Irina Shabalina — Executive Coach
Executive Coach
The leader who can tolerate ambiguity without losing themselves models the calm and helps others navigate. I coach senior executives and mid-career leaders who want to be that person.
The leader who can tolerate ambiguity without losing themselves models the calm and helps others navigate. I coach senior executives and mid-career leaders who want to be that person.
I'm a senior product leader by day. After twenty years building AI and enterprise platforms, I came to coaching not as a second career but as a parallel one. The questions executives carry are the questions I'm carrying too.
What I've learned, and keep relearning, is that the hardest parts of leadership are rarely the technical ones. They're the moments when the role asks more of you than your training prepared you for — when the team needs something you're not sure you have, when politics swallow your week, when stress stops being a state and becomes a way of life. When the question isn't what should I do but who am I being while I do it.
My practice is for executives navigating career transitions, leaders who want to lead more consciously, and professionals looking for a deeper connection with their values — people who'd rather sit with a real question than escape into a quick answer.
I draw on two traditions. The systems-psychodynamic lens I trained in at INSEAD asks what's happening beneath the visible layer of an organization — the unconscious patterns, the inherited dynamics, the things people don't say. The Co-Active tradition I'm certified in starts from a different premise: that the person across from me is already creative, resourceful, and whole, and my work is to help them hear themselves clearly. Together, the two shape coaching that's both rigorous and human.
Most coaching either stays at the level of strategy and behavior, or it goes deep but loses the thread back to the work. I try to do both. The conversations are useful in your Monday morning meeting and they reach the deeper material — the patterns, the inherited beliefs, the parts of you that have been running the show without your permission.
Systems-psychodynamic thinking gives us a language for what's actually happening — the unconscious dynamics in your team, the role you've been cast into, the anxieties moving the system. We notice them, name them, and stop being run by them.
You are not a problem to be solved. The Co-Active tradition assumes you're already creative, resourceful, and whole. My job is to help you hear yourself more clearly — your body, your values, the part of you that already knows.
Depth doesn't mean abstraction. The work has to land in the actual leadership you're doing — the meeting, the conversation, the decision you've been avoiding. Insight without traction isn't enough.
One-to-one, with your team, or on the trail. Every engagement starts with a discovery call to see whether we're a fit.
For leaders carrying real weight — C-suite, founders, senior managers — who want a thinking partner outside the system. We work on the questions you can't take into your team: how you're actually leading, what's costing you, what the role is asking of you that your training didn't prepare you for.
For high-performers in motion — a new role, a step up, a pivot, a recalibration. The transition moment is where identity questions become unavoidable. This is a focused engagement designed to use that moment well, rather than rushing past it.
For teams that look strong on paper but feel stuck in the room — a newly formed leadership team, a merger, tension nobody names out loud. We look at what's happening between people, not only within them: the roles people get cast into, the unspoken rules, the anxieties moving the group. The aim is a team that can talk about what matters, and act on it.
Coaching while we hike. An unfamiliar environment shows what a meeting room hides — how you respond to effort, uncertainty, and not knowing the way. We use what comes up on the trail as material for self-exploration, and for noticing the patterns you bring back to your work.
The first conversation is free, 30 minutes, no expectation. We talk about what's pulling at you and whether the work I do is the right shape for it. If it isn't, I'll often know someone whose work is.
For those personally impacted by the conflict in the Middle East, I'm offering reduced rates as a way to support during a difficult time. Please mention this when you reach out.