“You don’t have to become a coach to change everything about your leadership.
Sometimes the real shift is simply deciding to lead more like a coach — to hold the space where other people’s thinking, courage, and ownership can grow.”
— Sue Johnston
Across the conversations I’m having with leaders right now, I’m hearing a familiar undercurrent. The world is not slowing down. Expectations are not easing. And many of the ways we learned to lead are starting to feel out of step with what people — and organisations — actually need.
You might recognise a sense of:
“I care deeply. I’m doing my best. And yet… something needs to change in how I lead this year.”
For many leaders, that “something” is a shift toward leading more like a coach.
You may recognise some of these patterns in yourself or your organisation:
You’re deeply committed, yet your days are crowded with decisions only you seem able to make.
Your team is capable, yet you still find yourself as the default fixer, problem-solver, or emotional backstop.
The same conversations keep looping — about performance, behaviour, or alignment — without the shift you know is possible.
You sense your people are looking for more ownership, meaning, and trust, not simply clearer instructions or tighter controls.
If any of this resonates, it doesn’t mean you’re failing as a leader.
More often, it means you’ve outgrown an older leadership mode, and your context is asking something different of you now — something more spacious, relational, and partnership-oriented.
Many of us were shaped in systems that rewarded the heroic leader:
the one with the answers, the one who steps in, the one who holds everything together through effort and competence.
That mode has its place. There are moments when decisiveness, direction, and authority matter deeply.
The challenge is that, over time, heroic leadership can quietly create dependency.
People wait. Problems rise upward instead of being worked through where they arise. You become the bottleneck — often at a personal cost, you feel only once you’re exhausted.
Leading more like a coach isn’t about becoming passive or abdicating responsibility.
It’s a different form of leadership strength.
It often looks like:
Asking better questions before offering solutions.
Creating thinking space, rather than filling every silence with answers.
Holding clear expectations and boundaries, while genuinely inviting others into how those are met.
Relating to people as whole humans, not just as roles on an org chart.
This is where self-leadership matters.
If you’re running on fumes, gripping control because uncertainty feels risky, or carrying long-standing patterns of over-responsibility, it becomes much harder to bring the grounded, curious presence that coach-like leadership requires.
Rather than a checklist of things to do differently, here are a few questions you might sit with as you look ahead:
Where, in your current work, are you still the indispensable problem-solver? What might shift if you became the chief questioner instead?
In which conversations do you notice yourself moving quickly to reassure, rescue, or fix? What might open up if you stayed a little longer in curiosity?
Where might your team be more ready than you realise to step into ownership and accountability, if you created the container and the invitation?
What part of your leadership story is asking to evolve — perhaps from “I hold it all” to “I hold the space in which others can step up”?
This isn’t about changing everything at once.
Often it begins with one relationship, one meeting, or one familiar pattern you choose to approach differently.
When leaders begin to lead more like a coach, the changes are often subtle at first — and then surprisingly far-reaching.
For example:
A leader who used to arrive at meetings with a fully formed plan now comes with a clear purpose, two or three well-chosen questions, and a willingness to co-design the “how” with the group.
A manager drained by constant “Got a minute?” interruptions began holding regular, deeper one-to-ones focused on thinking together — and noticed the ad-hoc interruptions gradually fall away.
A senior leader caught between compassion and accountability found a way of giving feedback that was both deeply human and unflinchingly clear by slowing down, naming what mattered, and inviting shared responsibility.
None of these leaders became coaches in a formal sense.
They did, however, reclaim their role as cultivators of thinking, ownership, and growth — in themselves and in their teams.
This kind of shift tends to unfold on at least two levels.
First, the personal level:
your own patterns, stories, values, boundaries, and habits of attention. This is often where LifeStar and Daring Leadership work supports leaders — helping recalibrate energy and alignment so leadership isn’t driven by stress or autopilot.
Second, the collective level:
the culture and systems your leadership is shaping. This is where my Artemis leadership coaching and workplace programmes sit — supporting teams and organisations to work in more coach-like, connected, and future-fit ways, without losing clarity or performance.
Sometimes the work begins with you as an individual leader.
Sometimes it starts with your team or organisation.
Most often, it becomes a conversation between both.
Alongside this leadership and organisational work, I’m launching a small, pioneering cohort for an advanced coaching certification in February.
It’s designed for experienced, already-certified coaches who feel called to deepen their practice at the intersection of leadership, systems, and inner transformation. This is not entry-level training — it’s for those who already live and breathe coaching, and are sensing their own next edge.
If that sparks something, you’re welcome to reach out privately, and we can explore whether the pioneer cohort is a good fit.
As you stand at the beginning of this year, you might simply ask:
Who do I want to be in the lives of the people I lead?
What would it mean, in practical terms, to lead more like a coach — in my context, with my particular strengths and constraints?
What support would help make those shifts sustainable, rather than just another intention?
If you’d value a thinking partner as you explore these questions — for yourself, your team, or your wider organisation — you’re welcome to get in touch.
Sometimes the most future-shaping move we can make isn’t to push harder,
but to pause, reflect, and choose a different way of leading forward.