Articles - Pietro Pazzi Coaching

Leadership Transition and the Deeper Self

By Pietro Pazzi Most leadership transitions are described from the outside. But the transition that really matters often happens underneath all of that. It is the inner transition — the moment when the leader begins to realise that the identity which brought them here may not be able to take them further. This is where Jung’s work, especially the world that emerges through The Red Book, becomes surprisingly relevant to modern leadership. Not because leaders need to become Jungian scholars, but because Jung gives us a language for something many senior leaders experience but cannot easily name. A leader may come for help with pressure, confidence, performance, conflict, exhaustion, or a sense of being stuck. But very often, beneath the

Using the 5DL and 5C Frameworks in My Depth Coaching: Supporting Senior Leaders Through Identity Transition

By Pieto Pazzi My depth coaching is grounded in the 5DL (Five Dimensions of Leadership, Roger Evans) and 5C (Five Capability clusters). The 5DL works from the inside out — it describes the human developmental capacities that characterise outstanding leadership, revealed through ten years of corporate research. The 5C framework serves as the coaching architecture — five clusters of competencies that give coaches and leaders a shared language for what needs to be developed and how. Together they form a complete system: 5DL identifies where the leader is in their inner development; 5C maps what capacities to cultivate to move forward. In-depth coaching — which goes beyond performance and behaviour into identity, meaning, and being —is unusually powerful precisely because

The Leaders’ Deeper Challenges

The Leaders’ Deeper Challenges: Many senior leaders are caught between the identity that got them here and the identity now being demanded of them. They built careers on judgement, expertise, resilience, confidence, influence, and the ability to make things happen. But today’s pressures — AI, geopolitical uncertainty, climate pressures, hybrid work, workforce fragmentation, employee mistrust, burnout, and constant reinvention — are forcing them to lead from a much less neat place. PwC’s 2025 CEO survey, based on 4,701 chief executives, points to exactly this pressure for reinvention: CEOs are investing in generative AI, addressing climate-related threats and opportunities, and rethinking operations and business models rather than simply optimising the old ones. That creates a very human wobble. Not always dramatic.

Personal Challenges Senior Leaders Face: Effectiveness & Identity Transition

Challenges Senior Leaders Face I: The Identity Crisis at the Core The most fundamental personal challenges senior leaders face today are varied, but one stands out: an internal fracture between who they have been and who they need to become. The psychological phenomenon of role incongruence frequently emerges during leadership transitions. This cognitive dissonance occurs when an individual’s self-concept clashes with new role expectations. As documented by Ibarra in her studies of professional identity, people carry “working identities” that may not align with the requirements of senior leadership. Successful identity transition requires not merely adopting new behaviours, but fundamentally reconceptualising oneself — an internal reconciliation that often involves navigating conflicting values. This transition isn’t just about learning new skills or adjusting to different

Leading through the AI endgame

Leading through the AI endgame explores three AI Future scenarios and seven stages of transformation. Most leaders are asking the wrong AI question.They are asking: “Which AI future is coming?” That matters, of course.But I think the deeper question is: “Can we lead people through whichever future arrives?” Because here is what worries me. A lot of people are thinking about where AI might be heading. Some are imagining abundance.Some are warning about disruption.Some are worried about human obsolescence. But almost no one is seriously considering how we move through whatever scenario actually takes place. And that is where leadership will either hold or break. AI will not arrive neatly as a technology upgrade. It will move through our organisations,

Leadership Depth Coaching Framework

The Leadership Depth Coaching Framework is developed on the understanding that leadership is most tested when the pressure rises. That is usually the moment when experience alone is not enough. We do not simply need better tactics, sharper models, or more polished performance. We need the inner capacities that help us stay steady, think clearly, relate well, and act with courage when conditions are hard. That is the thinking behind The Leadership Depth Coaching Framework. This framework brings together 5 dimensions of leadership maturity and 5 core capabilities that shape how leaders actually show up in real life. The five dimensions are Self-awareness, Impact Awareness, System Awareness, Will & Delivery, and Mobilising Support. Beneath them sit five core capabilities: Grounding,

Leadership Today – Three Books, One Conversation

I did not set out to write a trilogy. I set out to solve a problem I see in leadership today, which does not bode well for future leaders. Then the problem moved. First, it looked like a leadership problem. Then it looked like an organisational complexity problem. Then, rather uncomfortably, it began to look like a civilisational management problem: the old machine model of business itself no longer fits the world we are in. That is why I now see Fluid Leadership, The Simplicity Switch, and Rhizome Organisation as one conversation. They are not three separate books on adjacent topics. There are three passes at the same underlying question: how do we lead and build organisations that can stay

I Go Deeper – Leadership Depth Coaching

In my leadership depth coaching I go deeper. Let me explain. There is a discussion I have had more times than I can remember. A senior leader is sitting across from me, and they say some version of this: “I am carrying too much.” Or: “My team is not stepping up.” Or: “I know what I should be doing, but I keep doing the opposite.” That last one tends to catch my attention. Because by the time someone has reached a senior role, they usually know the basics. They know they should delegate better, listen more carefully, stop stepping in too fast, create ownership, have the difficult conversation, trust the team a bit more, and control the room a bit

The Problem with Fixing Leaders | Integrating What Is Brilliant | Depth Coaching

The problem with fixing leaders is that it’s the wrong approach to coaching. Depth coaching is about integrating what is brilliant in a leader. There is an old smell in a lot of executive coaching. You can almost catch it in the room: something faintly medicinal, slightly corrective, as if the leader has turned up to be adjusted like a misaligned door. What is the issue?Where is the deficit?Which behaviour needs sanding down? A remedial language that still lingers That model still has a grip on organisations. It is tidy. It fits appraisal systems. It gives HR teams a neat story to tell: here is the gap, here is the intervention, here is the improved version of the person. But

The Golden Shadow – Owning the Part of You That Scares You Most

There is a moment in certain coaching conversations that feels… different. The air shifts. The client stops talking about what is wrong with them. No more stories about difficult parents, toxic bosses, or self-sabotage. Those still matter, of course. But something else comes into view. Something quieter, almost awkward to name. It sounds like this: “I think I might actually be good at this.” And then, almost immediately: “But that feels arrogant.” That is the edge. Not the familiar territory of wounds and coping strategies, but something stranger. Potential. Capacity. A kind of internal brightness that has been carefully dimmed. Roberto Assagioli, the founder of Psychosynthesis, called this the Higher Unconscious. Jungian writers later gave it a more provocative label:

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