In this Leadership Unscripted, episode of Unleash Your Impact, Unlock Others Dave and Rich dive into one of the most powerful, yet underutilized, leadership skills – Coaching. They discuss why coaching is at the heart of Zentano’s leadership approach and how embracing a coaching mindset can unlock performance, build resilience, and transform organizational culture. 

Rich shares his personal experience of being coached and how it completely changed his approach to leadership. Dave and Rich explore the differences between traditional leadership approaches and leadership using a coaching mindset, highlighting the importance of balancing directive leadership with empowering others. 

They also discuss Sir John Whitmore’s research from Coaching for Performance on retention rates for different teaching methods (Tell, Show, Try) and explain how coaching leads to higher engagement, accountability, and performance. 

You’ll also hear about Zentano’s own SORTed Adult Learning Model, an accessible framework for embedding learning and growth through coaching. 

📌 Key Takeaways: 

• Why a coaching mindset is a strategic tool for leadership success. 
• The power of balancing directive leadership with coaching. 
• Practical insights from Sir John Whitmore’s research on effective coaching. 
• Introducing Zentano’s SORTed Adult Learning Model. 

Stay tuned for the next episode, where Rich and Dave will share practical coaching skills and techniques every leader can use. 

Keywords: Coaching, Leadership, Coaching Mindset, Sir John Whitmore, Adult Learning, SORTed Model, Empowerment, Leadership Unscripted, Zentano. 

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership.

We hope to bring you grounded wisdom stories from real leaders and leave you feeling inspired.

Let's dive in.

Welcome to this leadership unscripted episode of Unleash youh Impact, Unlock Others.

Today we're talking about one of the most impactful, yet underutilized leadership skills, coaching at Centano.

Coaching is the heart of everything that we do, whether we're working with individual leaders, coaching teams, or running leadership programs.

But for many people, coaching remains misunderstood.

Some leaders think coaching is for fixing people.

Others believe it's just about asking endless open ended questions.

The reality is that coaching is a leadership mindset and a skill that unlocks performance, builds resilience, and transforms how teams and businesses operate.

Rich, hi.

Hi, Dave.

How are you today?

I'm good, thank you.

Good, good.

Let's kick start this podcast with exploring why coaching matters in leadership.

I'm particularly interested in maybe you explaining the impactful experience you had when you were first coached in the workplace.

Yeah, so I was in a senior leadership role.

I've been in that role for a little while, I think.

And there are certain aspects of the leadership that I was finding challenging.

I was finding it challenging to influence senior people.

Yeah.

Sometimes had this imposter syndrome that people often talk about.

So lacking in confidence in certain situations.

And just out of the blue, somebody who I'd met at some business event phoned me up and said, rich, do you fancy a bit of free coaching?

Oh, okay.

So I said, well, yeah, it's free.

Why not?

We were strapped for cash at the time.

So I said, yeah, let's go for it.

I wasn't sure what to expect.

Anyway.

My experience of the coaching process was he created an environment that allowed me, without feeling judged, to talk about the issues that I've just described.

And he did that skillfully by asking really good questions, giving me time to articulate my thinking and challenging me at times, but giving me the space to work stuff out for myself.

And as a result of that, I think that my leadership changed quite dramatically as a result.

In what way?

So I became more confident for sure.

And I definitely felt that I could walk into a room with senior people and hold my own.

Okay.

And as a result, I believe from that time on, I was more influential and more impactful as a leader.

Wow.

So the interesting thing you said there to me was I didn't feel judged.

I think that's a really interesting thing.

It is.

And the first point I was going to make in this Podcast about why coaching matters in leadership is this concept of what the leadership mindset is.

Do you go into leadership with what we would call the traditional leadership mindset, which we'll explore in a minute, or a coaching mindset?

So let's take those two things.

How would you describe the traditional leadership mindset?

What does that look like?

Okay, so I'll come back to that in a minute.

So I'll circle back to that.

I want to ask you a question first.

Yeah, go on.

Yeah, sure.

So do you like being told what to do?

No.

And you can ask me the same question.

I know you don't.

Does anybody?

No, I don't.

I don't think they do.

And actually, when you think about it in terms of the way we operate, if we make the mistake of telling each other what to do, that becomes irritating and annoying, doesn't it?

We don't like being told what to do.

I think human beings tend not to.

To like being told what to do, particularly when we've got expertise or experience in that particular area.

You know, it can feel patronizing.

It can.

And also you can feel judged as well, and.

Yeah, feel judged and patronized, Maybe not trusted.

There are times where people like to be told what to do.

So if in a situation we're lacking maybe confidence because we don't have the knowledge or the experience or the expertise in that particular situation, sometimes some direction, some guidance, some clarity in terms of, you know, this is what we need to do, that's really helpful.

It is.

Although even in those situations, the thing I used to hate when I experienced it was being micromanaged.

Yes.

And again, I don't think people like to be micromanaged either.

No.

No, they don't.

So in our connected leadership model, we have two continuums.

The vertical continuum on our leadership model is what we call the power continuum.

And at the top, that's, if you like, one style of leadership where there is a need to set direction to get clarity around the vision and strategy.

And that directive style involves sometimes telling people what to do.

And there's a time and a place for that.

Absolutely.

And the advantage is people have clarity.

They know what to do.

They know where the team or the organization's heading.

Well, they can focus effort, can't they?

Yes, exactly.

So that's what we call the north cardinal point of our connected leadership model.

At the opposite end of that model, the opposite end of that continuum is what we call the coaching approach.

So in other words, rather than taking and managing power, power at the top, the opposite of that is giving and sharing power.

In other words, empowering people.

Yeah.

So we give people the freedom and the range to do what they're good at.

So their potential is allowed to be flourished, their capability is built.

So in other words, we trust people to do the right thing and we use a coaching approach to draw out that potential and to remove the interferences.

I guess we also trust them to actually have some answers for themselves.

We just direct the conversation in the right way rather than telling them what to do, rather than giving them solutions for all their problems, which is tiring if you have to keep doing that.

Actually, these people probably have got some answers.

They just need help to articulate those.

But also that will empower them and motivate them.

Yes.

Because they realize they got more capability than they thought they had.

Yes.

So what we advocate as a coaching organization, although we believe coaching should be at the heart of what we do and what organizations should do, actually coaching is balanced out by this traditional approach.

So we believe the best managers flex between that traditional style of leadership.

There's a time and a place to be directive and set the direction and to tell, but there's also a time and a place for people to coach and empower.

In my experience, what usually happens is leadership gravitates towards that north cardinal point.

You know, leaders almost become like a one trick pony.

I think sometimes leaders go into positions and they believe actually they just have to tell people what to do and that's part of their role and there's truth to that.

But I think they miss a trick if they don't really draw on the power of coaching.

So why do you think people do default to the telling rather than the coaching orientated way of working?

So I think some of that's tradition.

So traditionally society has been geared to be very hierarchical and we look to people in authority to give us purpose and direction.

So when I started work back in the early 80s, I worked in an organization that was incredibly hierarchical.

So it's almost become like an expectation that leaders behave in that way.

And then people get promoted into a position and then think, oh, maybe I need to be like that.

So I think there's some of that, so some, some cultural expectation and I think sometimes just the fear of letting go and the fear of trusting people to do their own thing, because if you empower people and let them go and do their own thing, there's a sense in which you're not in control of that entirely, you know, so it's fear of loss of control.

I Think.

Well, I mean, if you go back to the recent podcast we had where Andy Flack was talking about the fear is the oldest bats.

Yes.

Yes.

That was exactly one of the points he made, wasn't it?

Exactly.

Actually, human beings like to be in control, and letting control go to other people is actually a little bit scary.

And that's why, in my experience, leaders often don't delegate because they fear losing control or they feel actually that they can do a better job themselves.

So there might be a little bit of superiority in there and a little bit of fear in there as well.

I suspect all in the modern world.

There's some time pressure in there.

Sometimes we think it's just quicker and easier to give people answers because we've got just so much stuff to do.

Yes.

And there are times where that is true.

Yeah.

But it shouldn't be our default position.

No.

Okay.

So coaching isn't micromanagement.

No.

Coaching is not about fixing people because actually they don't need fixing.

Often they do have answers within them.

They just need some help getting those answers out.

And it's not therapy.

We're not talking about rebirthing people here or anything like that, are we?

This is about actually helping people find the answers to and find the solutions for things they need to do.

Yes.

With some skillful listening and some skillful questioning.

Yes.

So what's the evidence, do you think, for coaching's impact in leadership positions?

So I think Sir John Whitmore has done some really interesting research in his book Coaching Performance.

That's a good book to read, I think.

And there's a whole body of research out there, so it's difficult to sort of quote any one thing.

But I think there is a consensus in the leadership and the business world, actually, if you're to encourage a coaching approach inside an organization to.

And you upskill your managers to use the coaching approach, that can unlock huge potential in people.

Yeah, I think there's also some research, isn't there, around.

If you just tell people what to do all the time, they might remember it for a short period of time, but ultimately you end up having to do it again and again because they just forget.

They forget what they've been told.

Can you remember what the stats were around that?

Sir John Whitmore in his book, again.

So he quotes those figures you're talking about.

He talks about three ways that you can, if you like, delegate work to somebody so you can tell somebody what to do.

Yeah.

So in other words, you're being very directive.

Yeah.

You can tell and show somebody what to do.

So an experiential element to that.

Yeah.

As a telling.

And you can see the third way is tell somebody, show them, and then allow them to try or to do it.

Yes.

So he did a bit of research where he tracked those three stars of management.

Yeah.

And tracked the percentage after three weeks and after three months for each of those stars.

How much people retained.

Yeah.

So first, to answer the question, so when people are told what to do after three weeks, how much do you think they might recover?

I think after three weeks, a fair number would still remember after three weeks.

I mean, I'd say what, half, maybe.

Yeah, 70%.

Okay, 70%.

So still quite high after three weeks.

I'm not sure whether I'd remember after three weeks the age I am now, but anyway.

But 70% on average.

Yeah.

After three months.

A different ball game now.

Yeah.

So after three months after being told what to do, what's the percentage retention?

I reckon it goes right down.

My experience would suggest something less than 20%.

Okay, 10%.

Yeah.

I'm not surprised.

So between three weeks and three months, goes from 70% to 10%.

People being told what to do three months.

So that.

Well, I'm not sure it's surprising, but it certainly should be something that should inform.

Actually, should the tell approach be one of our primary means of managing.

What that says to me, Rich, is that I'm just creating a rod for my own back because I'm having to constantly repeat myself and.

Yes.

And actually why would I want to be doing that?

Yeah.

So let's explore the stats further.

So that's the tell.

So if you show somebody and tell them, or tell and show.

Yeah.

After three weeks, what's the retention?

It's up a little bit from more than 70%.

Yeah.

Maybe 80%.

I don't know.

Well, 72.

Oh, so.

So similar.

Yeah, not much.

So that's being told and shown what to do.

Yeah.

After three months, what do you think happens?

That's probably where to get more people retaining.

Yeah.

So probably, I don't know, somewhere around a third of people.

Yeah, 32%.

Okay.

So pretty close.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So that's interesting.

So again, fairly significant.

Yes, fairly significant.

That's a big uptake between 10% and 30%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

So it's the second approach.

Third approach, tell, show and try.

So really real experiential sort of thing.

So let them try for themselves.

Let them try.

Let them try for themselves and explore for themselves and fail for them.

Themselves.

Well, Sometimes fail.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

Because you learn when you do things wrong.

Yeah.

Try and find your own way of doing it.

So after three weeks, this third approach, the try, how much do they retain?

Again?

Probably a little bit more, but not a huge amount.

I think the biggest benefit is going to come later on.

Okay, 85%.

Oh, so it's a bit higher then.

Yeah.

What's really interesting, how much do they retain after three months?

So they've been able to try out for themselves and explore for themselves the best way to do it.

I think that's where the real benefit comes in.

I suggest probably well over half.

65%.

Yeah.

That doesn't surprise me because actually over three months, when you keep constantly do things for yourself, you are going to learn.

So after three months, if you're just told what to do, you retain just 10%.

Yeah.

If you're told and shown what to do after three months, 32%.

Yeah.

If you're then given the experience after being told and shown to try it out for yourself, 65%.

So this fallacy, if you like, of I don't have time to use a coaching approach, that might be true in the short term, but what those stats say to me is in the long run it's going to save you time.

Well, it's going to save you time in the long run.

I think the challenge for leaders is often their time poor.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And there is a temptation just to tell people what to do.

But if you can break the cycle and bring more coaching into the way you lead, the long term benefits are pretty clear.

Well, one of the obvious long term benefits for me, because we've said this on previous leadership podcasts, that leadership is about creating a great environment where people can flourish and they can reach optimal performance and they can sustain that performance.

So for me, listening to what you said there about those stats, coaching is going to foster a culture of not just learning, but people taking ownership of their performance and their solutions and all the rest of it.

So you're helping effectively teams to start to solve their own problems rather than relying on you to be the one who's got all the answers.

That's sort of the try approach, isn't it?

In other words, you're allowing people to take responsibility for trying it for themselves, allowing them to fail and to come to you if they need support or whatever, but they get a sense that they have autonomy and freedom and that's it.

That impacts motivation and engagement.

If you want to bring your employee engagement up in your organization, Using a coaching approach facilitates that.

Well, I'm just thinking there's loads of research and studies out there saying, particularly in the uk, but I'm sure it's the same in other countries.

Where do we struggle?

We struggle with productivity.

That's not all about leadership being poor.

We struggle with employee wellbeing and we struggle with employee engagement.

That point you make.

Yeah.

I think the last stats I saw in this, I know Gallup do a lot of research in this area, but the last Gallup research I saw, that said in the UK broadly, one in six people are fully engaged in their jobs.

Well, that's not great one in six, is it?

No, no.

So actually it's poor.

So if we want to improve productivity, employee engagement, well, being in our businesses, surely coaching is going to be a major impact.

Yes.

On achieving those outcomes.

Yeah.

Because if you use a coaching approach, you give people autonomy and you empower them, they're going to feel like you trust them.

Yes, absolutely.

And when you feel like people have your back and they trust you to do your job, you're going to thrive in that environment.

You're going to use your strengths and your potential and that's going to be intrinsically motivational.

And we talked about intrinsic motivation in previous podcasts.

But the coaching approach is the leader tool and the cultural tool inside your organization to unlock this and to really engage your people.

And also one of my favorite topics is accountability.

I think, you know, often businesses struggle with having their employees be accountable.

Yeah, yeah.

But surely when you're coaching people, they are taking accountability for their stuff.

Yeah.

And that's really, really important.

Yeah.

Well, if you get people to take accountability for their own stuff, they're doing your job for you.

Yeah.

And then once they are individually accountable, you get collective accountability as well.

Which is, you know, you talked about that in a previous podcast.

Exactly.

So what do you think some of the other knock on benefits are?

So we, if we use a coaching approach to leadership when it's appropriate, like you said, not all the time.

Sometimes we do have to just give direction, but when it's appropriate and there'll be lots of opportunities when it is appropriate, what are some of the knock on benefits that coaching will do in terms of that environment you're creating?

So I think if people feel that you trust them and you've got their back, they'll be prepared to take more risks within boundaries.

So people are going to be more creative and more innovative.

Which we need.

Yeah, which we need.

I think also a coaching approach will encourage greater Collaboration.

Yeah.

And how many times have you heard we've got silo mentality here?

I've heard that so many times.

So people take responsibility for their.

For their own stuff.

So, you know, they build networks and do whatever they need to do to get the job that they need to get done.

Yeah.

And I'm guessing ultimately also you're going to get improved performance, aren't you?

That's.

Yes.

Which I know most businesses would love.

Let's maximize our performance as best we can.

So, Rich, let's think about our own experience.

What anecdotal evidence have we got that we can share that this actually stuff works?

This coaching approach works.

It's really interesting when we do our coaching workshops and when we do our workshops where we talk about, if you like, the core skills for coaching, like listening, asking good questions, which we're going to cover off in the next podcast.

Sometimes I remember there's a particular organization where we did this with.

And you can almost feel the skepticism in the room when you talk about this, you know, this soft and fluffy stuff.

Well, it's not actually soft and fluffy.

No, it's not soft and fluffy.

But, you know, people think that it is.

Yeah.

And then they go away and they try it and they see the impact it has on their team where their team feels that their.

They feel trusted.

Actually they spend more time listening and not jumping in and rescuing and trying to solve people's problems for them.

You know, people have reported back to us the impact that's had on their teams and it's actually made their life easier where people are not constantly coming back, knocking on their door.

I can remember, you know, I think five or six examples without me having to think too hard come to mind where people have said that in our workshops about the difference this makes.

No, I think you're right.

I've probably got similar.

Top of my head.

I can think of quite a few people that said that to me as well.

So actually what you're saying here, Rich, is that coaching is a strategic leadership tool.

This is actually something in our toolkit that we really need to be using.

And it isn't just for developing people because coaching skills are not dissimilar to sales skills.

It's about influencing people.

And leaders need to influence people.

Leaders need to influence change in an organization.

So coaching becomes a way to drive change, to engage with clients, better to influence up.

For example, there's.

The skill set you need for coaching is transferable into so many different aspects of leadership, isn't it?

So, Rich, let's move this conversation on to talking about how adults learn and why adults learning is important for performance, because I don't think you can separate performance from learning.

No.

People who learn more tend to perform better.

Yes.

Yes.

So coaching, I think, is central to an adult's learning in the workplace.

Would you not agree?

I absolutely would agree.

So let's expand what we mean by that and what the learning process is that adults need to go through to perform at their optimal level to perform consistently.

Yeah.

So I just want to reference.

Before we go into our learning model that we've developed in Zentano, I want to just talk about the performance equation.

Yeah.

And so the performance equation, I think, leads really nicely into this concept of why learning is so important.

So the performance equation was developed by an author called Tim.

Tim Goreway, who wrote the Inner Game of Tennis.

Really good book.

Tim Galway was transformational in tennis coaching.

So it transformed the way coaching was done in tennis and hence in sports.

So if you think from a tennis perspective.

Yeah.

If you think about the very elite people in tennis right at the top of their game, what would be the difference between their technical ability between different players?

Not a massive amount.

No, no.

It becomes much more about mindset.

Yes.

At that level, because they're probably physically, fitness is probably not massively dissimilar.

Technical ability, I agree.

Tactically, probably not necessarily that much.

But mentally, I think, is where the difference.

Yes, exactly.

So if somebody is serving for a championship point in Wimbledon, if you imagine what might be going through somebody's head at that particular moment, a person's ability to manage their mindset in that moment is crucial.

It's what Tim Galway called our interferences.

So the performance equation is performance equals a person's potential.

That's their knowledge, their skills, their ability, their strengths, their talents, all that innate stuff that we have in us.

And also some of the learned stuff that we have in us, minus interference.

What gets in the way, basically.

What gets in the way?

So typically in the workplace, there's all sorts of things that can get in the way of people's potential being unlocked.

This podcast is all about unlocking our potential and the potential of others.

And I guess one of the ways that that can happen is the manager gets in your way because they keep on answering all your questions.

Yes, yes.

Solving all your problems for.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So let's just explore what some of those interferences might be.

So that's often some of the stuff that's interfering inside our head.

Yeah.

So it could be Lack of confidence.

It could be a relationship that you're finding particularly challenging.

It could be, what do I need to do to problem solve?

This could be I'm struggling to focus in this particular area.

All those things can be interferences to releasing our potential.

So we learn when we understand how.

To remove those interferences or at least minimize them.

Or at least to minimize them.

Yeah.

So I think when you're under pressure, it's hard to completely remove an interference.

You can manage it and you can minimize it.

I think that's a good way of looking at it.

So the whole point about some of this mindset stuff inside an organization, mindset is really difficult to change.

Yes.

And actually to change that, we have to go through a process to help people solve the problem for themselves and to remove those interferences.

So this leads us in to that adult learning cycle that we alluded to earlier.

So we've developed what we call the sorted model, S O R T Sorted, which is based on a psychologist called Kolb.

He developed a similar adult learning model quite a number of years ago.

His model is quite technical, quite academic.

So we've tried to make it much more user friendly.

So we've used the acronym sort S O R T.

So in other words, we believe that what happens in order for an adult to learn and for their mindset to be shifted or those interferences to be removed, they need to go around this process of learning.

Yeah.

So S stands for stuff happens, which.

Is all about our subjective experiences that we have.

Yeah.

So in other words, if you think about this in the context of a workplace, perhaps, perhaps somebody has been in a very challenging meeting and they've not been sure how to respond to what's happened in the room.

Maybe they've lacked the confidence to speak up.

Maybe they find a particular individual in the room really challenging.

So there's stuff that's happened to them, their experience of what's happened.

So in order to learn from that, the sorted model says, okay, S stuff happens.

What we need to then do is to take a step away and take an objective view.

That's the O in the model.

So it's almost like being a fly on the wall.

You almost look from the outside in.

Yeah.

And we've talked a lot about reflective practice in previous podcasts.

In other words, actually taking the time to think back on this particular event and say, actually, just what happened then?

What was going on for me?

What was I thinking?

What was I feeling?

What was I doing?

Exactly.

Absolutely.

So it doesn't just stop there so stuff happens.

O, the objective view, and then we get R.

So imagine these letters going around in a little circle, if you like.

The R stands for rethink and challenge.

So in order for a human being to shift their mindset or to remove an interference, they've taken a step away.

They've taken that objective fly on the wall view.

And then critically, what they need to do is to challenge.

To rethink, rethink and challenge their thinking in that moment.

So in other words, looking back to those difficult meetings or for those difficult people, reflect rather than just blaming the other person, thinking, actually, what am I going to do differently next time when I walk back into that.

Yeah.

And it might be, you've got to challenge some of your own assumptions.

Exactly.

And there could be all sorts of mindset issues that's going on there and stopping people, you know, being at their best in that context.

So it's important that we go through the process of rethinking and challenging our view.

And that's quite.

And that's quite difficult to do, actually.

It is, yeah.

And it's not sometimes.

Comfortable to do.

Comfortable to do.

Okay, so the final step in the sorted model, S O, R, T, T is take action.

T for take action.

Okay.

And then T then follows back around to the S.

So it's a virtuous cycle.

I'll come back to that in a minute.

So take action.

So this is.

This goes back to the tell show and try, actually.

So in order to learn and to embed the learning and to make it happen for real, based on our rethinking of the situation and what we're going to do differently, we then go away and experiment and try a different approach.

Yeah.

And then you go back around the cycle.

I've heard you talk about this in workshops using a very amusing anecdote about Homer Simpson.

Do you want to share that anecdote?

Yes.

So typically, there's a couple of things that get in the way of people going around this learning cycle.

So in my experience, a lot of leaders, a lot of managers, a lot of people inside teams are so, so busy.

They go from one meeting to the next.

In our hybrid world, they go from one team meeting to the next team meeting with very little downtime.

Then they have teams, messages, Outlook, WhatsApp, WhatsApp messages or whatever.

An endless stream of stuff to do.

So rarely do people take a step away.

Okay.

And that's what.

That's what I call the Homer Simpson moment.

So in the Simpsons, I don't know whether people Our listeners know the Simpsons very well, but Homer Simpson is a character who's not the brightest person in the room, shall we say?

And there's a.

There's a clip in the Simpsons I remember watching years ago where Homer Simpson walks into the kitchen and there's a kitchen cupboard door that's open at head height and Homer Simpson walks straight into the kitchen cupboard door and goes dolt in his Homer Simpson way.

But what's then really funny is he then walks back round in a circle and then bangs his head again on the kitchen cupboard door, going, dope.

And he keeps going round and round and round in what we call the Homer Simpson loop.

He keeps banging his head on the kitchen cupboard door.

So an endless loop of stuff happening to him.

He's not taking a step away.

He's not learning.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

If he just stopped for one moment and thought about what he was doing, he'd stop banging his head on the kitchen.

Well, he'd close the kitchen door, wouldn't he?

Or do something.

Or do something.

Yeah.

Whatever he do.

So typically what happens is people don't take the time to take a step away and reflect.

No, I agree with that.

The other place they get stuck in the sorted model is actually it's really difficult to rethink and challenge our thinking.

Yeah, yeah.

Because we get stuck in our own way of thinking.

We get stuck, as you said earlier, we get stuck in our assumptions.

Well, I think that's a key one because there's a concept which I know you understand, called double loop learning, where you actually question the underlying assumptions of what you've done.

Not just what you've done, but the assumption that underlines it.

And I think not enough people do that.

Yeah.

So this is where coaching comes in, you see, because what coaching does, it formalizes this model.

So if you think about it, by coaching somebody, you pull them away from their situation where they're feeling stuck.

You give them the opportunity, in a safe environment where they don't feel judged, to talk through their stuff, so they're able to take an objective view.

You're facilitating a reflective environment for them.

And then what you're also doing, what good coaches, as leaders do, is they then, through skillful questioning, help the person to rethink and challenge their thinking and their assumptions.

Well, I know it was a long time ago, but that's clearly what happened to you in that example you gave us earlier on, wasn't it?

Yes.

So you must have, as that coach skillfully took you into the reflection part of this Process where you were able to just sort of think, okay, what was I thinking?

Doing what is going on for me here?

Yes.

Yeah.

Then asked you some questions that allowed you to reflect and challenge yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I presume then you chose the actions you were going to take.

Yes.

It wasn't him giving you the answers that was your choice.

I'm going to do this differently.

Yes.

And what we did in the coaching is what I do in coaching when I coach people is at the end of the coaching conversation I say, right, okay, so you've had all these wonderful insights.

What are you now going to do after this coaching conversation to put into practice what we've talked about.

So when they come back to the next coaching conversation, we review what they did and we go back around the sorted model again.

So coaching, if you like, formalizes this sorted process where you're encouraging people to take a step away, to reflect in a non judgmental atmosphere, to rethink and challenge their thinking.

By you facilitating that rethink and challenge, they take action.

Then you build in a virtuous cycle where you hold them to account in the next coaching conversation.

Yeah.

And it takes away that whole.

I don't want to be micromanaged, I don't want to be told what to do.

Exactly.

Which we've agreed.

We don't know many people who like that approach.

Okay, so let's.

I think you've made a good case there for why we should use coaching.

Let's think about the barriers that people might find when they try to adopt this approach to leadership.

So I've already alluded to one.

I don't have time to coach people.

What would you say to that one, Rich?

Yeah.

So let's go back to those statistics we were talking about earlier.

If you take the long term view and you coach people, it will be time saving in the longer term.

Yeah.

And three months isn't that long to.

No, it's not.

So there will be times.

I agree.

Where it's quicker to tell somebody what to do, you know, if it's truly an emergency or if it's a health and safety issue.

Tell somebody what to do.

That's perfectly appropriate and a valid leadership approach.

So here's another one then.

Now we're professionally qualified, highly experienced coaches.

What we're not saying here is everyone has to be professionally qualified, highly experienced coaches.

So if someone says, well, I'm not really a coach.

Yeah.

What would you say to that one, Rich?

Yeah.

You don't have to be a professional coach coaching very simply is listening and asking really good, open questions, getting out of your own way and trying not to fix the problem for the other person.

We're going to talk about this in the next podcast and talk about some of the particular techniques that people can use in the context of coaching.

But just keep it simple.

People like it when they feel listened to.

Yeah, absolutely they do.

Yeah.

People don't like to come to people and then be patronized with a series of trying to fix your problem for you.

That's really demot.

Motivating and really disempowering.

No, I totally agree.

Another myth that I often hear.

I'm sure you do too.

Coaching is really only for struggling people.

It's like a remedial activity.

What would you say to that one?

Yeah.

I still think that the business world needs to learn this lesson because there are times, in my experience it's happening less now with some organisations where they're becoming more mature in terms of the way they commission coaching.

But I remember very early on in my coaching career, a lot of people would refer remedial cases to me for coaching.

So somebody was performing poorly.

Let's throw a coach at this problem.

Yeah.

And actually the root issue was they're probably not being managed very well and they were using a coach to compensate for poor management.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Sure.

Coaching can be helpful as a remedial tool.

Yeah.

But coaching is at its most powerful when it's used as a strategic cultural tool to transform your organization and to use it to engage people, to empower them and for them to feel like they're trusted and they feel they have the space to go away and do their own thing.

No, I agree with you.

I think actually most people who will benefit from coaching are not necessarily struggling to perform necessarily.

They're stuck in some way and they could probably unleash their impact, which is the title of this.

But they just need to be unlocked.

Yes, exactly.

So unleash your impact.

Unlock others.

Coaching is a key key making this happen.

It is.

So I guess people need to start small, don't they?

We're not saying go out tomorrow and suddenly you're an expert coach in the workplace.

You need to start small.

What would your starting point be for somebody who wants to adopt this approach?

Try to use a coaching approach in all your conversations as much as you can.

Coaching, very simply, as I said just now, is about listening.

Stop trying to fix people's problems.

So just notice when you try to catch yourself when you're trying to fix other people's problems.

Ask questions in a very simple five minute conversation to them, solve the problem for themselves.

So start small.

When I go into an organization, I'm paid to do usually one and a half hour coaching sessions.

Yeah.

Don't start there.

No.

You know, start by just trying to embed a coaching approach inside the way you lead and manage.

So my top tip there would be simple.

Then next time you hear yourself giving somebody a solution, tell yourself to stop.

Yes.

And ask a question.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Any other top tips from you?

So we're going to cover this next time and I think I'm going to leave this as a teaser.

I think one of the most important skills to learn in coaching, and one of the skills that's the hardest to learn, is to actively listen and to deeply listen without judgment and to get out of your own way.

Interesting.

So on that cliffhanger, Rich, let's just summarize what I think are the key messages that we've talked about today.

So coaching is one of the most powerful leadership skills.

It transforms teams, it can transform businesses, and it can certainly, as it did with you, transform individual careers.

Absolutely.

Leaders who coach create engaged, resilient, and optimally performing teams.

Yeah.

Coaching isn't about giving advice.

It's not.

Definitely not like giving advice.

No.

It's about helping other people think for themselves.

Yeah.

And I think next time, as you said, what we'll dive into next time is what are the practical coaching techniques that every leader can use.

Yes.

And.

And that's your cliffhanger for next time.

Next time we'll talk about how you practically do this.

I think today what we've tried to do is to make the case for a coaching approach.

Yeah, absolutely.

And next time we're going to get really practical.

How do you do it?

How do you do it?

Great.

Thanks, Rich.

Really good conversation as always.

Thank you.

And I'll see you next time.

Yeah, see you next time.

Bye.