Two hats

Early in my coaching practice, a mentor highlighted an important point.

We were discussing conflict of interest - the situations where a coach might also work with the same client as a consultant or advisor. The conversation moved through what conflict of interest actually means, to what is genuinely in the client's best interest, and then landed in an intangible space.

When a coach shifts into a different role - even briefly, even with good intent - the relationship between the coach and the coachee becomes unclear. The coach knows they have changed hats. The client often doesn't. And that confusion, the unacknowledged shifting, is what damages the partnership. The client no longer knows what kind of conversation they are in, what is safe to say, what is being heard and how. The relationship loses its clarity.

Hence the principle: avoid it, because a confused relationship is not safe for the client and does not serve the client's growth.

A CEO navigating former peer relationships faces the same confusion at a different scale.

The elevation changes the title and hierarchical relationship. It also changes how the whole ecosystem now relates to the CEO. The CEO may move, consciously and situationally, between peer mode and authority mode. In a one-to-one conversation, the peer register feels natural; in a board representation, authority is expected. The CEO knows which hat they're wearing. The former peers often don't. And that unacknowledged switching creates unpredictability, confusion and distance.

Below this confusion, there is something else.

The peer relationship is structurally gone. The CEO still carries the emotional residue of the old relationship, still reaching for the ease and frankness of being equals. The former peers are now navigating something different: an authority relationship, with its own careful calculations. The CEO reads this as withdrawal. It feels like betrayal. It is a kind of grief on both sides, differently experienced.

For the CEO, most relevant question to ask is - what kind of relationship is actually possible now, and am I consciously building toward that, or still reaching for what existed before?