Something needs to change
You feel stalled, have been passed over, face a difficult new manager, or are navigating conflict, ownership change, or reorganization.
Gandee Leadership Partners
Executive Career Coaching & Confidential Advisory
A wholly owned subsidiary of John Gandee & Associates Inc.
Executive coaching for experienced leaders navigating transition, growth, and pivotal career decisions.
Work with John Gandee to clarify your next step, think through leadership challenges, and make informed decisions about your career.
ManufacturingEngineeringTechnologyBusiness DevelopmentFinancial ManagementProduct & Project Management
Who John helps
Make your next leadership and career decision a genuine step forward.
Gandee Leadership Partners serves experienced leaders who need clear judgment during transition, growth, and pivotal career decisions.
You are ready to grow
You are considering broader responsibilities, preparing for a senior role, or deciding what growth should look like in the next stage of your career.
A genuine decision is in front of you
You are preparing for an important interview or evaluating a position, employer, compensation package, relocation, or the decision to stay or leave.
Avoiding unnecessary career risk
Changing jobs is often riskier than professionals realize. Leadership IQ research involving more than 20,000 new hires found that 46% were considered unsuccessful within their first 18 months—nearly one in two.
The stakes may be even higher for senior executives. McKinsey has reported that 27% to 46% of executive transitions end in failure or disappointment within two years.
An experienced executive coach can improve your odds of making a successful move. A coach helps you evaluate opportunities, avoid common missteps, prepare for the hiring process, clearly communicate your value, excel in interviews, and make a strong impression on the senior leaders who make the final decisions.
Horse races are often won by a nose or less, a very small difference. The same principle applies when senior leaders compare you with other candidates being considered. Professional preparation by a true expert, can provide you with a winning margin.
Executive recruiting perspective
For 33 years, John has owned and operated an executive recruiting business. He has provided hundreds of executives and professionals with extensive guidance on career searches, résumés, interview preparation, and critical career decisions.
During his 25-year corporate career, he also recruited more than 100 senior professional managers, financial controllers, and business-development executives and managers.
Corporate operating experience
- Applied Automation UK LtdPresident and General Manager
- Combustion Engineering, Inc.Business Vice President, International Business Development
- Phillips Petroleum Company, Inc.Project Manager; International Business Development Manager; Proprietary Process Licensing
- Litwin Engineering and Construction, Inc.Project Manager; Contract Manager and Negotiator; Business Development Manager
Industrial fluency
- Capital equipment design and manufacturing
- Pulp and paper processes
- Chemical manufacturing processes
- Discrete manufacturing processes
- Electronic equipment manufacturing
- Software product management and design
- Business startup and management
- Extensive P&L experience
Current engagement structure
What we do for our clients
Coaching engagement$5,00050% to begin. Balance due 90 days after the first payment.
01Discovery, diagnosis, and objectives
- Clarify the client’s current career situation.
Assess employment status, career history, financial runway, geographic constraints, family considerations, motivations, frustrations, and immediate risks.
- Define the desired outcome and success criteria.
Establish the target level, functions, industries, company types, compensation range, work arrangement, timeline, and whether the client seeks employment, consulting, board work, entrepreneurship, or a portfolio career.
- Conduct a career-history and achievement inventory.
Build a detailed record of roles, responsibilities, P&L scope, leadership scope, measurable business results, transformations led, crisis experience, major deals, and professional differentiators. This is the factual foundation for resumes, LinkedIn, interviews, and negotiations.
- Identify marketable skills, capabilities, and differentiators.
Translate the client’s background into marketplace-relevant strengths: functional expertise, industry knowledge, leadership capabilities, operating experience, revenue or margin impact, technology fluency, and executive presence.
- Identify skill, knowledge, credential, and positioning gaps.
Determine which gaps materially limit the client’s target options and distinguish between gaps that require training, reframing of existing experience, a credential, current-market exposure, or a change in target role.
02Career direction and market strategy
- Develop and prioritize career alternatives.
Explore several credible paths rather than prematurely selecting a single job title. For senior clients, alternatives may include a comparable executive operating role, a step-up role, advisory or fractional leadership work, consulting, board service, private-equity portfolio-company leadership, or an interim executive assignment.
- Research the market for each priority alternative.
Assess demand, hiring patterns, likely employers, industry conditions, compensation norms, geographic realities, likely obstacles, and the client’s competitive position.
- Select a primary target and secondary options.
Create a practical hierarchy: the preferred target, adjacent targets, and fallback or bridge options. This keeps the search focused while preserving resilience.
- Create an individualized job-search or career-transition plan.
Define target companies, target decision-makers, networking priorities, recruiter strategy, application strategy, weekly activity goals, tracking methods, and review cadence.
03Positioning, brand, and career documents
- Develop the client’s professional positioning and executive narrative.
Create a clear answer to: “Who are you, what problems do you solve, what evidence proves it, and what role should an employer or client consider you for?”
- Create or revise the comprehensive master resume and achievement inventory.
This should be a detailed working document, not necessarily the version sent to employers. It captures the full factual record and supports later customization.
- Create highly focused resumes for the selected career alternatives.
Each version should emphasize the specific experience, outcomes, keywords, and leadership narrative relevant to a target role or market segment.
- Optimize LinkedIn and other professional-brand materials.
For most executive searches, this should include the LinkedIn headline, About section, experience entries, featured content, recommendations, profile photo guidance, and consistency with resume positioning.
- Prepare supporting materials where appropriate.
Depending on the client, these may include an executive biography, leadership profile, board résumé, consulting profile, deal sheet, operating portfolio, 30-60-90-day plan, or a concise value-proposition document.
04Search execution and relationship development
- Develop networking and outreach strategy.
Help the client identify and approach former colleagues, industry contacts, board members, investors, executive recruiters, professional associations, and target-company insiders.
- Provide guidance on recruiter engagement and executive-search process management.
Teach the client how retained search works, how to communicate with recruiters, how to avoid appearing indiscriminate, and how to maintain professional follow-up.
- Assist the client in expanding and recalibrating alternatives as the search develops.
Review feedback from the market and modify targets, messaging, search channels, geographic assumptions, compensation expectations, or interim options when evidence warrants it.
- Manage references and professional reputation.
Identify appropriate references, obtain permission, brief them on the client’s targets, and prepare the client for informal back-channel referencing, which is especially important at senior levels.
05Interviewing and selection
- Provide phone, video, and initial-screening interview training.
Focus on concise positioning, credibility, compensation questions, career transitions, handling apparent weaknesses, and generating enough interest to advance.
- Provide in-person and executive-panel interview training.
Focus on executive presence, strategic thinking, leadership style, stakeholder management, culture fit, board or investor interaction, and substantive business discussion.
- Prepare the client before every significant interview.
Identify the interviewers, likely agenda, company context, specific objectives, relevant stories, difficult questions, potential objections, questions the client should ask, and desired next steps.
- Debrief after every interview and plan follow-up.
Capture what was learned, assess signals, refine messaging, decide on thank-you and follow-up communication, address objections, and prepare for the next stage.
- Prepare for executive assessment, case studies, presentations, and board interviews.
This is particularly useful for senior operating roles, private-equity-backed companies, and positions requiring presentations to a CEO, board, or investment committee.
06Offer, negotiation, and transition
- Analyze offers, total compensation, and risk.
Evaluate not only salary, but bonus structure, equity, long-term incentives, severance, benefits, relocation, restrictive covenants, change-in-control provisions, reporting relationships, authority, performance expectations, and business risk.
- Assist with offer strategy and compensation negotiation.
Help the client decide what to negotiate, how to sequence issues, when to use leverage, and how to preserve the relationship while protecting important interests.
- Assist with employment agreements and executive-contract negotiation when appropriate.
For senior P&L, C-suite, or high-risk roles, this may involve organizing business issues for review by qualified employment counsel: duties, authority, term, termination, severance, equity, clawbacks, noncompete/non-solicit provisions, indemnification, D&O coverage, and change-in-control protections.
- Support resignation, transition, and onboarding.
Help the client resign professionally, manage communications, prepare a first-90-days plan, clarify expectations with the new manager or board, and establish early credibility.
Frequently asked questions
Direct answers before an introductory conversation.
What does the coaching focus on?
The focus is experienced leaders navigating transition, growth, and pivotal career decisions. Depending on your situation, conversations may address executive positioning, search strategy, interviews, and evaluating opportunities. Résumé feedback may be part of that work.
Does John find a job for coaching clients?
No. The executive coaching service is separate from recruiting and does not promise access, introductions, interviews, job offers, or placement.
What can the six sessions cover?
Normally it takes sixty to ninety days working with our clients over six sessions to fully prepare our clients to begin searching and corresponding with those having available professional career opportunities.
Is the service limited to Austin?
No. John is based in the United States and expects to serve clients nationally.
What is the engagement structure?
Our fee is $5,000 for projects as defined above. Our payment schedule is 50% to begin, and balance due 90 days after the receipt of the first payment. We commit to working with our clients for one year, providing interview preparation, after-interview debriefing and strategizing, professional employment contracts, and negotiating assistance.
A private first step