When a Family Question Brings You Back to Your Why
How one simple question reminded me what conscious leadership is really about.
Over Thanksgiving, a family member asked me a question I’ve heard many times before:
“Greg, why did you decide to go into coaching?”
It’s a simple question, and one that always makes me pause. Not because I don’t know the answer, but because the answer has evolved. This moment also reminded me why coaching matters for accounting professionals, especially those carrying heavy responsibility without enough support.
Over the years, coaching has become so much more than a profession for me. Leadership coaching is a way to help leaders grow consciously and reconnect with what truly matters.
I realized I wasn’t just helping people become more productive or effective at work, I was helping them reconnect to themselves.
Because underneath the spreadsheets, the meetings, and the constant demands, there’s a person who wants to feel good again. Who wants to show up as their best self, not just for their job, but for their life.
The Reality Behind the Numbers
I’ve spent much of my coaching career working with professionals in the accounting and tax world. They’re some of the hardest-working people I know, committed, detail-oriented, and deeply responsible. But they’re also some of the most stressed.
The pace of the profession, especially during busy season, can feel relentless. Expectations are high, deadlines are immovable, and there’s often an unspoken pressure to “power through.”
The reality is, powering through isn’t sustainable.
I’ve seen incredibly talented professionals reach a point where their performance plateaus, not because they’ve lost ability, but because they’ve lost energy, balance, and connection to why they do what they do.
That’s where real leadership development begins, not with technical skills, but with awareness.
The Heart of My Why
I believe that when leaders grow consciously, everyone around them rises, and that true performance and wellbeing can only thrive together.
That belief became the foundation of Greg Crossan Coaching & Consulting.
That’s why we coach professionals and organizations to develop awareness, emotional intelligence, and authenticity in how they lead, communicate, and show up every day.
So that they can create cultures where people perform at their peak, feel genuinely engaged, and achieve results that are both measurable and meaningful.
Our mission is to redefine success by developing conscious leaders who create workplaces where performance and wellbeing thrive together, transforming the way professionals, teams, and organizations grow, connect, and lead.
A Different Kind of Success
For a long time, success in professional services, and especially in accounting, has been defined by numbers: billable hours, utilization, revenue growth, firm size.
What I’ve come to understand from years of coaching leaders, managers, and partners is that numbers only tell part of the story.
The firms that truly succeed are the ones where people feel supported, engaged, and connected to something bigger than the next deadline. Where leaders don’t just manage work, they inspire growth.
That’s what conscious leadership is all about.
It goes beyond managing stress; it’s about shifting how we show up, turning awareness into action, and performance into something deeply human.
The Thanksgiving Reminder
That simple family question reminded me why I love this work.
Because coaching, at its heart, is less about fixing people and more about freeing them. Helping professionals rediscover the part of themselves that’s been buried under busyness, perfectionism, or pressure.
When that happens, everything changes.
People lead differently. Teams communicate better. Firms grow stronger.
And success stops being something you chase, it becomes something you create.
Your Turn to Reflect
So let me turn that Thanksgiving question back to you:
Why do you do what you do?
What’s the impact you want to have, not just through your work, but through who you are?
If you’re a leader in accounting, tax, or any professional services field, your people are looking to you for more than direction, they’re looking for inspiration. Conscious leadership is the heart of why coaching matters for accounting professionals, because when leaders reconnect to their why, everyone around them rises.
And that starts with your why.
Interested in helping your team reconnect with theirs?
Explore our leadership programs and group coaching experiences designed to help firms build conscious, resilient, high-performing teams, where performance and wellbeing thrive together.