How are executives thinking during the Coronavirus | Executive Coach Peggy Guest

About this episode

Executive coach Dr. Peggy Guest returns to discuss how the leaders and executives she coaches are navigating the pandemic's uncertainty. She identifies curiosity, safety concerns, and scenario planning as dominant themes among her clients — many of whom are running large workplaces and must weigh both employee safety and individual liberty, a tension she frames as a spectrum where different people are "wired" toward different tolerances for risk versus desire for freedom. Vance contrasts his own experience as a sole proprietor worried primarily about liberty (control over his own choices) with the responsibility Peggy's corporate clients feel for many employees with varying financial needs and risk exposure. The conversation moves into William Bridges' "Transitions" framework — the idea that organizations and individuals are stuck in a "liminal" bridge between a "Point A" (pre-pandemic normal) that abruptly ended and an unknown "Point B," requiring skills (patience, trust, tolerance for ambiguity) that Western/American culture rarely cultivates. Peggy discusses how teaching and other relationship-dependent professions face a particularly hard translation to remote/online formats, since so much of effective instruction relies on body language, subtle cues, and in-person trust-building that can't be replicated over Zoom. She offers practical resilience advice: acknowledge difficult feelings without dwelling on them, use tools like her "leadership life map" exercise to catalog one's strengths and values, and reframe uncertainty as opportunity, predicting entrepreneurs will "have their day in the sun" in the coming years. Vance observes a marked increase in people seeking and sharing wisdom in group settings (his "whale pod" of close friends) since the pandemic began, which Peggy independently confirms from her own client conversations and social media observations. The episode closes with a discussion distinguishing the desire to "get back to work" (meaningful, identity-affirming labor) from a desire to simply return to pre-pandemic normalcy, and Peggy's prediction for the next two weeks: more clarity on how businesses are structuring safe returns to in-person work, though genuine health outcomes will remain uncertain.

Key moments

• **[00:01:45]** Peggy identifies curiosity and safety-concern as the two dominant emotional themes she's observing among executive clients.
• **[00:04:20]** Discussion of individual variation in risk-tolerance vs. liberty-desire as a psychological spectrum, distinguishing Vance's solo-proprietor liberty concerns from executives' dual safety/liberty responsibility for large workforces.
• **[00:17:52–00:20:45]** Extended explanation of William Bridges' "Transitions" framework and the "liminal stage" of being neither at old normal nor new normal.
• **[00:24:55]** Peggy describes her "leadership life map" coaching exercise for building resilience through self-knowledge.
• **[00:38:19]** Vance's anecdote about "Lance" (a formerly incarcerated man posting daily labor photos) as an example of the psychological need for visible progress and strength.
• **[00:39:41–00:40:52]** Closing distinction between the desire to resume meaningful work versus a desire to return to pre-pandemic "life as normal."

Notable quotes

“If we're looking at a continuum of high tolerance for risk versus low tolerance for risk, or high appreciation for freedom or liberty... people are wired such that some people are gonna be high on one scale and some people are gonna be high on another.”

“You and I are in such a different age cohort. People who are my age are most grieved not being able to see their grandchildren.”

“I think that governments have said in the last six weeks, you don't have permission to do it. It's more about acknowledging the striving.”