INSPIR’ · INTERVIEW WITH ELEANOR BAKER
Strategy is not enough
After fifteen years in international luxury management, Eleanor Baker chose coaching to help leaders release their teams’ collective potential. She explains why alignment is often the missing key in major transformations.
Interview by Robert Dessi · Inspir’, MEDEF Paris · August / September 2026 · p. 327
English translation of the original French interview, provided on this website. This is not an English edition published by Inspir’. Read the French original.
You work with executive committees, management committees and leadership teams. What characterises your approach to these groups?
I work with teams whose members bring different nationalities, professions and organisational cultures, helping them meet the challenges of transformation, growth and internationalisation, and turn that diversity into a source of collaboration, engagement and lasting performance. I believe that a group’s full potential can only emerge when there is a foundation of trust and everyone can contribute freely.
Reorganisations, internationalisation and new ways of working: is coaching an essential strategic resource for leaders?
Companies invest heavily in their strategy. Yet, according to the Project Management Institute, almost 10% of investment in projects is lost through poor execution. In practice, it is hardly ever the strategy that slows transformation down: it is the teams. Misunderstandings, avoided tensions, false consensus: everything seems to work… until execution stalls.
In international contexts, these gaps become wider. Differences in culture, professional background or attitudes towards authority can become a tremendous resource — or a source of paralysing confusion.
Coaching gives leaders a space to step back, talk and build together, making explicit what has remained implicit: roles, expectations and decision-making processes. When that alignment exists, execution accelerates and the strategy can finally become reality.
According to Team Coaching International studies, only 10% of teams consider themselves high-performing. How can coaching the leader and their team play a decisive role in reversing this trend?
The key factor is not the absence of disagreement, but the ability to express it and turn it into decisions and action.
Amy Edmondson’s research, corroborated by Google’s Project Aristotle, shows that psychological safety is the foundation of collective performance.
It all starts with the leader’s approach. The most inspiring leaders combine ambition and humility, like the “Level 5 Leadership” described in Good to Great. They create the conditions for everyone to feel able to contribute fully.
It is with these leaders that my work finds its full meaning: those who want to develop their organisation, beginning with themselves, and who bring as much rigour as enthusiasm to a transparent and demanding process.
How does your experience in international luxury management influence your approach to coaching?
My fifteen years at Chanel and Hermès, working with teams in Europe, Asia and the United States, have profoundly shaped my practice. Research published in Harvard Business Review shows that the most diverse teams are often the most innovative. This conviction guides me today: helping diverse teams move forward and creating the conditions for them to dare to make progress together.
At a glance
Eleanor Baker is an ICF PCC-certified coach, an EMCC-accredited team coach and a Team Psychological Safety Practitioner, trained in Will Schutz’s Human Element and certified in Arc En Ciel DISC.