About Chris

I have been on both sides of this.

I’m Chris Mijatovich. Ten years inside Shell, and the years since coaching the people still in it.

ExperienceTen years at Shell. Acquisitions, supply chain, new energy.
GeographyQatar. The UK. The Netherlands. The United States.
CredentialFormally certified through inviteCHANGE.
ClientsCEOs, founders, partners, and senior leaders inside organizations you would recognize.

Chapter one

The life I built

I spent over a decade inside global corporate at Shell. Acquisitions, supply chains, new energies. Qatar, the UK, the Netherlands, the United States. The apartment with the view. The career with momentum, the reputation, the pay and the title. Performance reviews that read the way I had been taught to want them to read, and the political capital to steer my next international assignment.

From the outside, it looked exactly as I had said I wanted.

Inside, the gap between the life I had and the life I actually wanted kept widening. Sharp in the boardroom, drained at home. Competent and ahead in every room, absent from my own life. I knew the feeling well enough to manage it. I had no language for what to do with it.

That gap is the territory I work in now.

“I was very good at a life I no longer fully recognized as mine.”

Chapter two

Qatar. First months.

I had just arrived. New role, new culture, new responsibilities, and every reason to want to prove myself quickly.

A supplier meeting was on the calendar. I had to deliver a clear expectation, and I dreaded it. The culture was new. The relationships were thin. I was unsure how to land the message.

So I went to a colleague for advice. He was generous, well established, and gave me his exact approach. I studied his words, his gestures, his tone. I rehearsed until I could replicate it.

The next day I ran the script.

I spoke sternly, projecting confidence, and each rehearsed word made me feel weaker and further from the room. My colleague’s eyes asked the question I was already asking myself. Where is Chris? He stepped in gracefully, eased the tension, and reframed the message.

I knew exactly where I had gone. I was hiding behind the words, performing the act, more exposed than ever inside the rehearsal.

That was the first time I understood the cost of running someone else’s playbook in a room that needed me.

Chapter three

The feedback I did not want

Years later, my corporate self was fighting hard to secure another role.

Someone I respected told me my newfound self was off-putting. That I should be careful who I showed it to. That it might diminish my influence and undermine my reputation.

A shock ran through my body. The sensation was raw and overwhelming. I had spent years cultivating the awareness that let me show up fully, and for a moment it felt like a waste.

Two questions surfaced underneath the sting. What is wrong with me? Why is my true expression not valued at work?

I sat with both. I did not push them away. After a few days the answer came.

Yes, I had grown. Yes, I was finally showing up as myself. What I had failed to notice was the discomfort I was creating in colleagues who were not ready to do the same. And on top of that, my showing up was sometimes a showing off. A way to dominate a meeting. A way to exert personal power.

The feedback made sense. The discomfort made sense. The lesson made sense.

There is always a balance to strike between fully showing up and meeting others where they are. That balance is the practice.

“Showing up matters more than getting it right. The script does not connect. The person does.”

A doorway with light spilling through the threshold

Chapter four

The Friday I closed the laptop

A sunny Friday afternoon at the Shell Woodcreek office in Houston. Last goodbye emails sent. Final logout. The end of an era I had spent my entire adult life building.

It was grounding and surreal at once.

One part of me resisted ending what had brought success, wealth, international experience, a powerfully honed identity and a sharp mind. The career had also offered something quieter and harder to give up. A perceived sense of control, safety and recognition I felt I needed in order to step into the world.

The other part of me, the intuitive part, cultivated through years of inner work, was ready. Ready to step into something fully from the heart, without apology.

Both were true at the same time.

That afternoon was a threshold, and the kind only leaders who have lived this tension recognize precisely.

I walked through it.

Now

What I do now

I coach senior leaders who know this threshold well. Some have not yet found the courage to cross it. Most have tried to think their way across, negotiate their way across, strategize their way across. The threshold does not respond to any of that. It asks to be walked through.

I work with what is real to you rather than what looks good on a 360 review. I bring a decade of corporate experience into every conversation. I know the dynamics, the dilemmas, and the cost of performing at that level, because I lived it and once thrived on it.

I am formally certified through inviteCHANGE, one of the most respected coaching institutions in the field. The credential matters. The lived experience underneath it matters more.

Most coaches understand half of what you are carrying. They have either lived high-stakes corporate life, or they have done deep interior work. Rarely both, in one person, at the standard required to coach you well.

This is the work I was built for, and the place I am most fully myself.

Explore The Work

“Stillness is not the absence of pressure. It is what lets you think clearly inside it.”

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