Effective leadership is about partnering with your teams, removing roadblocks, and guiding them so they can be the best at what they do. That’s the coach in us.
That’s not enough though… We’ll fail the team we work for if we aren’t engaged and adapting as needed. Be it the workplace, marketplace, or your personal space… keep attentive, keep engaged, keep learning and use that to adapt and act.
What does it mean to stay a student while you’re coaching?
It means checking the ego at the door, every single day, not just once when we started out. The best leaders we know are still learning, still asking questions, still willing to say “I don’t know that yet, but I’m going to find out.” That’s not a weakness we tolerate in ourselves… it’s the thing that actually earns the trust to coach anyone else.
What does that look like in practice?
- Are we listening to the environment, or just waiting for our turn to talk?
- Are we open to a better answer than the one we walked in with?
- Are we still able to notice when our own approach has gone stale, or are we the last ones to see it?
There’s a real humbleness in admitting we’re always a student, and that’s not weakness… that’s exactly what reinforces we’re the best leader for the team, because we’re always the student too.
How do we know when it’s time to adapt?
Coaching means tailoring what we bring to the actual team, the actual moment, the actual problem in front of us, not handing out the same solution every time. Look and listen first, then adapt second… not the other way around.
- Have I actually looked at what’s changed, or am I still running last quarter’s playbook?
- Have I listened long enough to understand the real friction, or did I just hear the first complaint?
- Have I adapted the coaching to this team, or expected this team to adapt to me?
Keep it small, keep it simple… stay a student, stay engaged, and let that shape how we adapt and act.