Doro Dorsch Coaching

I keep seeing the same scene play out with the leaders I work with.

A specialist on their team explains why something isn't working. Three minutes, technically precise, completely correct. Nobody else in the room can follow it. Someone changes the subject before she's finished.

Then someone else stands up with a simpler idea, says it with total confidence, and gets nods around the table. The idea isn't better. It's just easier to agree with something you can understand in real time.

That's the part nobody prepares you for when you're leading a team of specialists who know more than you do. It isn't only that they know more. It's that people still reward whoever explains fastest and lands it cleanest, and depth rarely wins on speed.

And that is where leadership needs to make it's contribution: making sure the person who actually understands the system gets heard before the team moves on without them.

Nobody teaches you how ensure that everyone gets heard. Even those who are right but not fast. You learn it by watching good ideas get skipped enough times that you decide you're not doing that again.

It is 3am and you are staring at the ceiling, wondering how you ended up here. You worked hard for this and missed birthdays of people you love along the way. Your friends don't quite get it, because from the outside you seem to have it all: the title, a strong team and a salary you would never have dared to dream of as a student. And still the only thought in your head is whether this is it, whether the next 10, 15 or 20 years will look exactly like this, and where along the way you lost yourself.

I know that night from my own career, and it took me a while to read it properly. For a long time I filed it under weakness. Looking back, it was a reasonable question turning up at the only hour my diary left free for it: is there something more deliberate to aim for than surviving the calendar, the next launch and the next tool rollout? That doesn't mean the tiredness should be brushed aside. If your sleep no longer recovers you or your health keeps sending reminders, take that seriously and talk to a doctor as well.

Many of the leaders I work with are at exactly this point. They are worn out from succeeding in a way that no longer fits who they are now, and the 3am question is often the first honest sign that something needs to change.

If you recognise that night, I'd be glad to talk. Send me a message or book a free virtual coffee through the link in my profile, and we'll look at what could change, with no sales pitch at the end.

Hi, I'm Doro Dorsch. I help senior leaders in charge of an undefined transformation gain the clarity to lead it on their own terms.

"Be more strategic" is one of those requests that sounds reasonable and becomes absurd the moment you look at the actual workload.

I remember being asked, with a straight face, to "just copy and paste a webshop so it fits one of the brands within a week," while my task list already held preparations for the big executive strategy meeting, the move of the website to a headless system, and a customer journey map that was apparently meant to materialise out of thin air so I could present it to the presidents' meeting. Yes, I had a team, and a very competent and committed one. But they were already up to their ears in high-priority tasks. And don't get me wrong, I reported to a great leader too. I was told this was a marathon, not a sprint. It still felt like my job to hold it all together, and that not managing it meant I wasn't fit for the role.

None of these things are wrong in isolation. What's annoying is pretending they all fit into the same timeline without trade-offs, without decisions, and without anyone explicitly saying what gets paused.

If your leadership asks for strategy while treating every task as urgent, what gets paused, and who decides?

You were put in charge of the digital transformation. Nobody wrote a proper job description, and you are still waiting for someone to tell you that you're allowed to lead it. This is the issue nobody really talks about.

You have the budget and you have a team of specialists who mostly know more about the tools than you ever will. You have a board that expects results without being able to describe what those results look like. And somewhere in there, you are still asking yourself whether you are qualified enough to say what you actually think.

Let me break it to you: you were, the moment you got the mandate. Something that is true for most advanced careers is that the people who get heard in the boardroom are oftentimes the ones who just go ahead without asking for permission. Nobody above you has the map either. You could ask a big committee of qualified senior executives what success looks like, and you'd get back as many different answers (maybe even more!), every one of them honest.

Waiting before you speak is a habit, and habits can be unlearned. Mostly, what it takes is giving yourself the permission you were looking for from someone else.

If this is where you are right now, message me. We can talk about what the job actually is, and what leading it on your own terms would look like.

I help senior leaders who were put in charge of transformation nobody defined, gain the clarity to lead it on their own terms.

You're the one who always delivers. So why hasn't the next level of influence opened up? You've made it a long way up the career ladder. You've exceeded expectations for years. The job gets done. The title and the visibility haven't followed.

In many cases, it's because you've learned to over-adapt. Reliability builds workload. Visibility builds authority. You've become the safe person to hand things to, not the person handed the microphone.

Ask yourself where you've been over-explaining instead of positioning. Whether you're actually overlooked, or still waiting for permission to take up space. Many capable leaders are still running an old script: perform well, stay humble, don't rock the boat. Then they wonder why no one sees the leader they already are.

I help senior leaders who were put in charge of transformation nobody defined, gain the clarity to lead it on their own terms.

You led the team through a transformation nobody clearly defined. If that wasn't difficult enough, today they came at you with all the frustration, maybe in front of others.

You stay professional, say the right things, and then you drive home, replaying every word for two hours, or even the whole night. Were they right? Were you wrong? That's what you're trying to find out. What should you have said? You rerun the tape, looking for evidence, maybe even a verdict.

That's an instinct that won't help you. It's a reflex, your body treats the conversation as a threat, not as the feedback it actually was.

Knowing this doesn't switch off the reaction, because the real question isn't whether someone was right. It's whether you hear the information as frustration, or hear an attack and try to defend against it and shut it down. That's a skill most leaders, including myself, have never learned. It's not taught in manager school.

I help senior leaders who were put in charge of transformation nobody defined, gain the clarity to lead it on their own terms. This is where you are. Let's talk. Link in bio.

Aqua is my dog. Anxious, blue-eyed, hopeless at hiding it when I'm having a bad day. She notices before I've said a word. Walks over, sits, looks at me until I stop what I'm doing and pay attention to her instead of the sixteen things fighting for my brain. It works every time.

I read a good line recently: paying attention to someone can work like a social airbag. A small cushion against a hard moment. I liked it because it's true, and because it made me think about who does that for me at work.

Most days, nobody. Because I'm the one doing it for everyone else.

Leaders in transformation roles spend most of their day reading in between the lines. Noticing who's gone quiet in a meeting. Translating a technical problem into something the board will actually hear. Catching the junior specialist who's drowning before they are even aware themselves. It's a full-time job of noticing, on top of the job.

Nobody's walking over to check on the person doing all that noticing.

Aqua doesn't know what a sprint is or what board-level impact means. She just knows when to sit down next to me. Some days that's the whole difference.

Real leaders never have doubt. They waddle through life like teflon and nothing gets in their way. This is the kind of inner story I told myself when I was promoted to my business area responsibility. And as this was true no matter what, the only consequence when I was still doubting was: something is wrong with me!

What I didn't consider: doubt normally grows along with the role. Bigger roles mean harder decisions, bigger and more delayed consequences, more people affected. Plus honest feedback gets thinner the higher you move up. Staying certain under these circumstances would be a strange outcome, no doubt (pun intended).

Questioning yourself is normal. The issue is that sometimes it is hard to see what you are doubting. Are you missing a skill? Are the priorities unclear? Is it politics? Or is it just the normal weight of the job? And suddenly it feels very personal.

At that point, it is also normal to start overcompensating. You over-prepare, work longer hours, don't share and carry things alone. You can do the job, no doubt. But sometimes a sparring partner is hard to find.

Naming it clearly changes that. Once the doubt has a shape, you can do something about it. And this is what I do. Help you name the doubt so you are able to move out of the fog.