No. Executive coaching develops an individual leader: their presence, decisions and blind spots, usually one to one. Business coaching works on the company as a system: the team, the strategy, the operating rhythm and the cash. They overlap, but a strong scale-up coach starts with the business, not the person.
Listen to episode 20
Coaching Scaleup Companies Around the World: Meet Roland Siebelink
On this episode, scale-up coach Roland Siebelink describes coaching whole executive teams rather than just the CEO, measuring progress by how long the business can run without the founder touching it. His test is blunt: think like a clockmaker who builds a clock that tells the time, not a time-teller who has to be in the room for every decision. If the work is about you getting better, it sits closer to executive coaching. If it’s about the business getting better without depending on you, that’s business coaching.
| Business coaching | Executive coaching | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of work | The whole company and leadership team | One individual leader |
| What it changes | Strategy, execution, cash, operating rhythm | Presence, decisions, blind spots |
| How it’s delivered | Whole executive team, quarterly workshops | Usually one to one |
| Success measure | The business runs without the founder touching it | The leader’s own growth and behaviour change |
Why this episode is worth your time
Roland Siebelink has lived the scale-up journey from the inside three times and now coaches around ten founder teams at once across the US, Europe and Australia. He’s not talking about theory. What he describes is business coaching in practice: working on the whole operating system of a growing company, with you as one part of it rather than the sole focus.
Ask yourself the question Siebelink puts to CEOs. How long could your business run right now without you touching it? If the honest answer worries you, that’s a business coaching problem, not an executive coaching one. Polishing the individual leader won’t fix a company that stops the moment you step away.
Five things you can take from this episode
- Business coaching works on the team, not just the person at the top. Siebelink coaches full executive teams, not the CEO in isolation. That’s the structural difference from executive coaching, which develops one leader. The unit of work is the company, not you.
- The goal is a business that runs without you. He asks CEOs to be a clockmaker who builds a clock that keeps time, not a time-teller. Then he measures it: how long can the organisation run without you touching it? Early on, the honest answer is often under a minute.
- Getting the CEO to stop talking first changes the room. In planning workshops, Siebelink asks the founder to listen first and speak last. One client laughed out loud because his team, unprompted, reproduced the exact arguments he had been having with himself the night before.
- The skill that got you here will get you killed on the next stage. You can’t always see the role change growth demands. That’s the real reason a scaling business brings in a coach: an outside view of the shift you can’t spot in yourself.
- Don’t hire big-company executives to add discipline. Siebelink calls this the number one thing that turns a scale-up bureaucratic. His example: a mature executive who hires a team of fifty, brings in consultants who write fifty-page processes, and hands them to the two workers actually meant to do the job. Keep processes to one page with checkboxes, like a pilot’s checklist.
About the guest
Roland Siebelink is a scale-up coach for technology founders, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was employee number eight at Telenet in Belgium, which grew from eight to around 1,100 people in three years, then worked through scale-ups at Swisscom in Switzerland and Rocket Fuel, which he joined at about 80 people and which reached roughly 1,300 three years later before its 2013 IPO. He holds an MBA from IMD and is co-author of Scaling Silicon Valley Style. His methodology draws on Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up and Jeffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm.
Snippets from the episode transcript
These short excerpts show the episode’s most useful points in the guest’s own words.
“I often ask CEOs to think of themselves as a clockmaker. Instead of a time teller, they have to make a clock, right? A clock that tells the time for them.” … “Now, how long can you keep your organization running without touching it?” … “And the answers in the beginning are dramatic, dramatically short. Sometimes it’s less than a minute.”
What it means: a business coach measures the company, not the individual. The outcome that matters is an organisation that keeps working when the founder steps away, which is a systems result rather than a personal-development one.
“For every mountain you need a different skill, and the skill that made you successful before is probably the very one that will get you killed on this one.”
What it means: growth forces the founder to change how they lead at each stage. Spotting that shift from the outside is exactly what a scaling business hires a coach to do.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between business coaching and executive coaching?
Executive coaching develops an individual leader: their thinking, decisions, presence and blind spots, usually one to one. Business coaching works on the company as a system, including the leadership team, strategy, execution and cash.
Roland Siebelink’s model shows the difference in practice. He coaches whole executive teams and builds an operating rhythm, rather than only developing the person at the top.
Do I need a business coach or an executive coach as a founder?
Start with the problem, not the label. If you want to sharpen your own leadership, an executive coach fits. If your business stalls when you step away, or your leadership team isn’t holding itself accountable, you need business coaching that works on the whole system.
Many scaling founders need both, and a good scale-up coach covers the personal work while fixing the company around you.
What does a business coach actually do for a scaling company?
A business coach works on the parts of the company that decide whether it scales: the leadership team, strategic focus, execution discipline and cash. Siebelink runs quarterly planning workshops, gets the founder to listen before deciding, defines what an A player looks like, and builds processes light enough to actually be used.
The aim is a business that runs reliably without depending on the founder.
Can one coach do both business and executive coaching?
Yes, and the strongest scale-up coaches do. Developing the founder and building the business are hard to separate, because the founder’s habits shape the company. Siebelink coaches the CEO to change their own behaviour, such as speaking last in meetings, while coaching the team and the operating system at the same time.
The personal work and the business work reinforce each other.
Where Monkhouse & Company fits
If your business has stalled and you want coaching that works on the whole company rather than only on you, explore Monkhouse & Company’s business coaching for scale-ups. You can also read our 10 point plan for scaling your business, why you need to be a Level 5 leader, and our primer on what business coaching is.