Executive Coaching & Mentoring
Executive Coaching is an individual and confidential form of leadership development. It supports leaders and executives in reflecting on their leadership behavior, using their strengths more effectively, identifying blind spots, and increasing their impact in demanding leadership situations.
Thomas Gelmi has been working with leaders and executives for more than 20 years as an Executive Coach and personal sparring partner in Switzerland and internationally. As a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, he combines extensive experience in Leadership Development with a consistently practice-oriented coaching approach. The focus is on each leader’s individual situation, real-life leadership challenges, and sustainable personal and professional development
Developing Leadership Effectiveness::
Executive Coaching
Success in a leadership position does not automatically mean that all behaviors that contributed to that success will remain effective as circumstances change. With increasing responsibility in particular, established behavioral patterns and blind spots can limit a leader’s impact.
Executive Coaching provides a confidential space to systematically reflect on one’s behavior and its impact. Open feedback, focused self-reflection, and tools such as 360° feedback help leaders use their strengths more consciously, identify limiting behavioral patterns, and develop new ways of responding to challenging situations.
An independent outside perspective becomes particularly valuable at senior leadership levels, where honest and differentiated feedback often becomes less frequent as responsibility increases.
Typical Executive Coaching Topics:
Executive Coaching is always tailored to the individual situation and specific challenges of each leader. Typical topics include:
- Self-Leadership and personal effectiveness
- Reflecting on leadership behavior and impact
- Dealing with pressure, uncertainty, and high levels of responsibility
- Communication and challenging leadership situations
- Transitions into new roles and leadership responsibilities
- Decision-making and prioritization
- Conflict and complex stakeholder situations
- Building trust and Psychological Safety
- Personal reflection and professional development
How Does Executive Coaching Work?
Executive Coaching begins by clarifying the leader’s individual situation, current challenges, and development goals. This provides the basis for a coaching process tailored to the individual.
Coaching sessions take place in a confidential one-to-one setting and can be conducted in person or virtually. Depending on the objectives, additional tools such as personality assessments, 360° feedback, or other diagnostic methods may be integrated into the process.
Throughout the coaching process, insights from the sessions are applied to real leadership situations, reflected upon, and further developed. The objective is not the short-term acquisition of individual techniques, but sustainable development in perception, behavior, and personal effectiveness.
Personal Guidance and Sparring::
Executive Mentoring
As leadership responsibility increases, decisions become more complex, while the number of people with whom doubts, uncertainties, or sensitive issues can be discussed openly often becomes smaller. Executive Mentoring provides a confidential and independent space for reflection.
Unlike classical coaching, a mentor can contribute not only through focused questions and reflection, but also by sharing personal experience, perspectives, and assessments. This creates a combination of coaching, personal sparring, and experience-based guidance.
A professional Executive Mentor therefore requires not only sound coaching and methodological expertise, but also broad professional and life experience and the ability to consider situations from different perspectives. This is particularly valuable when dealing with complex decisions, personal career reflections, or situations for which there is no suitable conversation partner within the executive’s own professional environment.
Discretion and confidentiality are fundamental to every engagement.
