I'm Ariel Wilkins and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Podcast Network.

I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a bump in the road.

My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals

and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease.

I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time

coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing.

Today's guest is someone will call Diego to protect his confidentiality.

He's someone with a background in manufacturing and logistics and really enjoys the

problem-solving aspect of his field.

I think that the idea of working with so many variables,

because logistics is truly a very multivariable complex problem.

There's so many things that can go wrong, so many inputs along the way.

And I think that ability to diagnose all of them at once and then create a 10,000-foot strategy,

logistics was just a fondue of defects to go hound.

Diego was an individual contributor for some time, and a few years ago, he started managing teams,

just a couple of team members to start, but that number

grew quickly. And the new challenge of managing people has been highly motivating for him.

But what's been a bit harder is managing the people around him that he isn't directly responsible

for.

What I think has been the harder part, part actually is the stakeholder side now that I have

to coach individuals and not have direct contact to the stakeholders they're dealing with.

That has been, I guess, a longer learning curve.

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