Who do you call before the big call?
The CEO Transformation in the Age of AI
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
3:00 PM CET
Live on Zoom
Free
A question for this week.
Think about the last decision you made alone that you wish you'd made with someone.
Most CEOs, if they're honest, can name one quickly. Sometimes it was a hire. Sometimes a pivot. Sometimes a hard conversation you postponed too long, or had too soon. Sometimes a yes you should have said no to. The decision itself isn't usually the lesson. The lesson is the aloneness of it. The fact that you carried the weight of it by yourself, and you didn't have to.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because it's the gap I see most often in the CEOs I work with. It's the absence of a sounding board. A sounding board isn't an advisor. It isn't a mentor. It isn't even necessarily a coach (though it often is).
A sounding board is the person you can think out loud with before the big call. Their job isn't to give you the answer. Their job is to listen: well enough that you hear yourself more clearly. To reflect back what you said, including the parts you didn't realize you were saying. To notice when your stated reasoning and your actual energy are pointing in different directions. To challenge you, gently, on the assumptions you've smuggled into the question. To broaden your frame when you've been staring at the problem too long.
When the conversation is good, you make better decisions. That's the obvious benefit. The less obvious benefit is that you live with the decision better afterwards. Because you know you didn't decide in a rush, in a corner, in your own head. You took the time the decision deserved. You let someone else stress-test it. You did the work. That changes how you carry the outcome, whatever the outcome turns out to be.
The person can be but doesn't have to be a coach. It can also be a trusted friend who's been through it, a peer in a different industry who has nothing to gain or lose from your choice, or a former colleague who knows how you think but isn't living inside your business. What matters is that they have no agenda with you. No employment relationship. No financial interest in the decision. No personal stake in the outcome. Just the discipline to listen, the honesty to challenge, and enough distance to see what you can't.
If you don't currently have that person, building the relationship is the work to do this quarter. Not after the next decision. Before it.
If you're curious about what this looks like in a structured coaching relationship, the door is at nedoma.io/individual-coaching. But honestly, the most important thing is that you have someone. Whether it's me or someone else is secondary.