From Peloton to Boardroom: An Interview with Elite Executive Coach Linus Murphy

Interviewer (ECB):
Few coaches can cite a résumé that spans national sporting glory, C‑suite hyper‑growth, and mentoring leaders on five continents. Linus Murphy, former Irish national cycling champion and longtime tech CEO, has spent the past two decades guiding top global CEOs, founders and elite athletes toward heightened performance and fulfillment. We caught up with Linus to explore the mind‑set, methods and moments that shaped his distinctive “inside‑out” approach to leadership development.

1. ECB: Your career trajectory is remarkable—athlete, serial CEO, then full‑time executive coach. How did each chapter prepare you for the next?

Linus Murphy (LM):
I often joke that I’ve changed bikes more than I’ve changed industries, but the common thread is velocity with control. As an elite cyclist I learned discipline, data‑driven marginal gains, and the power of recovery cycles; winning the Irish National Road Championship taught me that sustained excellence is never an accident—it’s engineered. When I stepped into my first CEO role at Rentokil Initial in the Nordics during the 1990s, I applied the same cadence planning: assess terrain, break the course into stages, and protect your legs for the final climb. By the time I founded Keystone Education Group in 2006, that mindset translated into average annual top‑line growth of 45 percent—outperforming the combined CAGR of the five biggest global tech firms at the time. Running companies at that pace sharpened my pattern‑recognition skills and showed me how growth, culture and personal energy interlock. Coaching became the natural synthesis: helping others find their own race rhythm.

2. ECB: You mention 45 percent average growth—most CEOs would be thrilled with half that. What were the non‑obvious levers?

LM:
Everyone focuses on strategy, but few obsess over transfer of vision. If your senior team cannot articulate the story you tell investors, you’ll stall. As CEO I spent disproportionate time embedding narrative and values—think of it as handing every rider the same course map. Second, we turned self‑and‑team awareness into a performance metric: quarterly 360‑degree “pulse checks” on blind spots, clarity of roles, and momentum makers versus breakers. Finally, we treated goals as living documents, not annual rituals; cadence reviews every six weeks kept execution honest. Those practices now form three of the thirty coaching modules I deliver today—vision transfer, blind‑spot removal and goal‑setting mastery.

3. ECB: You refer to coaching “from the inside out.” Can you unpack your Leadership Transformational Coaching Model?

LM:
Gladly. Leaders rarely fail because they lack technical knowledge; they fail when hidden beliefs collide with external complexity. My model tackles eleven stacked layers:

1. Identity – Who am I when the title is stripped away?

1. Beliefs – Stories I tell myself about what is—and isn’t—possible.

1. Values – Non‑negotiables that guide priority and capacity.

1. Rules – Internal algorithms for decision and judgment.

1. Emotions – The chemical feedback loop we must understand, not suppress.

1. Skills – The tool‑kit we sharpen continuously.

1. Communication – The carrier wave that broadcasts our intent.

1. Relationships – Our mirrors and amplifiers.

1. Environment – Systems, incentives, even office architecture.

1. Goals – The focusing lens.

1. Actions – Where the rubber meets the road.

We diagnose friction at each level, then engineer tiny experiments—think 1‑millimeter course corrections repeated daily. That’s what makes change “stick.”

4. ECB: Which layers typically trip up high‑achieving CEOs?

LM:
Rules and environment are underrated gremlins. A founder who scaled from garage to unicorn may still run the internal “move fast and break things” rule set long after product‑market fit requires reliability over speed. Similarly, a well‑meaning board can create an environment of safety one quarter and fear the next by shifting bonus metrics. If rule‑sets and environments conflict with stated values, leaders enter what I call cognitive credit card debt—interest compounds silently until culture defaults.

5. ECB: Your Key Focus Areas list is a masterclass syllabus. Which topics resonate most right now?

LM:
Three stand out in 2025:

- The Leadership Landscape – Understanding the four pillars: choices, creations, convictions, and the causes you catalyze. Leaders crave a framework to prioritize amid AI disruption.

- Creating Change: A Successful Roadmap – Post‑pandemic fatigue means change stories must be humane, not heroic. We map emotion curves before Gantt charts.

- How to Transfer Vision Effectively – With hybrid teams, vision leaks faster. Leaders need multi‑channel storytelling habits: video snippets, ritualized “why” sessions, micro‑recognition loops.

6. ECB: Let’s pivot to sport. What parallels do you draw between the peloton and the boardroom?

LM:
In a peloton, wind dragons—those patches where resistance spikes—move constantly. Smart riders rotate; the domestique pulls, the sprinter drafts, then roles flip. Corporate “drafting” means succession pipelines and shared leadership. Also, races are won on nutrition and sleep as much as watts per kilogram. Executives who weaponize rest outperform their Red‑Bull‑fueled peers. Finally, a crash in kilometer five rarely decides the podium—composure does. CEOs must normalize recovery after market shocks.

7. ECB: You coach both elite athletes and Fortune 500 chiefs. Any surprising common denominators?

LM:
Yes—identity foreclosure. Whether you’re a quarterback or a unicorn founder, success can calcify identity. When setbacks hit, the person feels existentially threatened. My job is to widen their identity portfolio: parent, friend, learner. That buffer restores risk appetite. Also, both cohorts struggle with temporal distance. They project five‑year visions for others yet live in 24‑hour news cycles personally. We work on syncing personal and professional time horizons.

8. ECB: Many readers are internal coaches or HR heads. What advice would you give them for cultivating coaching cultures in 2025?

LM:
Start with language audits. If meeting transcripts brim with “urgent,” “fire‑fight,” and “ASAP,” the culture primes cortisol, not curiosity. Introduce vocabulary such as “experiment,” “insight,” “iteration.” Next, make feedback protocolized—separate appreciation, coaching and evaluation into distinct containers. That reduces ego threat. Finally, democratize micro‑coaching: peer‑to‑peer three‑minute huddles after key meetings. It’s the cadence that matters, not the length.

9. ECB: During your 25 years as CEO you reportedly coached or mentored individuals from over 20 countries. What cross‑cultural patterns have you seen?

LM:
Humility scores highest ROI everywhere, but it manifests differently. In Nordic cultures, humility means speaking last; in the U.S., it’s acknowledging the team in the first sentence. Middle Eastern leaders show humility through hospitality. Understanding these expressions prevents misreading confidence as arrogance or silence as disengagement.

10. ECB: The coaching industry is booming, yet critics say it’s saturated. How do you differentiate?

LM:

1. Outcome lineage – I can trace a CEO’s EBITDA uptick to a specific shift in mindset or habit we installed.

1. System ecology – I coach the whole life‑stack: identity to environment, so clients don’t toggle between business and personal coaches.

1. Velocity metrics – Borrowing from cycling telemetry, we track “decision cadence” and “friction coefficients” (time from idea to first experiment) as leading indicators of business lag metrics.

11. ECB: What’s a coaching myth you’d like to retire?

LM:
That vulnerability equals over‑sharing. True vulnerability is calibrated disclosure that invites reciprocal honesty, not an emotional dump. Leaders lose trust when they confuse transparency with therapy.

12. ECB: If you could embed one practice in every exec’s calendar tomorrow, what would it be?

LM:
A daily 6‑minute reflective reset. One minute gratitude scan, two minutes intention setting, two minutes scenario rehearsal for a tough conversation, one minute breath work. Do it at 2 p.m.—the circadian dip—so you start your “second day” refreshed.

13. ECB: You’ve lectured at top business schools on innovation and entrepreneurship. What’s changed most in the classroom?

LM:
Students now arrive purpose‑native. Instead of asking “How do we scale?” they ask “Should we scale?” The pedagogy has shifted from exploiting white space to stewarding planetary and societal resources. Coaches must integrate impact literacy alongside profit literacy.

14. ECB: Finally, what legacy do you hope your clients attribute to your work?

LM:
That I helped them lead with vibrant calm—the paradox of high‑octane execution fueled by inner stillness. If they, in turn, cultivate workplaces where people leave healthier than they arrived, that’s legacy enough.

Key Takeaways for Readers

- Transfer your vision daily. Narrative decay is the silent killer of strategy.

- Treat blind‑spot audits as maintenance, not crisis response.

- Engineer recovery like athletes. Performance is a by‑product of energy management.

- Coaching culture starts with language. Edit the adjectives, shift the emotions.

- Lead with vibrant calm. Inner stillness scales better than adrenaline.

About the Interviewee
Linus Murphy is an elite executive coach and former technology CEO who averaged 45 percent annual growth over 25 years in leadership roles, founded Keystone Education Group—now one of the world’s largest EdTech firms—and once wore the green jersey as Irish national cycling champion. He has guided hundreds of leaders across twenty countries and lectures globally on innovation, entrepreneurship and transformational leadership.

For more on Linus’s methodology for Executive Coaching, visit LinusMurphy.com.

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