Elisabeth Schwab – Leadership Coaching & Transformation Advisory Skip to content
Elisabeth Schwab Coaching & Transformation Advisory
Leadership Coaching & Transformation Advisory

Where real business
meets coaching.

I partner with founders, leaders and their teams as they navigate dynamic, complex contexts where the path is anything but linear. Business experience, consulting depth and coaching presence, in one partner.

Elisabeth Schwab – Leadership Coach & Transformation Advisor
ICF- and EMCC-accredited Leadership Coach and Organisational Consultant Vienna, Austria · working in English & German
14+ years of leadership across
Roche AGMarketing Leadership mySugrBrand Leadership BMW GroupMarketing Leadership SHARE NOWMarketing Leadership goUrban MobilityMarketing Leadership European Innovation CouncilMentoring, Masterclasses TU Wien i²cAdvisor, Performance Coach
Why this work

Many of the leaders I work with are doing well on paper. Underneath, sometimes it’s harder than it looks.

No time to think about your own growth, because everything urgent comes first.

Missing a trusted sparring partner for the decisions you can’t take to your team, your board or your co-founder.

Navigating a new role, a scaling company or a reorganisation, and still looking for your footing.

Carrying the stress and conflict of a team through constant change, while being expected to stay resilient.

Hands writing in a notebook beside a laptop

All of that needs time, space and the right questions, ideally with someone who has sat in those seats.

That’s where I come in. I work where coaching and consulting meet, bringing grounded coaching, strategic perspective and real business experience to people navigating change.

The approach

The greatest gift we can offer each other is the framework in which to think for ourselves.

– Nancy Kline, Thinking Environment®

Time to actually think

In today's fast, brittle, non-linear world, we rarely get the opportunity to pause and reflect. Drawing on the Thinking Environment® and Solution-Focused Coaching, my work creates the conditions for fresh, independent thinking – and for the remarkable, often unexpected outcomes that follow when we do. (Accredited by the International Coaching Federation and the European Mentoring & Coaching Council.)

Strategy that meets the room

Unlike pure consulting, I don't just hand over concepts. And unlike pure coaching, I bring real business, P&L, and transformation experience to the table. The result? Agency, clarity, confidence – and the practical next steps needed to move forward.

How we can work together

Three ways, each for a different moment.

1:1 coaching for leaders in corporates, scale-ups and startups: a confidential space for the thinking that matters most. Accredited by the International Coaching Federation and European Mentoring & Coaching Council. Areas I am often brought into:

Corporate & senior leaders

Leading through matrix structures, different agendas and continuous change or reorganisation, while keeping your own direction clear.

Startup founders

From product to market — navigating pressures, critical decisions and the complexity of scaling.

Career transitions & turning points

Whether it's a promotion, a reorganisation, or a sense that what you do no longer feels right, I support you in redefining your role, growing into the next one, and moving through change with intention.

Female leadership

From mentoring with the EIC Women's Leadership Programme and Female Founders, and my own experience, I know how competitive and lonely tech can be for a woman. That's why I love partnering with female leaders to lead with clarity, impact and resilience, true to their values.

You leave with

Clarity · Resilience · Confident decisions

Facilitation, workshops and team sessions — from team dynamics and hybrid working to values, purpose and strategy activation. Sessions are designed with you and moderated end to end, so teams stay cohesive as the landscape shifts.

Workshops I've facilitated
1
Vision, Mission, Values

Co-creating and facilitating workshops that make a company's vision, mission and values explicit, building a shared picture of where the team is heading.

2
Strategy development

Turning direction into concrete priorities the team owns.

3
Team building

Strengthening trust, dynamics and ways of working together.

You leave with

Shared direction · Increased engagement & motivation · Clarity

Transformation often fails when people feel change is happening to them, not with them. Through workshops, facilitation and hands-on advisory, I help teams and organisations co-create the culture, trust and ownership that make transformation possible.

70%

of transformations fall short — rarely because of strategy or tech.1

28% vs 3%

success rate when frontline teams are engaged — vs when they're not.2

1,2 McKinsey — ‘Successful transformations’.

You leave with

Adoption · Ownership · Change that sticks

How we'll work together

Four clear steps.

From first hello to reflection, you always know what comes next.

01 Free

Intro call

Free and no-obligation. We get to know each other, look at what you need, and see whether we’re a fit.

02

Proposal

Based on the goals we want to reach together, I put together a tailored proposal: scope, format and next steps, clearly laid out.

03

Delivery

We work together: 1:1 coaching sessions, team workshops or advisory, online or on site, at a rhythm that fits best for you.

04

Feedback

We reflect continuously on what shifted, capture the outcomes and decide where to go from here.

The common thread

Whatever the situation that needs to change, the work is the same — thinking with people, not handing them answers.

One leader, a team, or a whole organisation — I co-create the reflective space with clients, where clarity, ownership and better decisions come from people themselves.

What good work returns

median return on investment reported by organisations that track coaching.1

14%

higher productivity in teams with high engagement.2

23%

higher profitability in teams with high engagement.2

1 ICF Global Coaching Client Study (PwC). 2 Gallup, Q12 Meta-Analysis (11th Edition).

Elisabeth Schwab
About Elisabeth

Transformation I've understood, led, and lived.

Hi, I'm Elisabeth! I'm based in Vienna and I work as an ICF- and EMCC-accredited leadership coach and organisational consultant, focusing on digital transformation. My practice draws on 14+ years of international leadership in marketing, brand and growth across corporations and start-ups on global, regional and local level, and an MSc in People & Organisational Development from the University of Sussex (UK).

Read my full story →
In their words
Elisabeth brings a rare combination of real business experience and genuine coaching presence. She sharpened my thinking, helped me see the bigger picture, and gave me the confidence to act on it.

Founder · InsurTech

I felt both safe and pushed at the same time, which is quite rare. She created a space where I felt genuinely heard, which made it easier to explore things I might otherwise never have perceived.

Chief Growth Officer · Climate Tech

Elisabeth's expertise and thoughtful approach have been truly transformative – helping me navigate complex decisions while staying true to my values.

Senior Programme Manager · Tech Sector

Elisabeth helped me find the thread connecting what I already knew. The questions she asked opened up things I hadn't been able to articulate before – and that clarity has stayed with me.

Digital Sustainability Lead · Digital Transformation

I felt genuinely seen and supported throughout – not managed or advised, but truly accompanied. There was always ample space to think independently and arrive at my own insights in my own time.

Education Programme Manager · Media Consultancy

A note on privacy: these voices are shared anonymously. Some clients would gladly show their name and profile here — others value their privacy, as coaching is something deeply personal. Integrity towards my clients always comes first, so I keep these references anonymous. I'm happy to share reference contacts for further context on my work; please don't hesitate to reach out.

Good to know

Questions, answered.

A good sign is carrying a question around with you that never gets space in your day: a decision that won’t settle, a question that remains unanswered, a new role you haven’t quite arrived in, or a sense that what you do no longer fits who you’ve become. Coaching helps where the gap isn’t only new information but time and an environment to think. The free intro call is there to work out what fits your situation best.

Following the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF) definition, coaching works with your own answers, while consulting brings in someone else’s. In coaching, I accompany you with generative attention and questions, helping you connect with your own thinking and reach your own clarity. In consulting, I bring in my experience as a leader more directly, and together we think through concrete options. According to the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC), mentoring sits in between, sharing lived experience from a comparable role. Therapy treats mental health conditions and usually works with the past, whereas coaching assumes mental health and looks forward (ICF, 2024). My work combines the first three, because leadership questions rarely need only one of them, and depending on what you want to accomplish, we choose the right way forward together.

You bring the topic, I bring the structure and the questions. We start with the topic of your choice that you bring into that particular session and take it from there. There is no fixed agenda. My coaching is based on the Thinking Environment® and a solution-focused coaching approach. Accordingly, there is a lot of room at the start of the session for the topic you want to think through, before we jointly set goals for the session, so that at the end we can see whether we have reached them. You determine the path there; along the way, I ask you questions that lead to clear next steps, steps you formulate yourself. We can then both trust that your thinking continues after the session, continues to work between sessions, and so leads, step by step, to the changes you want.

The intro call is free. It is about getting to know each other, understanding what you actually need and seeing whether we are a fit. After that you will get a clear, individual proposal based on your goals, so you always know what to expect before anything begins.

Coaching usually runs over several sessions across a few months, with space in between, because thinking keeps working between appointments. A team workshop is a single date that often grows into longer support. Transformation work I accompany over months. We agree the specific frame together after the intro call, and you never commit beyond what was agreed.

Yes, without exception, because I work according to the strict ethical guidelines of the International Coaching Federation and the European Mentoring & Coaching Council. This means: the content of our sessions stays confidential, even when your company is paying for the coaching. That is a freedom we give ourselves anew in every session. Sponsors learn, at most, that and to what extent we are working together, never what about. In some organisations it is common practice for goals to be set over the course of the coaching engagement. These, however, are always agreed jointly with you, your sponsor, and me, and reported back accordingly within that same group. If several people from the same organisation work with me, I keep those conversations just as strictly separate and confidential.

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Get in touch

Let's start with a conversation.

No pitch, no pressure. Just a chance to see whether the fit is right. Tell me a little about where you are, and I'll be in touch.

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