Jordan Broad of BROAD Velocity On An Inside Look at the Benefits and Impact Of Working With an Executive Coach
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Leadership can be surprisingly lonely. When you’re responsible for major decisions, there are very few places where you can think out loud without filtering yourself. A strong coaching relationship creates that space.
The competitive edge in business often comes down to a combination of strategy, foresight, and professional development. For executives looking to level up their skills, an executive coach can be their biggest asset. In this feature, we talk to business leaders who heavily invest in personal and professional development opportunities, coaching, and leadership programs. They’ll share why they invest so much and the impact it has on their life.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Jordan Broad.
Jordan Broad is the founder of BRŌAD Velocity, where he works with CEOs and executive teams navigating complexity, scale, and organizational inflection points. A former operator who led multiple high-growth companies, he now helps organizations strengthen culture, sharpen decision systems, and improve how organizations execute. His core belief is simple: momentum follows clarity.
First off, can you give us a snapshot of your life before you started your career?
I’ve always been drawn to systems. Even before my career began, I was curious about how groups of people coordinate, perform, and build things together.
I grew up in the Midwest and spent most of my early years around sports, school, friends, and family life. But the environments that fascinated me most were teams and organizations working toward something ambitious.
That curiosity eventually led me to study Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The discipline focuses on systems, constraints, and performance. It trains you to examine how people, processes, and decisions interact inside complex environments. That perspective followed me into business.
As the companies I was involved with grew, I began noticing something interesting. The biggest constraints were rarely the market or the product. They were inside the organization.
I remember sitting in a leadership meeting where everyone around the table was talented and committed, yet decisions kept circling back to the same person for approval. Conversations moved forward, then backward, then sideways. Nothing was technically broken, but momentum was clearly slowing.
That moment stayed with me. It crystallized something important: organizations rarely stall from lack of effort. They stall when leadership structures and decision systems cannot keep pace with the business.
From that point forward, I became increasingly interested in how leadership structures and decision systems determine whether organizations accelerate or stall.
What was it about personal and professional development that attracted you to start investing in yourself? Also, can you share when you started and what your first investment was?
Early in my career I noticed something that surprised me. Most leaders work extremely hard, but very few deliberately work on themselves. They spend their time improving the business, the market, the product, and the strategy. All of those matter. But the underlying structure behind how they think, decide, and lead often goes largely unexamined.
That realization drew me toward personal and professional development. I started investing in coaching and leadership education fairly early on. At times it felt uncomfortable, but it also felt necessary.
What stood out to me was that the leaders operating at the highest levels treated development as a requirement. They were constantly refining how they think, communicate, and make decisions. That insight changed how I approached my career. Development stopped being occasional. It became part of my operating system.
Can you think back and share one of the biggest blind spots you had that someone helped you see and something specific about what you learned and how it showed up in your life?
One of my early blind spots was believing that being deeply involved in everything was a sign of strong management.
In my first major role, I oversaw a large sales team. I prided myself on being accessible, responsive, and hands-on. I was in every conversation, every decision, every issue. At the time it felt responsible. I believed staying close to every detail ensured performance.
A mentor eventually helped me see something uncomfortable. When every meaningful decision requires the leader’s involvement, you don’t have a leadership team. You have a dependency system. That insight changed how I operated. My focus shifted from personally solving problems to building systems and developing people who could solve problems without me.
That shift ultimately shaped the work I do today.
How long have you had an executive coach and how would you describe your relationship?
I’ve worked with coaches at multiple stages throughout my career.
A great coach functions like a non-equity partner, someone who understands the weight of leadership but isn’t caught inside the day-to-day dynamics of the organization.
Leadership can be surprisingly lonely. When you’re responsible for major decisions, there are very few places where you can think out loud without filtering yourself. A strong coaching relationship creates that space. It gives you someone who can challenge your thinking, offer direct perspective when needed, and help you see patterns that are difficult to recognize from inside the system.
The real value isn’t motivation or encouragement. It’s perspective, candor, and clearer decisions when the stakes are high.
If I was sitting down with your coach, and asked “what’s the one thing your client needs to work on more than anything else in the world” what would I hear them say about you?
They would probably say my natural instinct is momentum. I enjoy building things. I like solving problems and moving ideas into action. That instinct served me well for much of my career, especially in environments where speed and execution mattered.
But one of the patterns my coaches have consistently helped me refine is knowing when to slow down my thinking. Builders often default to action. We jump into problems, make quick calls, and keep things moving. That works for a long time, but as organizations grow, the real leverage shifts from doing to thinking.
The work for me has been learning to create space for that higher-level thinking. Not to reduce momentum, but to direct it more intentionally.
Momentum matters. But the thinking behind it matters even more.
If you were questioned about your “ROI” (return on investment), is there anything you can point to that justifies how much you spend on being coached? If not, how do you justify it?
When people ask about the ROI of coaching, I look at the quality of thinking behind the choices leaders make. For someone responsible for an organization, a single stronger decision can have enormous impact, whether that means hiring the right executive, clarifying decision authority across the leadership team, or avoiding an initiative that appears promising but would quietly drain time and resources for the next two years. Those moments compound.
Coaching creates space for better judgment. It challenges assumptions, sharpens perspective, and helps leaders recognize patterns where they may be unintentionally slowing the organization down. In an era where AI can generate answers instantly, the real advantage isn’t information. It’s clarity.
When you’re responsible for organizational performance, unclear thinking carries a very real cost. Leaders feel that quickly. In that sense, coaching isn’t about improvement. It’s about removing constraints so the business can move faster and perform at a higher level.
Let’s dive into specifics. What are the top 5 things you’ve either gained or learned about yourself, where you specifically made changes, and have seen positive results. Be specific and feel free to give us either the background or story about each.
1. Involvement and leverage are not the same thing.
Early in my career I noticed something that surprised me. Most leaders work extremely hard. Very few deliberately work on themselves. They spend their time improving the business, the market, the product, and the strategy. All of those matter. But the operating system behind how they think, decide, and lead often goes largely unexamined. That realization pushed me to start working on myself as seriously as I worked on the business.
A mentor eventually asked a simple question: If every meaningful call has to run through you, what happens when the organization grows beyond your capacity? The answer was obvious. The company becomes dependent.
That realization changed how I operated. Instead of personally solving problems, I focused on building systems, clarifying decision authority, and developing leaders who could act without waiting for approval. The organization moved faster, and the leadership team began to truly own outcomes.
2. Clarity solves more problems than effort.
When organizations face challenges, the instinct is often to increase activity. More meetings. More analysis. More follow-ups. The calendar fills quickly, but the underlying issue is frequently the same: lack of clarity.
One of the most valuable changes I made was learning to slow down long enough to define priorities, roles, and decision authority before pushing the team forward. When direction is clear, execution accelerates. When it isn’t, even capable teams burn enormous energy moving in slightly different directions.
3. Leaders eventually become the constraint on their own organizations.
As companies grow, complexity often expands faster than the leadership structure around it. I experienced this firsthand in a scaling organization where important decisions kept circling back to the same small group of people, even though the company had long outgrown that structure. At first it looks like a coordination issue. In reality it is a design problem. The organization has grown, but the decision system has not.
Growth eventually forces a transition. Leaders move from being the primary problem solver to becoming the architect of how decisions get made. When that shift happens, organizations regain speed and momentum.
4. Speed without clarity creates expensive mistakes.
Earlier in my career I placed enormous value on speed. Over time I realized speed without clarity often leads to costly mistakes.
Some of the most valuable work I’ve done with coaches and mentors involved learning to pause long enough to challenge assumptions, examine patterns, and think more deliberately before acting. The choices that follow are stronger and far more durable.
5. Trust and standards must rise together.
In several organizations I’ve worked with, culture began drifting even though relationships across the team remained positive. Meetings stayed cordial, feedback softened, deadlines stretched, and underperformance was explained rather than addressed. Nothing collapsed immediately, but the competitive edge gradually dulled.
That experience reinforced an important principle for me: High trust alone does not produce high performance. Teams perform at their best when trust and standards rise together.
What advice would you give other entrepreneurs who don’t think it’s worth investing in a coach or spending money to join a leadership program?
Most entrepreneurs invest heavily in improving their business. Far fewer invest in improving how they think. In the early stages of a company, that gap often goes unnoticed. When the organization is small, a founder’s instincts, energy, and proximity to everything can carry the business forward.
As the company grows, the problems change. The real leverage shifts from effort to judgment. Hiring the right leaders, designing clear decision authority, and choosing where the organization focuses its time and resources begin to shape the trajectory of the company.
The challenge is that founders and executives are operating inside the system they are trying to improve. From that position it becomes difficult to see your own patterns, blind spots, or structural constraints. A strong coach or peer group provides perspective. Not motivation or encouragement, but the kind of thinking environment that improves decision quality.
Entrepreneurs don’t have to invest in coaching. But once you are responsible for an organization, improving how you think and decide becomes one of the highest-leverage investments you can make.
Do you have any examples of how being coached had an impact on others who work around you? How has it spilled over to your team or your family?
One of the biggest changes coaching created in my leadership was how I handle problems brought to me. Earlier in my career my instinct was to solve them quickly. If someone brought an issue, I would analyze it, suggest a solution, and move things forward. It felt efficient, but it created an unintended consequence: people began relying on me for answers. Over time I realized that pattern quietly trains dependency.
Coaching helped me see that dynamic clearly. Instead of immediately solving the problem, I focused on developing the thinking behind it. I began asking better questions, pushing leaders to work through their own judgment, and clarifying the standards behind good decisions.
That shift changed how the team operated. Fewer issues traveled upward, leaders grew more confident in their decisions, and the organization moved faster because decisions were being made closer to the work. The same change carried into life outside the office.
When your instinct shifts from providing answers to developing others’ thinking, it improves how you interact with everyone around you.
There are so many executive coaches out there. How did you go about selecting the right one for you?
I looked for someone who had actually carried the weight of leadership. Many talented coaches study leadership, but I was most comfortable working with people who had built or run organizations themselves.
I wanted someone who understood hiring mistakes, growth pressure, board expectations, and the complexity that shows up as companies scale. Experience alone wasn’t enough, though. Candor mattered just as much.
The most valuable coaches I’ve worked with were willing to challenge my assumptions directly. They didn’t simply affirm what I was saying. They pushed on my thinking, asked difficult questions, and helped me see patterns I couldn’t see from inside the system. Trust was the final ingredient.
When you can speak openly about uncertainty, mistakes, and difficult decisions without filtering yourself, the relationship becomes extremely valuable. At that point, the coach becomes something close to a non-equity partner.
Lastly, where can our audience go to follow your journey and perhaps get inspired to make their own investment in coaching?
Most of the thinking I share publicly lives on LinkedIn. I regularly write about leadership dynamics inside growing organizations, the patterns that cause companies to stall, the structural shifts leaders must make as organizations scale, and the decision habits that separate teams that move with clarity from those that get stuck in noise.
For anyone interested in those topics, LinkedIn is the best place to follow along. You can find me by searching for Jordan Broad or visiting LinkedIn.com/in/jordanbroad.
Thank you so much for joining us! We wish you only success.
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and the thoughtful questions.
About The Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator.
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