A controlled experimental study of 1,361 global corporation managers showed that feedback-based coaching increased the managers’ propensity to seek advice and improved their subsequent performance one year later.

Your coach then interviews these people [people important to your life and wellbeing] and asks for open feedback on what they think could be holding you back or could become an obstacle to your success. For instance, as Goodman learned with respect to her own leadership, cutting people off in their presentations was inhibiting the free flow of information and, even worse, preventing her from hearing from her own high-potential employees.

Your coach then synthesizes this information for you. As Goldsmith’s clients will tell you, that initial, honest conversation can be tough, as it often challenges your own perceptions, and not necessarily in a pleasant way. Together, you and your coach decide what actions you would like to take to start working on the implications of the feedback and what evidence would suggest that you have been successful in addressing them.

Yet, Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, who has tried for twenty years to determine the characteristics of the most effective corporate leaders, cautions, “You look at the data, there’s ten different recipes for success. Sure, there are some people who are better than others, but it’s damn hard to tell what it is.

As Damien Faughnan said, the most successful CEOs are “the people who really work to understand who they are” and who have a great “capacity for deep reflection about themselves.” Failing to embrace this discipline of self-interrogation and relentless people skills development is a leading cause of executives stalling in their careers or failing in the early years of their CEO tenure.

Building on our study findings that CEOs who lead through influence were the most effective, we followed up by conducting interviews to learn about the development advice and training these leaders had received. We asked leaders to describe how they made the journey to becoming the highly effective leaders they were. What emerged is that a leader’s evolution generally proceeds in iterative cycles, with steps forward often followed by backsliding into old habits and then a renewed effort at change. It’s a process of trial and error, and often of fits and starts, as the daily grind of immediate demands diverts attention from one’s inner work. Those who continue to progress in the journey typically go through a three-phase cycle.

First, they are confronted with a necessity for change either because they took on a new challenge that reveals the shortfalls in their leadership or through feedback from their higher-up, colleagues, or mentor.