What a leadership advisory relationship actually looks like

Not coaching, not consulting. Something in between.

The leadership advisory retainer is the engagement that is hardest to explain and, for the right person, the most useful. It is not coaching. It is not a project. It is a standing relationship with someone who knows your situation well enough to be useful when something comes up.

How it differs from coaching

Coaching tends to focus on the individual: their habits, their communication, their development. An advisory relationship focuses on the situation: the decisions, the organizational dynamics, the strategic questions. The distinction matters because the two require different kinds of conversation.

A coach asks how you are feeling about a situation. An advisor asks whether your reasoning about the situation is sound. Both are useful. They are not the same thing.

What the monthly rhythm looks like

The advisory retainer at Cedar Cloud Rise includes a standing monthly conversation, written follow-ups after each session, and availability for time-sensitive questions between sessions. The monthly conversation is usually sixty to ninety minutes. It covers whatever is most pressing.

The written follow-up is a short memo summarizing the key points and any commitments made. It is not a transcript. It is a document that is useful to return to before the next session.

Who this is useful for

The advisory relationship works best for a founder or senior leader who is making consequential decisions regularly and wants a thinking partner who is not inside the organization. The value is in the continuity: Charlotte knows the history, the people, the decisions that were made and why. That context makes each conversation more useful than a one-off call with someone who is starting from scratch.

Advisory retainers run in three-month increments. The first step is a first conversation to see whether the relationship makes sense for your situation.