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CEO Advisory

A private 12-month advisory engagement for leaders where the quality of your judgement, your relationships, and your presence determines what is possible.

Nis Arend > Services > CEO Advisory
Delivery

In-person

Scope
Bespoke to context
Availability
Global

Overview

At this level, the role does not get easier. The decisions carry more consequence, the relationships are more load-bearing, and the margin between good leadership and exceptional leadership is narrower than it appears from the outside.

What changes – and what most advisory relationships do not address – is what happens underneath the strategy. The quality of your thinking under sustained pressure. How clearly you read the room. The trust you carry with your board, your team and the people whose confidence in you determines what you can actually build.

This is a private, 12-month engagement shaped entirely around you, your organisation, your pressures and what the role is demanding of you in this season. It begins with a rigorous diagnostic and everything that follows is built on that foundation.

Who this is for

This engagement is for a leader carrying full organisational accountability – a CEO, MD, founder or C-Suite leader, typically operating within financial services, professional services or a complex regulated organisation.

You are not short of capable people around you.

What is rarer is someone with no agenda, a direct point of view, and the discernment and depth to engage at the level you need.

You may be new to the role and moving fast. You may be experienced and navigating a moment that requires more than experience alone. What is consistent is that you have reached the level where the quality of your thinking, and the trust in the room, matters more than anything else.

Clients are based globally across major international financial centres.

What we address

Leadership challenges at this level rarely begin as obvious operational problems.

More often they emerge through behavioural patterns that have gone unexamined, trust that has gone and the gradual loss of clarity that builds when no one around you will say what they actually see.

The work typically covers:

  • The quality of your judgement under sustained pressure and what distorts it amongst the high stakes
  • Your board and executive team dynamics – what is working, what is not and what it’s costing you
  • The gap between your intent and your impact – how your leadership is read by the people whose confidence in you matters most
  • How you communicate when clarity is most required and certainty is least available
  • The patterns that shaped your success to this point and may now be working against you at this level.
Outcomes

The engagement is designed to strengthen how you think, decide and lead under pressure.

Over the course of the year, clients consistently describe decisions made with greater clarity and less noise. A measurable difference in how they are read by boards, teams, and key stakeholders. Greater composure under sustained pressure – and less personal cost in sustaining it.

An indepth understanding of their own patterns, blindspots and the ability to choose differently.

What changes is your performance, the quality of presence you bring to the room and what becomes possible as a result.

Client Perspective

I worked with Nis in my last Executive role where she persuaded a cynical, dyed-in-the-wool Exec to embrace the potential of coaching to improve performance. I very much appreciated her no-nonsense, direct style which took me outside my comfort zone on many occasions. She has a focus and drive that inspires confidence and a determination to succeed.

However, perhaps just as important is her loyalty and empathy which I saw during my painful and difficult exit from Santander. That’s when I appreciated the bond we had built most. She was there when I needed her most and that’s something I won’t forget.

I also observed her working with some of my junior colleagues to develop and grow their confidence and ambition by providing clarity on what they needed to do. I saw a number of colleagues really grow and take advantage of new opportunities that they may not have done without the guidance from Nis.

A true professional who is excellent at her job but more than that, a wonderful human being.

Michael Ellwood, Chairman

FAQs
This is a strategic advisory relationship. The work is not about facilitating reflection or delivering a development framework, rather it's about direct engagement with what is happening in your organisation, your leadership and your most consequential relationships. The value is in the quality of the thinking it produces and the precision it creates.
Most advisory relationships operate at the level of strategy or performance - what must happen and how to make it happen. This engagement works at the level underneath that: the quality of the thinking, the trust in the room, the clarity of the leader and the patterns that determine how everything else plays out. That is a different kind of work, and it requires a different kind of relationship.
The engagement is called CEO Advisory because that reflects its primary context which are leaders carrying fullon organisational accountability. It's also relevant for managing directors, founders and C-suite leaders in comparable positions. If the situation fits, it is worth a conversation.
We start with a rigorous diagnostic designed to fast-track your journey. We'll uncover your key leadership patterns, the dynamics at play in your organisation and what the year ahead requires of you. The advisory relationship is built on that foundation. Nothing is assumed. Everything is specific to you.
There is no single trigger. Some leaders come at the start of a new role, others come mid-tenure, when they're at a critical point, crossroads and they want clarity on which direction or strategy to take. Others recognise that the level they are operating at requires a quality of thinking and presence that their current situation is not supporting. If any of those resonate, the right starting point is a conversation.