"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty"
– Mother Teresa
It's lonely at the top!
There’s a moment that every CXO knows.
It’s late. The room is quiet. The charts and numbers are in front of you, but the answer isn’t in them. The decision you make next will ripple through the company for years — and it’s yours alone to make.
At these moments, it’s not more information you need. It’s perspective. It’s someone who can step into the cockpit with you — not to take the controls, but to help you read the horizon, navigate turbulence, and choose your course with clarity.
That’s the role of the CXO Advisor. Part confidant, part strategic partner, part sounding board — blending the personal development focus of an executive coach, the influence-building depth of a leadership coach, the operational insight of a business coach, the analytical discipline of management consulting, and the foresight of business advisory.
Beyond Traditional Coaching and Consulting
If you’ve been in senior leadership long enough, you’ve heard plenty of advice. You’ve also worked with consultants who came in with frameworks and coaches who focused on personal leadership skills. Each brought value — but often in isolation.
The reality of a CXO’s world is that personal effectiveness and business performance are intertwined. A strong strategic plan won’t succeed if leadership alignment is fractured. A high-performing team can stall if the operating model is flawed.
The CXO Advisor’s value is in integration. They bring the mindset of an executive coach to sharpen your decision-making and presence; the skills of a leadership coach to strengthen influence and team cohesion; the pragmatism of a business coach to align execution; the tools of management consulting to optimise systems; and the strategic foresight of business advisory to ensure each move fits the long game.
The Nature of a Strategic Co-Pilot
Advisory work is not a one-time intervention. It’s an ongoing dialogue that adapts as you and your organisation evolve.
One week, the focus might be on capital strategy and board alignment — the realm of business advisory. The next, it might be about preparing your leadership team for a restructuring, drawing on leadership coaching approaches.
In other moments, it’s operational improvement through management consulting or refining your personal leadership rhythm with principles familiar to an executive coach.
The common thread: staying close enough to understand your context, but far enough outside to see what you can’t.
The Moments That Matter
Think about your own leadership journey. There are pivotal moments that define not just the trajectory of the business, but the kind of leader you become:
Choosing to double down on a market while competitors retreat.
Restructuring to position for the future while protecting the culture you’ve built.
Handing over critical decisions to empower your team — and trusting they’ll deliver.
A CXO Advisor is present in these moments — not with the “right answer,” but with the right questions. Questions that a skilled executive coach or leadership coach might ask to deepen your insight, combined with the analytical grounding of management consulting and the scenario planning of business advisory.
Case in Point : From Strain to Strategic Clarity
I once worked with a founder-CEO whose company was scaling rapidly. Revenues were strong, investors were engaged, but the pace was unsustainable. Leadership meetings had turned into firefights; strategic projects stalled under the weight of daily urgencies.
Our early conversations were pure executive advisory — working on the CEO’s decision-making, focus, and ability to step back from the operational churn. That shifted into leadership advisory, helping the senior team reset priorities and rebuild trust.
We brought in business coaching principles to translate vision into clear execution plans. Management consulting tools mapped the bottlenecks and improved the flow of information. Finally, business advisory perspective guided capital allocation and partnership decisions, ensuring growth was matched with stability.
The turnaround wasn’t dramatic in a single moment. It was a steady, deliberate strengthening of both leadership and organisational systems — the kind of change that lasts.
The Quiet Power of Perspective
Inside an organisation, even the most senior leaders can be swept into the urgency of the moment or the comfort of familiar thinking. An external perspective cuts through that.
A CXO Advisor asks questions you haven’t thought to ask. They notice patterns you’ve normalised. They connect leadership behaviours to business outcomes, and business outcomes to leadership choices.
Like an executive coach, they focus on you as a leader; like a leadership coach, they work on the dynamics of your team; like a business coach, they align the moving parts; like a management consulting partner, they bring data-driven clarity; and like a business advisory resource, they keep you anchored to your strategic intent.
Why Now?
The pace of change has outstripped the pace of traditional planning. Disruption is constant, expectations are rising, and the “right” answer rarely stays right for long.
In this environment, CXOs need more than siloed inputs. They need integrated, trusted, and context-aware partnership — someone who can shift between leadership coaching, business coaching, management consulting, and business advisory seamlessly, depending on what the moment demands.
That’s the heart of the Advisor role: not to dictate decisions, but to expand the field of vision so you make better ones.
Closing the Loop
You’re still the pilot. The CXO Advisor is your co-pilot — interpreting the signals, spotting the weather ahead, and helping you chart a course that balances ambition with resilience.
The relationship is built on trust, candour, and the understanding that the most critical decisions often carry no guarantees. It’s about seeing more, deciding better, and leading in a way that leaves your organisation stronger than you found it.
Because in the end, leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating the conditions for the best possible answers to emerge — for you, your team, and the enterprise you’re responsible for guiding.
During our research, we also came across this interesting reference.
Please check it out here.
I hope you found this Thought-Provoking Approach valuable. Now, it’s time for Self-Reflection:
1. What makes you proud of yourself as a leader?
2. What are your vulnerable areas as a leader?
3. How can you cope-up or address these vulnerable areas?
Please feel free to share your thoughts
About Meghnand Dungarwal
Founder & CEO, Chief Coach at Shoonyas
• Certified Executive Coach, CA, CPA, CISA.
• Featured in The CEO Magazine’s list of “20 Most Inspiring Business Management & Strategic. Consultant to watch”
• 18 years professional consulting experience (incl EY, KPMG, SKP).
• Renowned Author & Educator.
ABOUT SHOONYAS
Shoonyas is a strategic coaching firm that empowers highly driven leaders globally
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