Good intentions do not automatically produce good coaching. This is one of the harder truths I have encountered in my work, and it is worth exploring further.
Many leaders who say they are coaching their people genuinely mean it. They want to develop their teams. They want to be the kind of leader who grows people, not just manages tasks. And yet somewhere between the intention and the execution, the impact can get lost. Not because they do not care, but because a few common patterns quietly get in the way. Let’s look.
The first pattern I see is the instinct to fix things. A team member walks in with a problem, and before they have even finished describing it, the leader is already offering a solution. The goal shifts from helping someone grow through figuring something out to simply making the problem go away. That is efficiency, not coaching.
A close cousin to that is the tendency to redirect people toward your own approach. There is a subtle version of this that does not even feel like control. It feels like support. But if the underlying message is always “here is how I would do it,” you are not developing their thinking. You are training them to replicate yours. Development requires room to find a path that works for someone other than you.
Next in line is the leader who dominates the conversation. Too much talking. Too little listening. Filling silence with stories and perspective when the most powerful thing would be to stay curious and let the other person think out loud. Coaching is fundamentally about the other person’s mind working through something, and that requires space to think.
One of the more damaging patterns is when development conversations get mixed with evaluation. If someone senses they are being assessed at the same time they are supposed to be growing, they will protect themselves. Honest reflection disappears because they don’t feel safe to have it. Psychological safety is not a nice-to-have in a coaching relationship; it is the foundation needed.
And finally, there is the ineffectuality of vagueness. Telling someone they need to improve their executive presence or be more strategic, without ever defining what that looks like in practice, is not helpful. Good coaching is specific. It gives people something concrete to work with.
If any of this resonates, I would love to explore what genuine coaching leadership would look like in your specific context. You can reach me at stacy@sbjconsultinginc.com.
When you think about the conversations you have with your team, are you creating space for them to think, or are you doing most of the thinking for them?
