balance her career with that of her partner’s. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through reframing her career stagnation and the steps she can take to continue her professional growth.
Further reading:
- How Dual-Career Couples Make It Work
- Restructure Ahead? Here’s Your Roadmap To Success
- How Do I Avoid a Career Plateau at Midlife?
- Feeling Stuck or Stymied?
Butting heads with your boss? Trying to decide whether to push for a promotion to the C suite? Struggling to figure out what really matters to you in your career?
These are all real challenges that many of us face in our careers, but we don’t always have a place to turn for answers.
Executive coach Muriel Wilkins is back for another season of Coaching Real Leaders to tackle these leadership hurdles and more on the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of real life executive coaching conversations. Muriel helps leaders discover unexpected insights about themselves and actionable steps they can take to move forward.
Listen to the new season of Coaching Real Leaders starting October 7th.
Have you ever wondered why different people work better at different times of the day? Maybe you love to do your most challenging work first thing in the morning or perhaps you’re at your best in the middle of the night. We all experience peaks and troughs over the course of a working day, but knowing how to manage them can make us more productive – and happier.
This episode is a special introduction to Working It, an award-winning podcast from the Financial Times, hosted by Isabel Berwick.
Working It offers expert analysis and key takeaways to help leaders and managers make sense of the big news stories and trends shaping the world of work.
In this episode, bestselling author Daniel Pink explains why we work best at specific times of the day, how to talk about those differences with your manager or your team, and how we can harness these differences to do our best work.
You can listen to Working It at https://www.ft.com/working-it or wherever you get your podcasts.
She’s experienced burnout in more than one past role. Now, after taking some time away from work, she’s gearing up to start a new position and she wants to avoid making the same mistakes. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her toward uncovering the root of her burnout and realizing how she can change the work habits that have caused it in the past.
Further reading:
- Brené Brown on empathy, compassion and boundaries
- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
- On the Brink of Burnout
- Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Your Relationship with Work
- Setting boundaries at your new job will help you avoid burnout. Here’s how to start
He’s come up the ranks and built his career working in the field, and now wants to transition to the corporate side of his company. But he’s struggling to convince senior colleagues to permanently place him in such a role. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through defining his value proposition and influencing key decision-makers to achieve his career goals.
Further reading:
- Navigating Uncertainty About Your Role During a Reorg
- 4 Steps to Making a Successful Career Change
- Build Your Reputation as a Trustworthy Leader
- How to Define, Develop, and Communicate Your Personal Brand
She’s an experienced leader who has always been highly ambitious and motivated to achieve impressive results. But now as she enters mid-life, she’s thinking about the next phase of her career and how to find a balance between striving and fulfillment. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through her concerns about aging in the workforce, finding the right challenges, and planning for her future.
Further reading:
- From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life (Arthur Brooks)
- Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age (Chip Conley)
- Making Peace with your Midlife, Mid-Career Self (HBR IdeaCast)
- How Do I Get Through My Mid-Career Crisis? (Coaching Real Leaders)
She has moved up in her organization quickly and often feels like she’s playing catch up. But she also has gotten positive feedback from senior executives that she’s performing well. Now, as her company grows and the advancement opportunities narrow, she wants to be strategic about how to get to the next level of leadership. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader to think through how she needs to adapt to move forward.
Further reading:
- To Sound Like a Leader, Think About What You Say, and How and When You Say It
- Five Ways To Show Up And Show Your Value
- Magnify Your Leadership With Multiple Perspectives
He’s a leader with a passion for going the extra mile and achieving results. But he’s struggling with how long he can sustain the level of effort and time required to meet the demands of his new role. Host Muriel Wilkins helps this leader unpack what drives his work habits, redefine how he demonstrates his value, and align his workload with his overall goals.
Further reading:
- Resisting the Pressure to Overwork
- Why We Glorify Overwork and Refuse to Rest
- Hard Work Doesn’t Always Lead to Success
- 5 Easy Ways to Work Smarter, Not Longer
She held many positions all over the world before landing her dream leadership role. But then she took on a different position at her company to be closer to where she wanted to live permanently. Now she’s missing her previous role and hopes to return to it, but is unsure how to make it happen since the company needs her where she is. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through understanding how to articulate her career goals and navigate what’s next.
Further Reading:
- How to Figure Out What You Want Next in Your Career
- How to Align Employee and Company Interests
- How Do I Know When It’s Time to Leave?
Whether you’re a first-time manager or a high-level executive, we all need some help getting past hurdles and taking our careers to the next level.
Executive coach Muriel Wilkins is back March 11 with a new season of the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of real life executive coaching conversations.
On this season of Coaching Real Leaders, you’ll listen in on coaching sessions with leaders working through pressing career challenges like:
- How can I craft my next role to avoid burnout?
- Should I return to the C-suite?
- How can I find a new role that makes use of my strengths and brings me happiness?
- Can I adjust my workload while still making an impact?
Muriel helps each leader discover unexpected insights about themselves and actionable steps they can take to move forward. Listen in, learn with them, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
She’s grown her entire career at one company, but now she’s in a new leadership role and she recently felt blindsided by negative feedback from her team. She’s struggling to process the feedback and respond. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how she can move forward with her team.
Further reading:
- Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback
- Stephen Covey’s Speed of Trust
- How Leaders Can Get the Feedback They Need to Grow
She’s a high-achiever who has defined herself through her achievements and promotions. But she’s hit some bumps in her career and she’s feeling less engaged in her work. Now she’s questioning the leadership track she’s on. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through defining what success looks like for her moving forward.
Further reading:
Finding Success Starts with Finding Your Purpose
Why Success Doesn’t Lead to Satisfaction
How to Tell Your Boss You Don’t Want a Promotion
He took a less traditional career path to college and law school. Now he’s successful as a lawyer, despite several job pivots. But he is still missing meaning and connection in his work. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through defining his purpose and how that can translate to his work.
Further reading:
- Why Success Doesn’t Lead to Satisfaction
- How to Find Meaning When Your Job Feels Meaningless
- What Makes Work Meaningful?
He’s a leader with a growing team, and he enjoys people management. But he’s struggling to influence those outside of his team and build trust with stakeholders. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through developing some of the skills he needs to gain stakeholder alignment while driving for results.
Further reading:
- How to Increase Your Influence at Work
- How to Create a Stakeholder Strategy
- To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort
- The Eisenhower Matrix
She’s taken a number of chances in her career and made some big pivots. Now, she’s been assigned to a senior role on an interim basis, but she’s not sure whether she should try to make the role permanent. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through the decision-making process to better understand what’s holding her back and the future she envisions for herself.
Further reading:
- How to Turn an Interim Role into a Permanent Job
- Focus on Learning During an Interim Role
- How to Overcome Executive Isolation
He’s always believed in hard work and is extremely ambitious. But he’s received feedback that sometimes the way he communicates is too direct, and he wants to work on his delivery. Host Muriel Wilkins helps him understand what might be holding him back and coaches him through how he can improve his approach.
Further reading:
- Good Leadership Is About Communicating “Why”
- How Great Leaders Communicate
- How to Give Negative Feedback to Your Peers, Boss, or Direct Reports
Executive coach Muriel Wilkins is back September 18 with an all new season of the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of real life executive coaching conversations.
This season, first-time managers, mid-level leaders, and executives work through some of their most pressing career challenges. You’ll hear conversations around questions like:
- How do I know if I should make my interim role permanent?
- Have I taken my career as far as it will go?
- How do I build more effective relationships with my peers and those above me?
Muriel helps each leader discover unexpected insights about themselves and actionable steps they can take to move forward. Listen in and learn with them.
On this special bonus episode, host Muriel Wilkins and Think Fast, Talk Smart host Matt Abrahams discuss strategies for creating a strong physical presence that can be felt by those around you . By understanding and controlling your presence, you can communicate more effectively, lead more authentically, and have a greater impact on your organization. Follow the Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast on your favorite podcast app. Stay tuned for a new season of Coaching Real Leaders this fall!
Candor and compassion at work are more important (and more difficult to cultivate) than ever. On this episode, host Muriel Wilkins joins the Radical Candor podcast to take questions from listeners and discuss how to lead in a hybrid environment. Look for Radical Candor in your favorite podcast app. And keep an eye out for the new season of Coaching Real Leaders, coming this fall!
He experienced early success and a fast promotion at his organization, but then things started to shift. Now, there have been leadership changes, and his scope of responsibilities has changed, making him feel like his career is backsliding. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how he can reframe the situation and prioritize what he wants from his career going forward.
She loves the work she does and has effectively managed her career to gain increased responsibility over time. She’s recently started managing managers for the first time and is struggling to find the right pace to help her organization reach long-term strategic goals, amid some short-term uncertainty. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through setting goals and timelines for the long term.
Further reading:
- How to Manage Managers
- Get Your Team to Do What It Says It’s Going to Do
- How to Make Progress on Your Long-Term Career Goals
He’s a mission driven leader who has always found roles where he can help others. He was brought in at a high level at a new organization, but he’s feeling tension and conflict with the organization’s founder. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how to manage himself in this negative work dynamic.
Further reading:
- Founder’s Syndrome Can Take Down a Nonprofit. Here’s How To Avoid It
- Make Sure Your Work Is Aligned with Your Boss’s Expectations
- Managing Up
She’s found a career path she truly enjoys, in part because of her ability to take risks and try new things. Now, as her team is reorganized, she has the opportunity to design her next leadership position, but she’s not sure what she needs to ask for in order to be successful. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through reframing what may be holding her back and identifying the priorities she wants to focus on going forward.
Further reading:
- Turn the Job You Have into the Job You Want
- Using Design Thinking To Become The CEO Of Your Own Career And Drive Career Success
- How to Create a New Job at Your Current Company
- How To Ask For What You Need At Work
- Having the Here’s-What-I-Want Conversation With Your Boss
He leads a team at a large global organization and gets positive feedback on their work. But he’s having trouble leading his team amid conflicting priorities and without direction from his senior leaders. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how he can help his team have organizational impact, with or without more clarity from above.
Further reading:
- When Managing Through Ambiguity, Develop a Clear Vision
- How To Lead Through Ambiguity
- 5 Reasons Your Employees Don’t Understand Your Company’s Vision
- How to Teach Leaders to Navigate Complexity
She’s finally found a leadership role that feels aligned with her personal mission. But in the wake of unexpected company-wide layoffs, she’s struggling with how to plan for her team’s future amid the organizational uncertainty. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how she can motivate and lead her team when so much feels out of their control.
Further reading:
- How to Deal with Layoff Anxiety
- How to Support Your Remaining Employees After a Layoff
- After Layoffs, Help Survivors Be More Effective
- Layoffs Are Harming The Mental Health Of Workers, Making Them Feel Vulnerable And Disposable
Executive coach Muriel Wilkins returns April 10 with an all new season of tough leadership challenges and thoughtful conversations.
Each episode takes you behind the closed doors of real leadership coaching sessions with executives, entrepreneurs, and managers, as they work through their hardest career challenges. Muriel helps them discover unexpected insights about themselves and actionable steps they can take to move forward.
This season, episodes explore dilemmas like:
- How do I stay motivated after a round of layoffs when resources are tight?
- How do I rebound after my scope of responsibility has been reduced?
- How do I make sure my team and I reach our goals?
Listen in for new career challenges and new leadership lessons.
She’s carved out a unique role for herself, which she loves, but worries that the pace of work is unsustainable. As she thinks about the next step in her career, she realizes that it will require her to lean on the help of others — something she’s not used to doing. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how to get the support she needs to move forward in her career.
Further reading:
- To Take Charge of Your Career, Start by Building Your Tribe
- How to Ask for Help at Work
- The Best Leaders Aren’t Afraid to Ask for Help
He sees himself as a servant leader and enjoys building and supporting his teams. But over time, he’s seen behavior from more senior leaders that he doesn’t always agree with, and it’s making him feel disengaged at work. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how he can respond when executives don’t model the company’s values.
Further reading:
- Employees Are Sick of Being Asked to Make Moral Compromises
- 6 Ways to Disagree with Senior Management
- When You Have to Carry Out a Decision You Disagree With
- Check Yourself Before You Disagree with Senior Management
- Dealing with Disappointment
He’s had fast success in a sales-driven industry and enjoys leading his expanding team. But as his responsibilities grow, he needs to learn how to delegate to his team more and empower his direct reports. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how to adapt his leadership style as his team grows.
He’s had a long, successful career as an attorney, in spite of the challenges he’s faced as a neurodivergent leader. Now he wants to parlay his legal experience and interest in advocacy into a different career in diversity, equity, and inclusion, but he’s having a hard time landing the role he wants. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through how to move forward with his career plans even when it feels like the odds are stacked against him.
She’s had a successful career leading in the corporate world and now she’s decided to venture out on her own to build a consulting business from scratch. But she’s struggling with her move into entrepreneurship and wonders if she made the right decision. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how to make the most out of her entrepreneurial journey.
He’s a self-professed “natural finance guy” and has shown himself to be invaluable to his company. His long-term goal is to become a CFO, but he’s gotten little feedback on what to do to get to the executive level. Now he’s starting to feel stuck in middle management. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through managing his career, even when the plan isn’t always clear.
Coaching Real Leaders returns October 3 for another season of real-life coaching sessions, with leadership challenges like making a career change later in life, transitioning from a corporate job to an entrepreneurial one, and more. Listen in as host and longtime executive coach Muriel Wilkins takes you behind closed doors as she helps executives, managers, and entrepreneurs work through the challenges they face.
This episode is part of a new special series from HBR’s Women at Work, hosted by Amy Gallo – an expert in workplace dynamics. Each episode offers tactics for dealing with “difficult” people at work. Every workplace has them, but what if we had better tools and approaches to improve our interactions with those colleagues? In this episode, Amy helps a leader whose boss keeps rejecting any changes she recommends. By the end of the conversation, she has the advice she needs to communicate her proposals in a way that will get approval and feel less stress when interacting with her boss. Look for “Getting Along” in Women at Work’s feed.
He’s had a successful career in the military and is deeply invested in his professional growth. As his transition out of the military approaches, he wants to figure out what’s next for him professionally. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how to best prepare for the next phase of his career.
She took on a leadership role as a scrum master because she wanted a new challenge. But after a few months on the job, she worries that she lacks the technical knowledge and years of experience to truly lead her team. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how to build credibility with her older, more experienced colleagues.
He’s developed a stellar reputation at his organization as the go-to person to solve some very specific, complicated problems. But he worries that the organization has pigeon-holed him as a subject matter expert, limiting his ability to lead more broadly. He speaks with host Muriel Wilkins about how he can break out of the specialist role to reach his goal of becoming a more general business leader.
She has risen very quickly in her career, often being the youngest in the room. She’s ambitious and wants to make it to the C-suite eventually, but she doesn’t know the right moves to make in the short term to fast-track her way to the top. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how to align her career path with her goals.
She’s heading toward the apex of her career and wants to play a more strategic role in her company because she feels that’s where her strengths lie. While she’s great at creating the vision, she’s struggling to set direction and then follow through with her team. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how to lead with more accountability.
He’s part of a real estate organization and loves his work but wonders what his future looks like at the company and how his role could grow in the coming decades. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through how he might use some of his entrepreneurial muscles to shift his career track toward a business leadership role within his current organization.
Coaching Real Leaders returns May 2 to tackle new leadership challenges – like learning how to hold your team accountable, making the move from subject matter expert to business leader, and more. Listen in on coaching sessions with real leaders from around the globe, as they work out the challenges they face at work, with host and longtime executive coach Muriel Wilkins.
No matter how driven and capable you are, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by a promotion and a new seat at the table. Host Muriel Wilkins speaks with a newly promoted leader who wants to make sure she’s as effective at this new level as she has been in past roles.
He’s a senior-level executive with a goal to make it to the C-suite. While he’s come close, he’s been turned down and is not sure why. Host Muriel Wilkins helps this leader plan his next moves.
As we head into the holidays after a very stressful year, many of us are struggling with burnout. This week, we revisit a conversation from earlier in the year with a leader on the brink of burnout. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader toward strategies she can take to focus her energy and scale up her leadership.
He's been at his company for many years and has worked his way up from an entry-level position to a director role. Now, he wants to get to the next level in his career, but he feels stuck and unsure of himself. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader on how to regain his confidence so that he can move forward.
No matter how hard you work and how good you are at executing tasks, there are always less tangible reasons people get tapped for more senior roles. Executive presence matters, as does finding the right sponsors. Host Muriel Wilkins speaks with a rising leader who understands the importance of sponsorship but doesn’t know how to get there – starting with learning to tell her own story.
There are all different kinds of leadership styles, but it’s hard to know what is authentic to you, or how much you should try to adapt to your environment. In this episode, host Muriel Wilkins speaks with a senior leader who is having trouble drawing a line between what is expected of her, and what feels true to her core.
We check in with three guests from Season 1 to see what they took with them from their coaching meetings and where they are now.
She's recently been promoted to a senior role, after working her way up in the industry from an entry level position. But she’s become a leader at a time when there's also a lot of change. Now she's the legacy person on her new team, and she feels constantly questioned and defensive about the way things work and the culture she helped build. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader on how to figure out what to keep from the past and what to let go of, so she can be effective.
He’s moving up a level to take on a new leadership role at his company. Now he’s managing other managers for the first time and realizing that it’s a big leap to go from managing individual contributors to managing other managers. Host Muriel Wilkins helps this leader understand how to approach his new role and what new skills he must develop in order to succeed.
She made it to a coveted senior role, but she isn’t feeling excited about her future career path. And now she’s wondering how to balance all the competing commitments in her life – children, spouse, elderly parents, and work – while still pursuing what she really cares about. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through discovering what’s important to her, so that she can figure out what’s next.
He’s a senior leader in a hospital, who has long seen himself as an advocate for equality for his female colleagues. But in the past few years, he’s faced a few instances where women he works with have been offended by exchanges with him. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader toward a stronger understanding of his own assumptions and how he can manage across differences.
She’s a C-suite-level executive with 20 years of experience working in corporate finance. Earlier in her career, she stayed at companies for long periods of time. But in her last few roles, she’s been jumping ship as soon as the going gets tough. Is she leaving too quickly, or has she not yet found the right role? Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through her discomfort and toward strategies that can help her see her role through to a successful conclusion.
Coaching Real Leaders returns October 6 to tackle new leadership challenges – from when to quit your job to communicating across differences, navigating imposter syndrome, and more.
Listen in on coaching sessions with real leaders from all walks of life, as they work out the challenges they face at work, with host and longtime executive coach Muriel Wilkins.
She’s worked her way up from an administrative assistant to a leadership position. But she still struggles to come across as confident, especially in high-level management meetings. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader on how to communicate more effectively.
She’s relatively new to the organization and more junior than most of her stakeholders. But her success hinges on her ability to lead initiatives cross-functionally. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this emerging leader through how to cultivate strategic relationships and increase her influence without the formal power of a senior title or position.
He’s spent much of his career successfully being a problem solver. Now, as he works his way up, he’s realizing that always trying to fix everything won’t let him focus on leading – or help his team succeed. How can he adapt his approach to lead more effectively?
As a leader, she has always tried to find a balance between being directive and collaborative. But she has also struggled to bridge the gap between how she sees herself – and how her team experienced her as a leader. Now she’s building her own start-up and wants to make sure she is seen as a strong, effective leader in that new venture.
He’s been successful in his industry but feels like he’s been typecast in his role. Now he’s hoping for a change and wants to make sure his next position helps him redirect his career. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through figuring out what he really wants before he commits to a new company.
She’s demonstrated her leadership ability throughout her career, advancing to some of the most senior leadership roles. But her C-suite peers haven’t always valued what she brings to the table. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through how to demonstrate her value as an executive as she joins a new organization.
She’s ambitious and has always leaned into opportunities to lead. But in her current leadership role, her responsibilities just keep growing, which makes her feel like she can’t keep up. If this is what leadership is all about, she questions whether she even wants to lead anymore. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through her burnout toward strategies she can take to focus her energy and scale up her leadership.
He’s a senior executive leading a division made up of professionals who are much younger than him and come from different racial backgrounds. He’s committed to helping his team members grow professionally, while generating positive results for the company. But he’s struggling with how to engage and motivate them. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through bridging those generational and racial differences, so that he can learn how to better support his team.
Her boss is white. Her staff are people of color. She’s been walking a tightrope between addressing her boss’s microaggressions and making her team feel safe. But so far, it’s not working. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches this leader through this tension toward the actions she can take to improve the situation and build a healthier culture at her organization.
Her out-of-the-box approach to solving business problems has made her successful in her current role, but she’s been passed over for a promotion that would put her on track to the C-suite. Host Muriel Wilkins talks this leader through how she can reposition herself for a top leadership role at her company and what steps she can take to get there.
New from the HBR Presents podcast network: a show that takes you inside real-life coaching sessions with leaders working to overcome professional challenges. Host Muriel Wilkins is a longtime executive coach who has helped highly successful professionals – from team leaders to CEOs – get unstuck and grow as leaders. That work is often done behind closed doors, but on this show she opens that door to everyone. Join us this season, and gain new insights and practical guidance to take your own career to the next level.