How to turn a good CEO into a great CEO. An Interview with Groove Management’s Brian Formato
In September 2025, Groove Management’s founder, Brian Formato was interviewed at the Brighton Park Capital Senior Advisor Summit in New York City. Brian’s commentary from the event has been captured in the post below.
What drew you into executive coaching, and what was your own first “aha” moment around leadership blind spots?
My grandfather on my mothers side Dr. Allan Fromme was a renowned psychologist and author. His clients were wall street elite and CEOs. Many of these patients were uber successful at work, but at the cost of their relationships with their families. I was drawn to the topics of leadership development and work life balance. As I navigated my career at companies like Time Warner Cable leading people development, I saw that there was a struggle moving from best doer to leader. Leadership development programs can accelerate that transition, but one on one executive coaching is the most effective approach to scaling ones leadership. Leadership is about individuality, so the aha was that the number one thing that separates the best leaders from all others is self-awareness. The better you know your strengths and your kryptonite the more effective you can be as a leader. Helping executives to understand their UVA (Unique value add) and to embrace owning their weaknesses is a big unlock for coaching clients.
What’s one unexpected place or moment where a leadership lesson really hit home?
There are two that come to mind. I worked with a co-founder of a high growth SaaS company. He had built the technology himself, hired his co-founder as CEO yet continued to act like he was the CEO. Through our coaching and his 360 feedback it became evident that his leadership was not scaling along with the business. He refused to let go of decision making authority, he always fought for his ideas and overruled his very capable teammates. I gave him blunt feedback but he made excuses for his behavior. I came up with a phrase that finally got through to him. I called him a single point of success. He said he resembled that comment with a smile. That helped him see how he was constraining the business. I told him the organization cannot resemble a Jenga structure (The Jenga Leadership Test) where if any one member of the leadership team is removed the organization will topple over. Ultimately he was unable to make the pivot and the CEO and board parted ways with him. The story highlights that heroics don’t scale and leaders cannot be single points of success.
The other story was about helping a CEO learn how to operate at their best. I was coaching a CEO of a manufacturing company. He was a former Navy guy. When covid happened and he started working from home, he found himself ineffective. On one of our coaching calls, I asked him his pre-covid morning routine. He explained he woke up at 5:30am for his daily morning workout. After the work out he showered, ate breakfast and then drove to the office. I asked him what he did during the drive. He told me he would make a list in his head of all the tasks and priorities he had for the day. When he arrived at work he would write the list out on paper and then spend the day doing his job and tackling the list. I then asked him to tell me how he starts his day during covid with work from home. He shared the same workout, shower, breakfast but no commute just walk into his home office and start the day. I asked him what about the headspace time and making the list. He said he was not making the list. He had tried to sit at his desk and write but it was not flowing. I made the suggestion that he finish breakfast, get in his car and go for a 10 minute drive and then return home and try to make the list. He texted the next day that it worked. For the next year he went for a drive every morning. He told me he discovered neighborhoods he never knew existed and that the commute was an important part of getting him in the right headspace for the day. This represents the power of coaching. Helping leaders to be at their best.
You often challenge leaders with the question: “Would I thrive working for me?” How do CEOs react to that—and why is it so effective?
“If your team isn’t getting the results, the first place to look is in the mirror.” The question is a bit of a test. If you would not thrive working for you, then why should anyone else thrive working for you. We all want to be led by someone who cares. Who cares about the work and cares about the team. I have never met a CEO who doesn’t answer the question with a positive, of course I would thrive working for me. But when you then unpack why members of the team are not thriving, you find that the CEO blames the team rather than themselves for the ineffectiveness. This opens a deeper conversation about tailoring the leadership approach to each person on the team. A situational leadership model must be employed. It is much easier for the leader to alter their approach to their team members than it is to ask each team member to change to fit the leader’s style. There is a nuanced balancing act. This highlights that leadership is about serving others.
What are the most frequent points of friction between a CEO and their board—and how can coaching help mitigate that?
CEOs often defer to their boards too much. They see the board as the higher authority. I ask CEOs to shift the relationship from a parent/child relationship to more of a spouse relationship. If the board is your spouse, then you are in it together. You are each other’s success partners and you present a unified front. When CEOs make decisions to appease the board rather than fighting for their own beliefs that becomes a problem. While CEOs spend much of their time interfacing with their executive teams, board members only meet at best monthly. Board members have different priorities and different views on what success looks like for the business. The lack of board alignment pulls the CEO in different directions and can distract a CEO. I am a proponent of CEOs organizing board retreats. This is similar to the executive team timeouts that I lead for most clients. It is an opportunity to build trust, rapport and to align as a team. Friction often stems from CEOs not moving fast enough on underperforming talent. The board’s distance from the day to day provides perspective. Board members also get visibility into other organizations so they know what a high performing CRO or CMO looks like. This is helpful, but often feels like pressure on a CEO. The other friction point that I see a lot is around inorganic growth or acquisitions. CEOs see acquisitions as a fast path to revenue growth. If an organization isn’t running smoothly already, an acquisition will only exacerbate the problems. Getting CEOs to see the risks of an acquisition can be a challenge. As a coach I can be a go-between for the CEO and the board. I can share positives with the board and be a cheerleader for the CEO, I can be a sounding board for the CEO and help them frame things for the board and I can help the board to more effectively deliver messages to the CEO and their team.
What is LeaderSurf? —what happens when you take high-performing execs out of the boardroom and into the ocean?
LeaderSurf is my passion play. It is an experiential leadership development program for a cohort of eight leaders from different companies. They come together for a week in Costa Rica where they form a learning circle. We tackle defining each leaders UVA, unpacking leadership versus management, each person bring a business challenge they are facing and get input from the other participants, we engage in a community project to model servant leadership and we offer daily surfing lessons. Surfing is one of the only sports where even the best surfers wipe out every time they go surfing. So how do you team a high performing executive to embrace failure as learning, when failure is rarely an option in a business context? The act of learning to surf required teaching people how to fail. The first lesson is about safety and how to fall. In business we don’t teach people how to fall or fail. Learning to surf is a humbling experience. Executive quickly realize that surfing is really paddling with the occasional wave. I always say you don’t catch the wave because you cannot control the ocean, instead you put yourself in the right position to harness the power of the ocean to ride a wave. This metaphor has so many parallels to leading teams and businesses. Learning occurs when we push outside our comfort zones and try something new. The LeaderSurf program forces accomplish executives to suck at something and have the resilience to figure it out. .
You’ve said there’s no “best practices,” only “better practices.” What do you mean by that, and can you share one “better practice” every CEO here should consider?
Adam Grant the author and Wharton Professor actually said this in his book, Think Again. I love this statement and use it often with CEOs and their teams. When you call something a best practice you assume there is no room for improvement so you stop monitoring or looking to enhance it. Whether that is a product, a system or a process. Innovation is the act of improving on something that exists. We are living in a period of rapid disruption. AI and other technologies are changing the way we conduct business. It requires new thinking and better practices. Good can be the enemy of great when we settle for things because they just work even if they could work even better. Few companies invent most companies innovate and that requires challenging the ways things have been done. A better practice for CEOs is to dissect successes. Many organizations perform post mortems on projects to understand why things didn’t go well. I am a big proponent of the concept of appreciative inquiry where you look for what is working well. Dissecting success can uncover the root causes of success which then creates a foundation for future success and better practices going forward.
What do you say to a CEO who’s skeptical of coaching—maybe even resistant? How do you break through that mindset?
Coaching in the 1980s was akin to charm school. It was seen as remedial and one step before exiting an executive. That has changed dramatically over the past 40 plus years. I liken executive coaching to hiring a personal trainer. A personal trainer cannot get you in shape, you have to show up and do the work. That said they can help you work the muscles more effectively, they can hold you accountable and be your success partner. Likewise an executive coach can help you work your mental models, navigate challenges that a CEO and team faces, be a confidant, be a success partner, be a BS detector and be a cheerleader. It is lonely at the top and CEOs have few people who they can confide in. I joke “How many coaches does it take to change a lightbulb? One but the lightbulb has to want to change.” The best CEO coaching engagements tend to start with the CEO asking for a coach. When the board suggests a coach it can work but it makes my job more difficult because I need to get the CEO to really want it for themselves versus to appease the board. I tell them every professional athlete has a performance coach in addition to the team coach. A coach is a huge benefit and the best investment a CEO can make in their personal growth. I must build rapport, trust and chemistry with the CEO for it to work. Coaching fails when the leader is uncommitted.
What’s one small, practical habit you encourage CEOs to build into their week to move from good to great?
Exercise and sleep. My Garmin watch has given me great visibility in to my energy level. Working out is a great way to destress. I also find that it is time disconnected from technology. Create healthy habits around self-care is important. I weave this into my coaching. For those who don’t do this already, I encourage them to hold walking meetings, park further away in shopping centers and prioritize getting more steps and sleep. These habits build endurance which makes CEOs sharper on the job and better prepared to navigate challenges.
If the executives in this room took one bold action this month to challenge their own leadership style, what should it be?
Seek feedback from all their constituents in a quick and informal way. Ask each person for five words that describe their leadership style. 3 positive and 2 developmental. Aggregate the inventory, lean into the positives and create an action plan to address the negatives.
For board members and CTOs/CIOs in the room—what signs should they look for that a CEO might benefit from coaching?
The hero mentality. Back to the CEO acting like a single point of success. This highlights a barrier to scale. An executive coach can help the CEO learn that leadership is about leverage and that comes from sharing more responsibility with team members. This change requires trust in the team members competency and execution. In many instances the CEO could benefit from better talent in key roles. One way I broach this subject is to ask CEOs what keeps them up at night. The follow up question is even more important. I ask does, what keeps you up at night keep your direct reports awake too? This unlocks the conversation about leverage and the fact that leading a business is a team sport.
