Harvard Business Review / Muriel Wilkins
101 episodes listed below
Real coaching sessions where Muriel Wilkins helps one professional solve one leadership dilemma.
Coaching Real Leaders follows working leaders through focused, one-time coaching sessions about promotion, uncertainty, visibility, and career choice. Muriel Wilkins listens closely, names the tension, and helps each guest separate what they want from what they are avoiding.
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Coaching Real Leaders is a one-on-one coaching-session show: host Muriel Wilkins, an executive coach affiliated with Harvard Business Review, works live through a real professional dilemma with one guest per episode. Guests are typically anonymized or given pseudonyms (Chloe, Jada, Elsie, Gia, Erica, Stefan) and span director-to-C-suite levels across industries including healthcare, product, and agency-side design work. Recurring problem types include promotion stalls, being told to 'increase visibility,' conflict with a competitive or difficult peer, co-leadership breakdowns over decision rights, and weighing a next career move while still content in a current role. Most episodes follow a consistent arc: the guest states the presenting problem, Wilkins reframes it against a specific decision or value (e.g., outcome versus reaction, guilt versus happiness, content versus process), and the guest leaves with a concrete next step or plan. A smaller number of episodes depart from the single-client format for an 'Ask Muriel Anything' style conversation with an outside guest, such as Dave Stachowiak of Coaching for Leaders. The show carries corporate sponsor ad reads (Alma, NetSuite by Oracle, Quince, Liberty Mutual) typical of an HBR-network production. Tone throughout is educational and conversational rather than performative, with no studio audience or scripted narrative. Listeners are mid-career and senior professionals — directors, VPs, business owners — who are facing a specific advancement, visibility, or workplace-conflict decision rather than seeking general management theory. Episodes run roughly 40 to 57 minutes and are framed around one clear question per session (e.g., 'Do I Really Want to Be CEO?', 'How Do I Deal with a Competitive Peer?').
Made for: Directors, VPs, and business owners weighing a specific promotion, visibility, or workplace-conflict decision.
What sets it apart: Unlike interview-format leadership shows, each episode is an actual unscripted coaching session with one anonymized client working a single real dilemma, not a scripted conversation with a public figure.
We all want to get to the next level of our career, but so many of us get stuck. Longtime leadership coach Muriel Wilkins takes you inside real-life leadership coaching sessions with high performers working to overcome professional challenges and grow as leaders. Listen in on real conversations and leave with new insights and practical guidance for your own career. The views expressed on this podcast are those of its hosts, guests, and callers, and not those of Harvard Business Review.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Muriel Wilkins makes leadership dilemmas concrete by testing ambitions, trade-offs, workplace relationships, and the choices hiding beneath career frustration.
Coaching Real Leaders turns workplace friction into a disciplined examination of choices. Muriel Wilkins works through confidential cases involving promotion, visibility, competitive peers, shared authority, and decisions about leaving a comfortable role.
Muriel Wilkins keeps asking what you want until office politics loses its convenient disguise.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured leadership conversation about defining non-negotiables before taking a larger role with real trade-offs.
A senior leader weighing a bigger role gets the central question here: how do you decide what is genuinely non-negotiable before leaving a company where you are known and well liked?
A focused coaching session on ambition, stalled advancement, and the personal cost of choosing a C-suite path.
Erica, a long-tenured healthcare leader, wants the final push into the C-suite after years of steady advancement inside one organization. The episode works because Muriel Wilkins moves the issue away from a simple promotion gap and into the harder business of choice: what Erica…
Muriel Wilkins opens a monthly leadership Q&A format, with producer Mary Du adding a warmer voice to the room.
Muriel Wilkins uses this short launch episode to introduce Ask Muriel Anything, a monthly Coaching Real Leaders format built around questions from listeners, her community, LinkedIn, past coaching guests, and people who applied to be coached but did not make it onto the show.
A grounded coaching session on whether bigger leadership ambition can survive the habits that got someone this far.
Do I Really Want to Be CEO? frames leadership ambition less as a title question than as a test of working habits. Muriel Wilkins coaches a guest called Chloe through a familiar executive problem: she understands time-management ideas, but has not yet found or owned a system that…
A practical coaching session on turning visibility from vague exposure into promotion-relevant business credibility.
Career visibility is framed here as a business problem, not a personality makeover. Muriel Wilkins coaches a leader called Jada, who is working through feedback about increasing her visibility after earlier career momentum and promotions.
A grounded coaching session on promotion ambition, peer tension, and staying focused on the outcome that matters.
Muriel Wilkins coaches a director who wants to be the first person the executive team thinks of when a VP role opens, while tension with a former mentor, now a peer, is starting to affect how she sees her path forward.
Stephen Dubner tests bourbon economics, Alzheimer's research, and money advice against hard data.
Daily business news with Kai Ryssdal, tracking Fed policy, oil shocks, and private credit.
Galloway rotates Office Hours Q&A, Raging Moderates politics, and China Decode geopolitics weekly.
Joel and Matt answer listener money questions weekly in the show's Ask HTM segments.
Brené Brown's long-form conversations linking grief, caregiving, politics, and nonviolence to her vulnerability research.
A leader is staring at a serious career move.
Erica wants the C-suite.
Ask Muriel Anything changes the format.
Executive coach Muriel Wilkins conducts a coaching session with a marketing leader named Elizabeth who is navigating her new senior role and seeking growth opportunities in her organization.
Muriel Wilkins announces the return of Coaching Real Leaders for Season 11, featuring year-round episodes with coaching conversations and a new Ask Muriel Anything segment to help leaders overcome challenges.
Work harder is the reflex.
This episode features a coaching session with Thomas, who is struggling to manage former peers after rapid promotions into a supervisory role.
An executive coach helps a leader named Maggie navigate organizational uncertainty and career advancement questions as her company transitions to a new phase of growth.
An executive coach helps a leader named John navigate feelings of not belonging and lack of operational responsibility as he seeks to advance from a strategy role to a senior leadership position.
This episode explores how hidden beliefs like 'I don't belong here' or 'I have to have all the answers' limit leadership effectiveness, featuring a conversation with executive coach Muriel Wilkins on identifying and overcoming these psychological barriers.
Muriel Wilkins coaches a guest called Jada on why managers at her company keep telling her she needs more 'visibility' after faster promotions earlier in her career.
This episode previews Season 10 of Coaching Real Leaders, where host Muriel Wilkins helps leaders overcome career blocks like imposter syndrome and tough feedback through executive coaching.
An executive coach helps an entrepreneur navigate a leadership challenge and company transition.
Elsie wants the path to VP to feel less foggy.
An executive coach works with a high-performing leader to address a specific leadership challenge through a one-time coaching session.
An executive coach works with a seasoned consultant to address a leadership challenge in a one-time coaching session.
A leadership coach works with a high-performing individual contributor who is taking on unofficial management responsibilities.
A leadership coach works with a high performer struggling with imposter syndrome and loss of confidence in their career.
A leadership coach introduces a coaching immersion event and begins a session with a client facing a strategic leadership challenge.
A leadership coach introduces a coaching session with a senior executive facing a career transition and a major transformational project.
An executive coach helps a professional named Sarah decide whether to leave her long-time job for a C-level role.
A leadership coach works with a newly promoted director struggling to manage a growing team across multiple locations.
A leadership coach works with a client named Adam to help him navigate a career challenge and achieve his professional goals.
The host shares a preview of an upcoming season and recommends an episode from another podcast about managing energy and productivity at work.
An executive coach works with a manufacturing manager struggling to balance long hours and make a meaningful impact in his organization.
A leadership coach works with a long-tenured employee named Sophie to help her navigate career stagnation and loyalty conflicts within her organization.
A leadership coach works with a client who stepped back from a leadership role to address skill gaps and advance his career.
A leadership coach promotes an upcoming immersion event and shares a guest appearance on another podcast discussing executive presence.
A leadership coach helps a mission-driven professional navigate a career challenge in a one-time coaching session.
An executive coach promotes a coaching immersion event and then introduces a coaching session with a leader struggling to measure his team's impact.
A leadership coach works with a client named Michael to help him overcome a professional challenge and grow as a leader.
An executive coach works with a finance professional aiming to become a CFO, addressing his leadership challenges.
A leadership coach shares a preview of an upcoming coaching immersion event and introduces a special episode from a colleague's podcast about workplace relationships.