David Boulos Executive Coaching

If I weren’t an executive coach, I would be a financial investor. That answer tends to surprise people.

When I was younger, I never pursued finance because it didn’t particularly interest me. But as my career evolved and my understanding of human behaviour deepened, I began to see investing through a completely different lens.

Successful investing has far more to do with psychology than with technical financial knowledge alone.

It requires the ability to resist fear, greed, panic, and impulsive decision-making. Most people lose money not because they lack information, but because they buy and sell based on emotion.

As Warren Buffett said, “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” Patience. Self-regulation. Long-term thinking.

There is even a well-known observation that some of the most successful investors are those who never touch their accounts. Their portfolios grow not through constant action, but through time, compounding, and restraint.

In that sense, investing mirrors everything I believe about leadership. It is not about reacting. It is about clarity, discipline, emotional regulation, and trusting long-term processes over short-term noise.

—
David Boulos
Executive Coach

One thing I have noticed about anxiety is that it often grows in the absence of perspective.

Fear is frequently disproportionate to the actual danger present. Our minds are exceptionally good at imagining worst-case scenarios.

There is a quote often attributed to Mark Twain that captures this well: “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

I once coached someone with a strong fear of flying. Instead of addressing only the emotional side of it, we looked at the numbers. The probability of being involved in a fatal plane crash is extraordinarily small. When they saw the statistics, something shifted. The perceived danger had felt enormous. The actual risk was not.

But when we step back and look at facts, data, and probability, thinking begins to rebalance. We move from emotional amplification to rational perspective.

And when perspective returns, fear tends to shrink back down to its true size.

—
David Boulos
Executive Coach

Star players don’t automatically create dysfunctional teams. But some do, and the pattern is consistent enough to be worth naming.

Most high performers have been conditioned to move fast, compete hard, and deliver results independently. There is a quote that captures the tension well: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

For star players, collaboration can feel like friction. Slowing down to bring others along can feel inefficient, even threatening to the very traits that made them successful in the first place.

When this plays out at the executive level, it tends to create two unhelpful extremes. The star player disengages, pulling back to fit in. Or they double down, pushing harder without regard for the impact on those around them. One creates dysfunction for the individual. The other creates it for the team.

There is also a dynamic that rarely gets discussed. High performers who report to leaders they perceive as less capable often struggle with frustration, disengagement, and a quiet erosion of respect for authority. That tension rarely stays contained.

The resolution is almost never found at either extreme. It lives in the middle ground, where individual excellence and collective effectiveness learn to coexist. That is usually where the most meaningful coaching work begins.

—
David Boulos
Executive Coach

One leadership issue I see repeatedly, regardless of seniority, is the struggle to move from operational to strategic.

At the surface level, it looks like a technical problem. Too many meetings. Difficulty delegating. Constant firefighting. And those things do have solutions: better processes, clearer priorities, stronger systems.

But underneath, the issue is usually adaptive. And adaptive challenges are harder, because the real problem isn’t immediately visible.

At a fundamental level, leaders, like all human beings, are driven by three core needs: to feel safe, to belong, and to feel valued. When those needs feel threatened, behaviour changes. Leaders hold on tighter. They stay involved in decisions they should have passed down. They default to doing because doing feels safer than trusting.

The result looks like poor time management. It is usually something deeper.

There is a quote I return to often. “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four sharpening my axe.” Most leaders I work with spend all six hours chopping. Harder. Faster. Longer. Without ever stepping back to ask: how could I design this differently?

Strategic leadership doesn’t begin with a new tool or a better calendar. It begins when a leader pauses long enough to see that the system they are running is one they built, and one they can change.

—
David Boulos Executive Coach