CEO Coaching Is Broken: Why Leaders Don’t Need More Advice, They Need Better Thinking

Poole, Dorset Apr 23, 2026 (EMWNews.com) – James Akin-Smith, ranked in the top 3% of business coaches worldwide and the founder of a leading UK CEO coaching practice, has issued a direct challenge to the modern coaching industry.

His message is simple: CEO coaching, in its most common form, is broken. Leaders drowning in advice, frameworks and expert opinions don’t need another voice telling them what to do. They need space, structure and challenge to think more clearly for themselves.

The statement comes as James Akin-Smith expands access to his CEO Scorecard, a free diagnostic tool designed to help business leaders uncover how their business is really performing across ten critical areas in under ten minutes. The tool is available at jamesakinsmith.co.uk and has become a central entry point for CEOs exploring whether their challenges are truly operational or whether they stem from the quality of thinking behind their decisions.

According to James Akin-Smith, the coaching market has become saturated with prescriptive advice, templated frameworks and content-heavy programmes that treat every CEO as though they share the same problem. In his view, this approach fundamentally misunderstands what leaders at the top actually need.

“Most CEOs I meet aren’t failing. They’re succeeding, and success creates a different kind of problem,” said James Akin-Smith, Founder of James Akin-Smith, The CEO Coach. “They don’t have a shortage of advice. They have a shortage of time to think, and a shortage of people willing to challenge their thinking honestly. Pouring more advice into an already overwhelmed leader rarely moves the needle. Sharpening how they think does.”

The argument is grounded in three decades of commercial experience. James Akin-Smith built seven businesses across sectors, including eCommerce and international wholesale distribution, before moving into coaching, where he has accumulated more than 10,000 coaching hours with CEOs, founders and managing directors.

That background, he argues, is precisely why he views the “more advice” model with scepticism. Experience has taught him that the hardest problems at the top of an organisation are almost never solved by additional information. They are solved by better framing, sharper questions and the willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

This philosophy is reflected in the CEO Scorecard. Rather than delivering generic recommendations, the tool assesses a business across ten areas spanning strategy, systems, people and performance. It then places the leader into one of three operating stages — Paddle, Sail or Cruise — and produces a personalised report highlighting strengths, blind spots and the decisions most likely to be holding progress back. The emphasis is on perspective rather than prescription.

James Akin-Smith’s coaching practice extends this principle further through one-to-one coaching, Strategic Planning Days, and a Boardroom Advisory service for established businesses. Across each format, he deliberately distinguishes between coaching and advisory work. Coaching, in his framing, is about asking better questions. Advisory is about bringing seasoned judgement to high-stakes decisions. What unites both is a refusal to treat leaders as passive recipients of expertise.

“Every CEO reaches a point where they need to think differently,” James Akin-Smith added. “That’s where clarity begins, and where progress follows. The role of a good coach or advisor isn’t to hand over answers. It’s to create the conditions in which the right answers become obvious to the person who has to live with the consequences.”

The timing of the announcement is notable. Business leaders are navigating a period marked by economic uncertainty, rapid shifts in AI adoption, talent pressures and rising expectations on governance. James Akin-Smith’s view is that in an environment this complex, advice alone is not only insufficient; it can be actively counterproductive when it crowds out the leader’s own judgement.

James Akin-Smith has been recognised with the Entrepreneur Coach of the Year 2022 award at the Southern Enterprise Awards, as well as Growth Coach Awards in 2016 and 2019 for the fastest-growing UK practice in the South West. He is an Accredited Talent Dynamics Practitioner and has profiled approximately 1,000 professionals to help leadership teams align the right people with the right roles.

Business leaders interested in exploring the argument further can access the CEO Scorecard and related resources at www.jamesakinsmith.co.uk.

About James Akin-Smith

James Akin-Smith is a UK-based CEO coach, business advisor and Non-Executive Director with more than 30 years of commercial experience across seven businesses. Based in Poole, England, he works with CEOs, founders and senior leaders across the UK and internationally, offering one-to-one coaching, strategic planning sessions and boardroom advisory services. His practice is built on uncompromising honesty, experience-led judgement and a commitment to helping leaders build businesses that are less dependent on them so they can focus on growth, succession or exit.

Further information is available at www.jamesakinsmith.co.uk

Media Contact

James Akin-Smith, The CEO Coach

Poole, United Kingdom

Website: www.jamesakinsmith.co.uk