Lead Like a Coach

Picture this: You're drowning in meetings, your inbox is overflowing, and your team keeps coming to you with questions you know they could answer themselves. Sound familiar? You're not alone. Today's leaders face unprecedented pressure to deliver more results with fewer resources, all while being available around the clock. The natural response is to tighten control, micromanage, and try to do everything yourself. But here's the paradox: the harder you grip the reins, the more your team disengages, and the heavier your burden becomes.

What if there was a different way? What if instead of being the person with all the answers, you became the person who helped others find their own answers? This shift from commanding to coaching isn't just about changing your leadership style. It's about transforming your entire relationship with work, lightening your load, and unleashing the full potential of every person on your team. When you lead like a coach, you don't just get better results. You create a workplace where people thrive, grow, and genuinely want to give their best effort every single day.

At the heart of coaching lies a fundamental shift in how you see your role as a leader. Instead of being the expert with all the answers, you become like Michelangelo, who said he saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set it free. A coaching mindset looks for the potential within each team member and works to help it be realized. This means moving from an autocratic or controlling approach to one that is genuinely supportive and developmental.

Amy's story perfectly illustrates this transformation. As a senior leader in security, she felt like a misfit because she lacked the technical expertise her team possessed. For two years, she compensated by being tougher and more controlling, trying to assert her authority through command and control. When a critical theft incident occurred, her first instinct was to put on her armor and defend her team's actions to HR. But in a coaching session, Amy reframed the situation entirely. Instead of controlling the response, she saw it as a learning opportunity for her regional manager.

Amy stepped back and let her regional manager handle the situation directly with HR. She coached him on how to manage the internal fallout rather than taking over herself. This simple shift had profound effects. Amy no longer felt she needed to be the security expert. Her relationships with her team deepened as she showed greater trust in their abilities. The team responded by generating more ideas, making more suggestions, and taking more leadership actions. By giving up control, Amy actually gained more influence and created a more empowered, engaged team.

To develop your coaching presence, focus on four key elements: vulnerability, empathy, humility, and appreciation. Vulnerability means showing up as your authentic self, admitting you don't have all the answers, and creating space for others to do the same. Empathy requires tuning into your team members' experiences and honoring their feelings. Humility means asking questions instead of providing solutions, staying curious rather than certain. Appreciation involves recognizing contributions and helping people understand that their work matters.

The coaching mindset fundamentally changes your focus from short-term task completion to long-term capability development. Instead of asking "What work needs to get done?" you ask "What capabilities does this person need to develop to get this job done?" This shift creates a sustainable path to better results while developing the people who will deliver those results long into the future.

Coaching isn't something you do only in formal meetings or performance reviews. The most powerful coaching happens in everyday moments, in what we might call micro-coaching conversations. These spontaneous interactions have the improvisational quality of a jazz band, where musicians adapt and respond to each other and to the moment, creating something beautiful together.

The key to mastering coaching conversations lies in understanding that coaching focuses on the person, not the problem. When someone comes to you with a question or challenge, resist the urge to immediately provide the solution. Instead, explore how they construct and make sense of their problem. Ask questions like "What have you already tried?" or "What would you do if you had different resources?" These questions help the person find their own answers while building their problem-solving capabilities.

Jack's transformation from directive manager to coaching leader demonstrates this perfectly. When he moved into a role managing other managers, he realized he couldn't continue being the expert on everything. He started answering questions with questions and began one-on-one meetings by asking his team members what was on their minds. Most of his team responded positively to this change, but one team member, Dan, continued seeking approval and direction. Jack realized he needed to help Dan develop greater insight into his own behavior and style rather than simply changing his own approach.

Jack became more explicit about his development journey, sharing his changing views on authority and leadership with his team. With Dan specifically, he provided feedback about how he experienced Dan's behaviors and invited reflection on what other approaches Dan might try. This wasn't about telling Dan what style to adopt, but opening him up to possibilities and allowing him to choose his own path forward.

Successful coaching conversations require creating psychological safety and asking open questions. Psychological safety means people feel they matter, belong, are enabled to contribute, make a difference, and are respected for who they are. Open questions that start with "What," "Where," "How," "Who," and "When" expand thinking and create possibilities. Closed questions that can be answered with yes or no shut down exploration and feel more like interrogation than coaching.

Remember to fully explore lines of questions rather than jumping randomly from topic to topic. Like geese flying in formation, each question should align with the direction the conversation is taking, using the momentum to go deeper rather than constantly changing direction.

Feedback has gotten a bad reputation because most people confuse it with criticism. True coaching feedback isn't about pointing out what's wrong; it's about improving performance and developing future capabilities. The goal is always improvement, growth, and helping people reach their full potential. This requires courage, generativity, and genuine caring from you as the coach.

Effective feedback focuses on three key areas: increasing current strengths, improving current performance, and developing capabilities needed for the future. Too often, we overlook the first area entirely. If someone is already a great communicator with internal stakeholders, how might they grow those strengths to work with external stakeholders? How can their existing talents be expanded and applied in new ways?

The most powerful feedback is based on observation rather than interpretation, is specific rather than general, is timely rather than delayed, and has a clear business purpose that will improve performance. Instead of saying "You have a great sense of humor," which is an attribution that might feel limiting, try "I enjoyed your comment in the meeting. It relieved some of the tension that was building up and helped us move forward with more energy and a different focus."

When giving feedback, expect and accept all responses, even resistance. Resistance isn't usually an endpoint but a way station on the path to acceptance. People may initially deny, get angry, bargain, or feel discouraged before ultimately accepting and acting on feedback. Your role is to move with the resistance rather than push back against it. Ask questions like "Help me understand your perspective" or "What would make this feedback more useful to you?"

Sometimes you'll need to have what we call "crunch conversations" - those challenging discussions that require courage but are necessary to move relationships forward. These might involve addressing ongoing tensions, giving tough performance reviews, or confronting disrespectful behavior. The key is to manage your own fight-or-flight response while helping others manage theirs. Remember that small embers of discord can smolder and flare up if left unaddressed, so it's better to deal with issues while they're still manageable.

The ultimate goal isn't just to become a better coach yourself, but to create a culture where coaching becomes contagious. When people are coached well, they naturally become more coach-like themselves. This ripple effect multiplies your impact exponentially as coaching behaviors spread throughout your organization.

Jackie's story at Next Jump illustrates this perfectly. Initially focused on putting her own success first, she received feedback that this approach was actually limiting her leadership opportunities. She committed to coaching once a month with the deliberate intention of helping others succeed. Gradually, she increased this to weekly, then daily coaching interactions. After about a year, the feedback about her leadership completely changed. Not only was she developing as a leader, but others around her were growing, and the benefits spread across the entire business.

Creating a coaching culture requires understanding what truly motivates people. While most managers believe recognition is the biggest motivator, research shows that the perception of making progress in meaningful work is actually far more powerful. Your role is to help people see and feel their progress, provide catalysts that facilitate great work, and nourish the human connections that make work fulfilling.

Progress triggers positive emotions and creates a virtuous cycle where positive inner work-life leads to more progress. Catalysts include having clear goals, sufficient autonomy, adequate resources, appropriate timeframes, help when needed, opportunities to learn, and the ability to contribute ideas. Nourishers involve showing respect, giving encouragement, providing emotional support, and creating opportunities for affiliation and celebration.

The most successful coaching cultures are those where senior leaders model coaching behaviors consistently. When leaders ask open questions rather than always providing solutions, when people willingly give and receive feedback, and when honest, developmental conversations become the norm, coaching becomes "how we do things here." In such cultures, anyone can coach anyone else, creating a self-generating system of growth and development.

To sustain this culture, create a circle of like-minded coaching advocates who meet regularly to support each other's development. Remember that as you focus on "filling everyone else's bucket," you need to keep yourself replenished too. A coaching culture provides this mutual support, creating a sustainable leadership legacy that grows future leaders while empowering current ones.

The transformation from commanding leader to coaching leader isn't just about changing your management style. It's about fundamentally shifting how you see your role from being the person with all the answers to being the person who helps others discover their own answers. This shift lightens your burden while unleashing the full potential of every person on your team. As the book reminds us, "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it."

The coaching approach creates a positive cycle where trust leads to engagement, engagement leads to better performance, and better performance creates more trust. When you show vulnerability, empathy, humility, and appreciation, you create the psychological safety that allows people to bring their full selves to work. When you ask open questions instead of providing quick answers, you develop your team's problem-solving capabilities. When you give feedback that focuses on growth rather than criticism, you help people reach their full potential.

Start today by identifying one team member you could coach differently this week. Instead of answering their next question directly, ask them what they think the answer might be. Notice their response, and notice how it feels different for you too. This simple shift is your first step toward leading like a coach and creating the kind of workplace where everyone thrives.