About Chris

I have been on both sides of this.

I’m Chris Mijatovich. Eleven years inside Shell, and the years since coaching senior leaders standing where I stood.

ExperienceEleven years at Shell. Acquisitions, supply chains, contract negotiations, new energies.
GeographyThe Netherlands. Germany. The UK. Qatar. The United States.
CredentialFormally ACC ICF certified through inviteCHANGE.
ClientsCEOs, senior corporate leaders, public leaders, firm partners, entrepreneurs, and creatives.

Chapter one

The life I built

I spent eleven years inside Shell, across the Netherlands, London, Qatar, and the US. I helped integrate the BG Group acquisition, a sixty billion dollar deal, managed a billion dollar contract portfolio in Qatar, and ran one of Shell’s key global suppliers across twenty of its assets.

I lived on the top floor in Qatar, overlooking Doha, and secured one expat assignment after another. I had the political capital, the momentum, the relationships. When the reorganization came, my sponsor, who always delivered on the roles I wanted, asked what I wanted next. I had nothing to complain about. From the outside, it looked exactly like what I had said I wanted.

What was harder to admit was the truth beneath it. I was no longer having fun. The gap between the life I had and the life I actually wanted kept widening. I was sharp in meetings and drained at home, competent and ahead in every room, at the cost of my own life. I knew the feeling well. It took time before I was willing to actually listen to it.

That gap is where this story really begins.

“I had built exactly the life I said I wanted. I just was not sure it was still mine.”

Chapter two

First months in Qatar.

I had just arrived. New role, new culture, new responsibilities, and eager to prove myself.

A supplier meeting was on the calendar. I had to deliver a clear expectation, and I dreaded it. The relationships were thin, and I was not sure how to land the message.

So I went to a colleague for advice. He was generous and well established, and he gave me his exact approach. I studied his words, his gestures, his tone, and 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 more disconnected from myself and the room. My colleague’s eyes asked, “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 moment I truly understood the cost of running someone else’s script 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 emailed to say 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, 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 instead of pushing 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 unease I created in colleagues who were still inside a game we had both been playing. Seeing that clearly did not mean stepping away from them. It meant I could finally listen, actually hear where they stood, instead of asserting my own ambition onto the meeting, the person, or the topic.

I replied to the email. I thanked the person for their honesty and told them I welcomed more.

“It was never about performing less or asserting more. It was about reading the room, and choosing.”

An open wooden door onto a bright terrace with a wide view

Chapter four

The Friday I closed the laptop

A sunny Friday afternoon at the Shell Woodcreek office in Houston. Last goodbye emails sent. 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 truth beneath it, 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. The two had not yet become one, and that was the threshold, the kind only leaders who have lived this tension recognize precisely. Walking through that Friday was part of how they finally would.

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 know this gap. I lived inside it for years, the unease, the stress, the rejection, the grief. And the acceptance and freedom that came after.

For me, walking through it meant leaving. It does not have to mean that for you. Once your corporate mind and your truth beneath it are no longer at odds, you become a powerful, mature, and grounded leader, wherever you are.

I work with what is real to you, not only what looks good. I bring eleven years of corporate experience into every conversation. I know the dynamics, the dilemmas, and the cost of performing at that level. I lived it, and I once thrived on it.

I am formally ICF ACC certified through inviteCHANGE. The credential matters. What I actually coach from is having lived it.

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

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“I once thrived on performing a life, now I thrive on living one.”

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