Elena Dolmat: Why Coaching Fails in Companies
Key Takeaways
- Most leaders approach coaching to fix a specific "fire" like a team conflict or a missed target. However, these are often just symptoms of underlying leadership patterns. Real transformation happens when you stop focusing on the "what" and start coaching the "who".
- There is a massive conflict of interest when supervisors try to coach their direct reports. For sensitive issues like restructuring or senior leadership transitions, external coaching is a necessity to ensure the total confidentiality and independence required for the leader to be truly honest.
- Meaningful change is a biological process, not a corporate rollout. Neuroscience shows that building new habits and neural connections can take anywhere from 65 to 299 days. Organizations must move away from expecting "magic" overnight and instead provide the sustained space required for real growth.
If coaching still sounds vague, fluffy, or a little too close to "nice conversations at work," this episode changes the frame fast. Coaching isn't just about advice or performance theater—it’s a process that helps people think differently and lead with more awareness in a world that is getting faster and more AI powered by the month.
In Episode 17 of withBrio, Elena Dolmat argues that in the era of AI, it matters less what we know and more how we know it. When information is cheap and AI is abundant, the real differentiator for a leader is their ability to interpret reality, make meaning, and understand their own patterns under pressure.
Elena Dolmat is a C-Suite Coach, Team Coach, and neuroscience based coaching practitioner. Before focusing on individual and team coaching over the last seven years, she spent more than 19 years in HR consulting across multiple countries. Her client work spans global organizations including Nike, Adidas, Unilever, the World Health Organization, and the UN Secretariat. As a Vertical Leadership Development Practitioner, she works at the intersection of human behavior and organizational complexity, helping leaders move past simple "skills" toward a deeper expansion of consciousness.
Coaching the person, not the problem
One of Elena’s most useful distinctions is that coaching should focus on the person, not the problem. Often, the issue a leader brings to the table, like a team not performing or a desire for more charisma, is a symptom, not the root. Think of it like a doctor’s visit: you might feel pain in your shoulder, but the actual problem is elsewhere. Consulting often tries to fix the visible issue, but coaching digs beneath the surface to change the pattern creating it. By addressing the "who" behind the "what," coaching creates a shift that lasts long after the session ends.
Vertical development: It’s about meaning, not just skills
Most leadership development is "horizontal" it’s about gathering more tools, frameworks, and experience. Elena focuses on vertical development, which is about expanding the way a leader interprets complexity. As adults, our growth is less about gathering more knowledge and more about expanding our awareness. Elena describes this as helping people create new meaning so they can apply what they know in much wider contexts. In a world of rising complexity, the goal is to expand the "container" of your mind, not just fill it with more content.
Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them
The neuroscience of real change
This is where the conversation gets real: meaningful transformation is not a quick fix product. According to the neuroscience data Elena draws on, building a new neural connection, a new habit or way of thinking—takes anywhere from 65 to 299 days. The market is full of shortcuts and fast hacks, but biology has its own timeline. Real change needs repetition, time, and actual readiness. If an organization tells someone they "need" coaching but the person isn't ready to do the work, the process will likely fail. Development cannot be fully outsourced; the individual has to step into it.
Shadow coaching: Bringing behavior into the light
One of the most practical parts of the discussion is Elena’s description of shadow coaching. Instead of just talking about behavior, she observes leaders in real contexts, like meetings and team interactions, and then brings those observations back to the conversation. This accelerates the process because it bypasses the leader's own description and looks at their actual behavior. Many leadership blind spots feel "normal" from the inside. When a coach sees a leader dominating a meeting and leaving no space for others, they can turn that "normal" behavior into a powerful moment of reflection.
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The trust gap in Asian markets
For HR teams and leaders in Asia, the cross cultural aspect of coaching is vital. Elena notes that while coaching is more openly embraced in many European settings, it can face a trust gap in parts of Asia. Sometimes coaching is confused with therapy, mentoring, or advice giving. Many clients come in expecting a list of recommendations, and when a coach gives them questions instead of answers, trust takes time to build. For coaching to be effective in these markets, organizations need to build a deeper awareness of what the process actually is.
Internal vs. External coaching
Elena makes a strong case for the limits of internal coaching, especially for senior leaders. When dealing with sensitive topics like restructuring, layoffs, or reorganization, confidentiality isn't just a detail, it’s the foundation.
* Internal Coaching: Best for non-sensitive development where there is no reporting line conflict.
* External Coaching: Essential for senior leadership or situations where independence and total confidentiality are required.
* The Golden Rule: Supervisors should never coach their direct reports to avoid a massive conflict of interest.
AI can support reflection, but it misses the human heart
Elena already uses AI coaching tools for small reflective moments between sessions, but she is clear on the gap. AI still cannot recognize human emotion with the depth required for true transformation. In the next decade, self awareness will become even more important. As knowledge becomes easier to access via technology, the human ability to frame, interpret, and create meaning becomes the ultimate competitive advantage. AI can scale the work, but it cannot scale the human soul.
Conclusion
- Elena Dolmat’s insights serve as a necessary reality check for industries often obsessed with "quick-fix" corporate culture, emphasizing that true leadership transformation is a biological marathon rather than a management sprint. By highlighting the 65 to 299-day window required for neural rewiring, she challenges HR teams to move away from superficial workshops and toward sustained, high-readiness development. Her advocacy for shadow coaching provides a tactical solution to the "narrative gap," allowing leaders to confront their blind spots in real-time settings like meetings rather than relying on sanitized self-reporting.
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