Coaching leaders to become their best selves

Coaching leaders to become their best selves

Mike Donahue

“My purpose is to do transformational work, to leave a permanent mark on my clients.”


In an era when anyone can print business cards and call themselves an executive coach, Mike Donahue is the real deal. Mike has coached business owners, senior managers and chief executives since 2002. In that time, he has logged over 3,000 hours in one-to-one coaching sessions and facilitated more than 700 meetings of his leadership peer groups.

Mike served as a Vistage group chair for nine years starting in 2002. Vistage is the world’s largest executive coaching organization for small and midsize businesses. Mike says the coaching and facilitation training he experienced as a member of the Vistage family was second to none. It transformed him in indelible ways, including turning him into an opsimath (i.e., someone who comes to learning late in life).

Though he has decades of solid work experience in companies big and small, and an MBA from the University of Chicago, one of the highest-rated business schools in the U.S., he’ll tell you that he didn’t truly understand what it means to be a leader until he was 54 years old and began working as a coach.

Though Mike’s business card calls him an “executive coach,” his clients call him their strategic sparring partner and trusted advisor. His peer groups are learning labs for executives, and his one-to-one coaching sessions are crucibles for personal and professional growth, a place where fierce conversations take place.


Peeling back a layer.

Coaching leaders to become their best selves
Coaching is a journey, like climbing a mountain. The higher I climb, the more my perspective changes. I'm able to see the same things from a different point of view. The journey makes me more insightful, a better coach than I was a year ago.
Coaching leaders to become their best selves
  • Q: Your superpower?
    A:

    Making my coaching clients feel safe enough to share the most serious issues they’re dealing with.

  • Q: Favorite possession?
    A:

    My Stickley rocker. It’s positioned near the fireplace in our living room. Over the years I’ve spent hundreds of hours sitting in that chair reading, sipping whiskey and listening to Frank Sinatra.

  • Q: Greatest fear?
    A:

    Rejection.

  • Q: Greatest extravagance?
    A:

    My Porsche 911 Carrera S. It’s painted basalt black, and every time I climb aboard, the teenage boy who lives inside of me gets excited.

  • Q: Title of your Six-Word Memoir?
    A:

    “He Coaches Better Than He Played”

  • Q: Best advice ever received written as the 7-word title slide of a PowerPoint presentation?
    A:

    “Say nothing and keep on saying it.” It’s an expression I first heard in Ireland. In her book “Fierce Conversations,” a book written for executive coaches, Susan Scott offers the same advice in a chapter titled “Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting.” It’s great advice that I try to live by in my one-to-one coaching sessions.

  • Q: MBA?
    A:

    Yes, I earned my MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. If you knew me in elementary or high school, you’d be amazed to learn this.

  • Q: Hobbies?
    A:

    Donahue family genealogy. I volunteer as one of the co-administrators of The O’Donoghue Society Family Tree DNA project. Not only have I been able to document the family history of my Donahue family, but I have also gotten to know half a dozen “DNA cousins” with whom I share a common ancestor who lived in rural Ireland in the late 18th century.

  • Q: Ever been fired?
    A:

    I’ve been fired three times and deserved it every time. Lessons learned.

  • Q: Three essential ingredients in a successful one-to-one coaching session?
    A:

    First, the coach must make the session safe; that means everything said is confidential. Second, the coach needs to ask thought-provoking discovery questions that help the client look at issues with new eyes. And third, an effective coach must listen to their left-hand column (LHC). This means listening not just to what’s been said, but also to what we’re thinking about what’s been said. The LHC is the source of penetrating follow-up questions.

  • Q: Bucket list item you've checked off?
    A:

    Riding on the Nürburgring Nordschleife in a Porsche GT3.

  • Q: Most famous person you’ve ever met?
    A:

    I’ve met two Nobel Prize winners, attended talks given by three others and had another for a class. The most famous of these six was the poet Seamus Heaney. I’m proud to say I made a joke in badly broken Irish (Gaelige briste) that made the Nobelist laugh.