Summary

The Tipping Point:

• Growth stage: Series A, 50+ employees
• Core issue: Senior leaders operating in silos during a season of rapid growth
• CEO pain: Traditional leadership approaches weren’t creating the needed executive team cohesion

Outcomes:

• CEO-first coaching approach helped build resilience, avoid burnout, and unlock a deeper level of effectiveness
• Increased psychological safety for the executive team
• Communication improvements eliminated overwork, over-cycling of problems, and internal resentment
• Streamlined execution and reduced friction

The Challenge

Amy Brown faced a problem many scaling CEOs recognize: her company was growing too fast for her leadership team to keep up. Despite having a talented team of leaders, something was broken.

“The overall health of the business is a reflection of the health of your leadership team. I could see that our leadership team was not as functional or healthy as it needed to be to sustain the extreme pressure and fast growth that our company was experiencing.”

The problem wasn’t capability—it was cohesion. Her leaders were moving fast and working in silos. Communication was breaking down, and the entire organization felt the strain.

“It really doesn’t matter how great your talent is—if they don’t know how to understand, respect, appreciate, and communicate effectively, then your plans are just going to sit on the shelf.”

Traditional approaches failed to create unity, causing bottlenecks and overwork.

“I was out of tricks and tools in my toolbox for building cohesion. I had tried modeling behaviors, having hard talks, tough love, and team-building exercises, but they weren’t quite moving the needle to where our team needed to be.”

The Kairos Approach

1. Built a Foundation of Psychological Safety

Kairos pushed the Authenticx leadership team to go deeper than they had before and address the human elements holding them back.

“At the end of the day, we’re all human beings that have feelings, insecurities, and vulnerabilities. Kairos helped tease that out in a way that built psychological safety amongst our team more effectively than other tools or coaching practices I’ve seen in the past.”

The foundation? Genuine trust with the Kairos team.

“Having a trusting relationship where you can be vulnerable and raw and say ‘I don’t like what you did’ is crucial in a coaching relationship. Trust is at the heart of everything. If you don’t trust that person with your feedback or your darkest stuff, you won’t get the highest value out of it.”

2. Individualized Yet Integrated Support

Kairos personalized their approach to bring uncomfortable realities to light and guide Authenticx leaders with presence and care towards transformation.

• Individual coaching available to executives
• Multi-coach sessions to work through relationship dynamics between leaders
• Customized development that honored where each leader was in their personal maturation

“Kairos has a very thoughtful, careful, and intentional approach to getting to know each of us in a way that both pushed and challenged us as individuals while also respecting and protecting where each of us is on our own journey.”

3. Facilitated Breakthrough Conversations

Kairos coaches guided Authenticx leaders through difficult conversations, elevating the team’s ability to solve problems in safe and productive ways.

“Some of the most valuable work I received from Kairos was when my coach, one of my colleagues, and their coach all got together to have a conversation about the relational health between me and the other leader. What I loved about that is that we gained multiple perspectives in the room.”

“You guys made it safe and helped us get through difficult points of conflict together. That provided a prototype for us to do that work on our own from there.”

The Results: Triple ROI Impact

“Being a leader is very hard and very lonely. The most important thing you can do for the business is bring your best value every day. If you don’t have a strategy for sustaining your energy, you’re going to burn out and be a less effective leader, which will have business implications.”

1. CEO Sustainability & Effectiveness: Amy learned how to prevent burnout while maintaining peak performance through strategic self-care
2. Leadership Team Transformation: Authenticx’s leaders didn’t just become better executives – they became better at developing others, creating a ripple effect through the organization. This transformation birthed a culture where personal growth is valued, resulting in a healthier workforce
3. Enhanced Client Relationships & Market Differentiation: When leaders became more authentic and modeled humanity, it showed up in every client interaction

Kairos Learnings

At Kairos, we believe in continuous improvement, which means being honest about what worked, what didn’t, and what we’ll do differently moving forward. Here’s what we observed from our time working with Amy and her team:

What Didn’t Go As Planned:

• Limited buy-in: While Amy was fully committed to team development, we didn’t effectively engage all her executives early enough, making it difficult to generate momentum with the entire leadership team.
• Scheduling complexity: Coordinating meetings in a fast-paced environment can be challenging. We underestimated the role this would play in getting busy executives bought in and aligned.
• Competing priorities: The company’s operational tempo increased dramatically during a critical period, which de-prioritized team development work.

What We’ve Changed:

• Clearer targets and measurement: We now use the Kairos Elite Team Model to provide specific yardsticks and targets, giving teams a clear destination and progress markers.
• More focus on heat: We created and now regularly use “Balcony Sessions” to identify clients’ most urgent challenges as fuel for more powerful team conversations, ensuring the work stays relevant to immediate business needs.
• Better pulse-checking: We now conduct more frequent check-ins with both the CEO and executive team to gauge alignment and commitment, allowing us to course-correct when needed.

You could stop reading here… but curiosity is way more fun. Check out more client stories.