I've been asked many times how I've honed my skills as a leadership coach and how others can too. And of course I've worked as a coach for other coaches (informal as well as professional practitioners) to help them develop their skills and build their coaching businesses.
It's such a personal subject for me, and leadership coaching is a topic that a lot of others have strong opinions on too. Not everyone will agree with what I say here. Nevertheless I will do my best to capture my path and perspectives in this post, along with with the most common answers and suggestions that I give to others.
Read it all, or jump to:
How To Be a Better Leadership Coach
How To Be a Better Leadership Coach
What is leadership?
First I need to make it clear that I view leadership as something that everyone has. I work with top executives, students, mid-career managers, volunteers, founders, community advocates, the list goes on. Each of us can learn to lead effectively from right where we are.
To do that we need to know how to "take the mic" effectively and be helpful. We also need to know how to pass the mic, in other words: how to shut up and listen and then follow when the situation calls for it. That's leadership too.
All leadership is shared leadership. It should be fluid, and the most skilled leaders hold their roles lightly and with a kind of reverence.
Your skills as a leader are independent of the roles you are serving in.
What is a leadership coach?
At Erin Mosley, Inc. (EMI) and the Mosley Institute for Leadership, we use the term leadership coaching to cover all of our work. We may be working with executives on their leadership skills to run a complex organization, with a new manager on how to delegate more effectively, or with a workshop of young professionals on how "manage up." It's all leadership, and a lot of the skill building is similar.
A coach brings experience, an open mind, and process to help others:
- discover choices they don't know they have
- work through blocks and limiting beliefs
- try new things knowing that the coach is there
- celebrate what's working
- develop confidence, interpersonal skills, and business acumen
- master complexity and uncertainty
- become a trusted resource
Importantly, a coach also provides time, space, and support for the client to (re)negotiate difficult situations and any accumulated stress.
Coaching is special because it is fueled by the motivation and aspirations of the client. We use these personal and professional goals and we take action. It is not therapy or medical treatment, though many of my smartest and most successful clients have a "team" of experts they work with and I love that. (More on this below.)
Why are you coaching?
Before entering into any coaching relationship, you have to ask yourself why you are doing it. Coaching is not friendship, unsolicited advice, opinions, casual conversation, or commiseration. It's also not the same thing as being a supervisor or mentor. And it's definitely not about driving particular organizational goals or trying to enforce or dictate behaviors.
Most importantly, coaching is not about you (the coach). Great coaches are a channel for greatness, but the success belongs to the client. They do the work; they do the discovery.
If you find that your ego, opinion, or attachment to being a coach is too strong, you must pause and reconsider. You can do some damage as a leadership coach if you go into it with an agenda.
Continually work with your own team of advisors and experts to become more self aware of how you might be inserting your own bias into a trusted coaching relationship and how to handle any ethical questions that come up. Believe me, this is very common!
(TL/DR: Coaches need coaches too! See below.)
Do you have your own team?
We might as well go into this now since it already came up in the last section. Coaches need coaches too!
Coaches may also need therapists or similar practitioners, coaching supervisors for consultations on aspects of the work, advisors of various kinds, and whatever wellness support is needed.
I view my coaching practice as one in which I spend part of my time being an expert practitioner who is confident in my skills and the other part of the time as an apprentice and student who is learning from the best in the world at some new skill.
So I also encourage my clients to have a great team of professionals teaching and supporting them every step of the way. As the leadership coach, I should be just one person on that team.
Our clients take on really challenging leadership positions in a really complex world. As do we. No one can do any of this alone.
Are you the right coach?
When I meet with a prospective client I am never trying to ingratiate myself or fake a connection. In fact, it is almost the opposite. I often enter into a new consultation assuming I will provide some good support and insights in a single conversation.
Even for ongoing coaching programs I regularly check in with myself: am I the right coach for this person at this time? Should I bring someone else in or refer this client out? What actions can they take outside of the coaching program that will be of benefit? Are we getting to a place where a break would be beneficial?
I'm not the right coach for everyone all the time. Even my long term clients take breaks and come back with something new they want to work on.
Knowing this means I don't have compromise my integrity to be a coach. If it feels right, magic happens. Even during the most difficult reckonings for my clients, I am clear eyed and confident that a big shift or breakthrough is moments away.
If I work with clients that aren't a good match, it feels different. So I've learned to be straightforward about when and how I can help.
This goes against so much of hustle culture today: Try harder. Don't quit. It's your fault if you can't do it. Don't let them see you fail. Go big or go home. Sell sell sell. Etc.
That's not what this is about. This is a high trust relationship and the work is extremely vulnerable. You must work within your capacity and current skillset.
You must be brutally honest with yourself about the clients you take on.
If you would like to hear more specific (anonymized) examples of when I said no to coaching requests and for what reasons, please contact me and I will be happy to share more on this important topic.
Who are you coaching?
Building from the last question, not all coaches can or should coach all people in all situations. You must get good at discerning which coaching relationships are worth the investment from both sides.
If you are a professional leadership (or similar) coach with a private practice, you'll want to have a good idea of your clientele. Who are your clients, and why do they benefit from working with you? Really make sure you understand them and can offer them the help they are asking for.
If you are an inside coach for an organization (formally or informally), your biggest challenge is likely how to navigate competing expectations. You will need to be clear who you are coaching in the organization and why you are coaching them. Does the organization have a internal coaching program? Or are you providing ad hoc coaching because you see that it might of benefit? Is this coaching endorsed and supported by the organization, or is it more informal? Is the coaching available fair and equitable to other team members? All of these are important to clarify.
Once you know who you are coaching and why, you will still have the challenge to balance what is good for that person and what is good for the organization. You must be extra careful on this. Exploring alignment of personal and organizational values and interests is usually beneficial. But inside coaches can fall into some understandable traps:
- Feeling pressured or entitled to convince, enforce, or guide employees toward some company policy or outcome (or even hearsay and opinions). This can be subtle: watch for it.
- Getting too involved with the issues at at hand and mixing up coaching with other roles. For example, a senior person serving as a 'coach' who then works on finding promotion opportunities or takes on an action on resolving a problem. In that case coaching has become something else (supervision, mentoring, sponsoring, management, etc.), which is fine -- but it has eroded the integrity of the coaching relationship.
- Diving in and out of different conversations in the company asking questions, sharing viewpoints, and dispensing advice. This is not a beneficial coaching relationship. (It may also create confusion and qualify as seagull management, if you've heard the term.)
Any of these (or others you might suggest!) usually cause more damage and distrust than positive transformations and growth. Inside coaches need to develop some really specific skills and guardrails to become a trusted and stabilizing resource in the organization. It is not easy.
If you are volunteering to provide leadership coaching in another environment or for pro bono, you may face some lack of structure or commitment. As stated above, you need to understand who is receiving coaching and why are they interested?
Do you have permission or an agreement?
This is really, really important.
- Do not under any circumstances try to coach without clear and current permission or agreement from those you are coaching. Also, do not assume previous permission extends to now without re-establishing the context.
- Make sure you have cleared the space for coaching - meaning that any potential conflicts or misunderstanding coming from outside of the coaching relationship have been addressed.
Let me describe these better.
1. Getting permission and agreement can be as simple as someone asking you for your perspective or you offering some coaching time to someone else. This might sound like:
"If you'd like to tell me more about this challenge, I'd be interested to listen and ask some questions that might help give you some new ideas. I may also have some experience that I can share with you. Would that be helpful?" If yes, "Let's set up a time."
It may also be a written agreement. If you are a professional leadership coach, this is essential of course. If you are an inside coach or a volunteer providing coaching pro bono, I'd still lean toward getting something in writing even if it's just an email exchange. It helps to promise each other the space, time, intention, and respect that is needed for a really great coaching experience.
2. When I say clearing the space from outside conflicts or misunderstanding, I mean things like:
- Any known financial or scheduling obstacles have been addressed and accounted for so that coaching can be consistently prioritized and not discarded along the way.
- People outside of the coaching relationship will not obstruct it. This could be either professional situations or personal relationships for either the coach or the client. If something unexpected comes up, that can be brought in as part of the coaching experience. But if there's something known at the beginning that needs to be addressed, don't ignore it. Inform and get outside agreements when they are needed.
What is your coaching approach?
As a coach, you need to have an approach that gives you both structure and flexibility. Every coach is different and there are many opinions on what coaches 'should' do. Here is an idea of what works for me and my clients:
- Be present. I almost never rush into a call without supportive time and space to give my most full attention to the client for the time we have together. And no interruptions. I go into individual coaching sessions with my knowledge of the client or general perspectives, but never with an set agenda. I follow what is showing up in that moment with that client for best results. With groups there is more of a plan, but it's always designed for immersion and collective presence.
- Listen and observe. Most of my skillset has to do with listening and observing. I listen to what the client says and what they don't say. I track physiological changes both in the client and in myself. I notice things like emotion, patterns of stress activation, pauses, movements, facial expression, vocal prosody, and more.
- Slow down. There is a funny thing about both meeting the client where they are and offering them (sometimes non-verbal) options to shift that state. For example, clients are often feeling harried and 'stressed out' at the beginning of a call. I hear them out, validate the stress - and at the same time quietly offer them the chance to downregulate with me or to allow the completion of a natural stress response like anger, fear, or sadness. This coaching skill involves the practice of subtly altering the pace in just the right way for that person at that time. In groups, we keep things active and fun but we are also creating a space that interrupts habitual patterns in a different way.
- Ask questions; provide a sounding board for the answers. Perhaps the most quintessential art of coaching is in asking questions. When to ask, how to ask, what to ask. The intent of questions is not for the coach to solve problems, it is to open up pathways of courage for the client to solve problems. This topic is way too huge to cover here. Many sessions are all about getting to a point of new discovery and then helping the client integrate it.
- Offer a step-by-step process. At some point leadership coaching comes down to having some action they can take. At this point I often employ quite a bit of conversation that normalizes whatever we're working on. Most people are relieved to know they aren't alone in their frustrations! I may share stories or case studies that illuminate some of the possible actions, offer perspectives, and provide some choices the client may take on. I many offer one of EMI's many step-by-step exercises that we've collected and developed over the years. And while I may see a grand plan in the making, my job is to inspire the client to develop their own plan. I don't have cookie cutter trademarks (e.g. the Mosley Method) that I am trying to push on anyone. What I have is extensive training and knowledge across many disciplines, and I draw on that in a creative way when I'm working with clients. My goal is to move toward clarity and simplicity. I know I'm offering the right process when I observe how it's landing with the client. In groups, we also have interesting ways for participants to share stories and make step-by-step discoveries among themselves as well as with the full group.
- Look for hidden brilliance and opportunities. When I say above that I don't use cookie cutter approaches, it's because I am most interested in finding untapped genius within the client and opportunities within the situations they bring to coaching. My first coaching program was called "Step Into Your Genius" and I still love that name. Genius isn't something you are, it's something you have. And most clients have gobs of genius that they do not recognize or value. As a coach, I love finding these brilliant gems and watching my clients light up.
- Let go of outcomes. This is non-negotiable. As a coach, you do the best work you can and you walk away. You don't get attached. You don't fall in love with any particular promising direction. You don't try to predict or manipulate what will happen. (If you are a really good coach, the results of the work will surprise you more often than not.)
- Don't fix it. Nothing is broken. Absolutely under no circumstance are you here to "fix" anyone or anything. Situations exist for whatever reasons, and someone has come to you for a bit of coaching to make a change. That's it. If you notice yourself judging or blaming your client or anything about the situation, check yourself. Judgement shuts down the open-mindedness necessary for the work. If you find yourself feeling essential to the client's decisions or like a 'savior,' please stop.
- Hold your seat. If you are a good leadership coach, you are doing work with your client that is difficult for them to navigate. They will be under stress, and you must be able to stay steady while they move through some rough territory. You learn how to start and end calls on time. You learn how to offer support as needed between sessions or after a coaching program ends without undermining the actions they need to take on their own. You learn how to be present for big emotions and surprises. All of this takes training and practice. When you hold your seat, it means you can be right there with them to witness what is happening without getting pulled into it.
- Celebrate. Most people have a very hard time tracking their own progress. As a coach, I pause often to notice what has changed and share my perspective on it. Because leaders by nature are always growing into the next challenge, it can seem like they are always struggling and never mastering anything. They sometimes need someone to challenge that and point out their growth and development. Sometimes my clients and I will spend an entire session that I call a "celebration call" when they relax and share examples of what's going well. As a coach you should not rush into the next challenge. These celebrations are vitally important so that the client knows it's OK to be OK and not be in stress activation all the time.
All of these are important in the success of coaching outcomes but also because each of these is a foundational leadership skill. By role modeling what it is like to have someone pay attention to healthy growth and development, you will find that your clients will take these skills on and start to use them.
What about training, degrees, and certification?
Generally speaking, there are no U.S. laws or state requirements that govern leadership coaching other than business registrations, taxes, insurance, etc. Nevertheless, you must be absolutely clear on your "scope of practice" and make sure you are NOT providing services that do fall under such regulations. For example, if you start offering "touch work" (physical therapy, massage, etc.) or health counseling or if you start selling products, you had better check to make sure you are in compliance with any applicable rules for your state.
I encourage coaches to follow their instincts and seek out training that will benefit their practice. Some coaches really enjoy going back to a university program for a certificate or a degree related to coaching. Others engage with one of the coaching professional organizations. These programs can offer history and theories, proven approaches, peer support, feedback, practice guidelines, networking, and credibility on a CV.
Other coaches, such as myself, do not seek these credentials. That is fine too.
What I think all great coaches do is keep learning. If you look at my credentials and coursework you'll see that I've sought out and studied with the best practitioners in the world of innovation, sustainability, contemplative practices and meditation, somatic psychology, relational dynamics, curriculum development, coaching, operating a global virtual business, performance and interactive events, circus and movement arts, and more. And I haven't given up the world class training in engineering and science, program management, and client service from my early career either.
Gathering from many different inspirations has allowed me to build the coaching and consulting business that was my "calling" -- one that provides a kind of leadership development that I couldn't find anywhere else.
So, no surprise: I can't provide a cookie cutter set of recommendations as to what training will make you the coach you want to be.
If I were your coach, though, what I would probably suggest is that we look for your hidden brilliance and trust it to show you the way. 😉
And if you have questions or want to talk about any of this, click below to get in touch. I am happy to share anything that may be useful.
Written by Erin (Pink) Mosley
©️ 2025 Erin Mosley, Inc.
