You’re Not 'Just a Coach' You’re a Leader

Many coaches resist the word leader. But what if the problem isn’t leadership itself — it’s the narrow model of what leadership looks like?

In this episode, I make the case that all coaching is leadership work. I explore a simple but powerful idea: you’re not “just a coach” — you’re a leader. Through every coaching conversation, you help people question assumptions, reclaim their agency, and step into a bigger relationship with their own lives. That’s a profound form of leadership — even if it’s quiet.

We’ll explore a non-hierarchical model of leadership (that I learned from a horse!) and why self-employed coaches are in a particularly powerful leadership practice. I’ll also share a few ways you can experiment with embracing your leadership in grounded, practical ways.

***

Apply now for Ripen www.saspetherick.com/ripen 

Join The Coaching Well for Group Supervision here

FREE Private Podcast Bold not Beige: Why your coaching isn’t selling and what to do about it  here

Website: www.saspetherick.com | Instagram:  @saspetherick

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to Courage Inspice for Coaches, where you build your self-belief and your business in under 30 minutes a week. I'm Sass Pederick, your host. I'm a coach, supervisor, and unapologetic self-belief nerd. My mission is simple. I want your coaching practice to feel like a right fucking beach. Let's go. So last week's episode was called The Fall of the Coach Fluences with two of my best coaching powers, Leanne Raymond and Bridget Boudreaux. And I posted about this on Instagram and it went a bit viral. I had almost a hundred comments, thousands of views, lots of new followers. If you're here because of that, like welcome. I honestly was not expecting that because if you've been on the gram for a while, you'll know that more nuanced kind of ideas don't tend to have a lot of reach. But I um I I found that very encouraging and I wanted to offer an expansion of this conversation, particularly about leadership in our industry. Like how do we each contribute to the future of coaching? And I wanted to frame this through the lens of leadership. Because I look around the world right now and I see so many examples of quite disappointing, if not dangerous, leadership. We see the corruption and the kind of egoic drivers and that kind of I guess old what I see now is quite old-fashioned command and control style of leadership where everything is simplified into very kind of easy yes or no binaries rather than exploring complexity and nuance. It's quite a narrow view of leadership. And I know for me, kind of coming up in the corporate world, my model of leadership was a white bloke in a suit called Dave, you know, publicly educated but quite mediocre, really not working half as hard often as most of the women around him. And I think this expanded then into something a bit weirder in the coaching world where I would meet leaders who, you know, told us they were full of integrity and values led. And understandably, I think we kind of followed and we put them on a pedestal. And it I think it's quite hard these days to actually see that oh they were just as flawed and human as all of us, like no one has the answers. And so I think we kind of have this quite narrow view of leadership, and for a lot of us, we we tend to reject it because we don't want to be arrogant or guruish or seen as the expert or dominating in any way. But I think that is a form of all or nothing thinking, right? It actually decides that something's quite simple and we just go, oh, it's either really risky or it's unsatisfying. I'm screwed both ways, so I'm out. So I wanted to have a conversation about widening the aperture of how we see leadership. And you know, I I've kind of come to the conclusion in writing this, I've sort of named this for myself in writing this episode, that I think you're a leadership coach no matter who your clients are. Like I think you are a leader, and I want to talk more about how particularly self-employed coaches are absolutely in a leadership role, even though some of us find it quite tricky to claim that. But I think there is some really delicious growth that happens when you embrace your own leadership. And I want to talk about some really practical, small, small risk experiments for how you can start to play with this. So, so let's kind of get into it. I I'm gonna put my stall out there and say I think all coaching is about personal leadership. So for me, no matter who your clients are, we're helping our clients to grow their internal resources that allow them to navigate their lives. So both internal resources and how they think and feel and conceptualize and make meaning, and externally, like just what they say and do, what actions they choose to take. And so many conversations in the coat in our coaching context are asking the client to you know invite them in to grow their awareness of how are you showing up, and let's explore your assumptions around that, let's explore your agency, your actual choices rather than the maybe assumed or perceived choices you have. And that allows a client to see themselves differently, to take new actions and experiment more. So you're in the coach's chair influencing how someone relates to their own life. I think that's a really profound form of leadership. We are literally helping our clients become healthy grounded adults. And look, of course, there are always power dynamics at play in coaching conversations. You know, some clients don't see themselves as leaders and they want us to give them the answer. And in these kinds of uh conversations, there's always a risk that we default to advice giving, right? But I think there's a really clever shift you can make to coaching the person and not the problem, which helps us as the practitioner to kind of stay away from advice giving and focus on capacity building. And I think that can make a huge difference in just the way we relate to clients as leaders, as the leader of their own life, we're building their capacity to navigate what they think and feel, what they say and do. And from a developmental psychology perspective, which is very much underpins my my coaching style and philosophy, what we're actually doing is we're helping our clients take something that they feel subject to and help them to see it as object. Oh my god, is this phrasing like so annoying? I know it really is. Like conceptually, it makes sense, but it's so dry. So, anyway, let me explain what I mean by that. When we are unconsciously inside something, we're subject to it. We don't hold a belief. The belief has us, right? And when we can see, oh, that's something I'm choosing to believe, we can take it out and out of us and see it as an object. It's something that we can choose whether or not we ingest, right? So it's an object that we can poke around and see if we want to change our relationship to it because we can see it more clearly. So this subject-object shift is such a massive part of personal leadership, I think. And it's what happens is a client will come in to a session with a belief like, look, I'm just terrible at delegating, or I'm a procrastinator. If I slow down, everything's gonna fall apart. And the client is sharing what feels like their reality, right? They'll say this as if it's a fact because that's how it feels. These are beliefs they are subject to. They don't hold the belief, the belief has them. And in a coaching conversation, we help them to step outside of that belief and see that it is something they can choose, even if it's something they've been holding for years and years and years. That's people have always said this about me, and they get to decide oh, I can grow out of this. This is something that I can shift, and that's when something moves from subject to object. It's not something that I am, it's something I can choose. We're not telling them what to do, we're helping them to look at their own thinking. So when we talk about coaching the person, not the problem, we're holding that just larger perspective than the client. It's not superior, it's just that we're not inside their assumptions, we're not inside their reality, so we're not as captured by it as they might be. And this makes it so much easier to widen their perspective and reflect on what the client might not be able to see yet. Notice those patterns and make active intentional choices from who they are now. So in this way, we are, and this is just one example, right, of what we do in coaching, but we're helping them to grow their capacity to think about their thinking, right? It's a it's actually about guiding someone across a developmental threshold, and it is so much about personal leadership. So I just wanted to share that example, as that is what I mean by all coaching is leadership, because we are helping our clients to lead their lives in a different way from a wider perspective, from a much more intentional perspective. And you get to do this your way. So I think one of the reasons we resist leadership is because we see it as hierarchical, but that's just one model that you know capitalism bloody loves because it puts someone at the top, usually a white bloke called Dave. But leadership can be a circle, and this is something I've learned from coaching with horses, and I wanted to share a story about how I learned this, but I think it is such a matriarchal style of leadership, right? Where it's a circle, and the most vulnerable are in the center, and that just makes my heart swell when I think about that style of leadership. So let me share a little bit about how I how I learned this and what the circle actually looks like, and how you can maybe see where you like to stand in that circle. So one of the most fun experiences I've had with coaching with horses is where the the horse is sort of the the second coach, it's the massive mirror that reflects back what's happening. And I was working with a team of execs and another coach and a horse, and we just brought them all into the corral and we said to this team, okay, we just want you to move this horse about 20 meters over there and get the horse to walk and stand in that pen, and then you close the gate, and then we know you've completed the exercise. We just want to see how you work as a team, and there's only one rule: you cannot speak to each other or to the horse. And they just lost their shit. It was hilarious. Because, of course, you know, executives are used to often the most extroverted person wins, the person with the highest influence wins, right? That their way goes, and when you can no longer speak, you actually have to lead with your energy, and it's such a beautiful mirror because horses don't actually speak a language, they only really read energy, and they are looking for coherence to feel safe. So when you as a human are with a horse, when what you think and feel and say and do lines up, the horse senses that coherence is safety. And the fastest way to do this is to tell the truth. When you tell the truth, your body shifts, it relaxes, your energy grounds, and the horse feels safe, and it will pretty much do what you would like it to do. And of course, you know, with these execs, they they just didn't know how to lead with their own energy, they didn't really understand that as a concept. And you know, there were comments like this horse is clearly defective, it's not moving, because the horse was looking at them, going, I don't know what the hell you guys will want, but once you figure it out, just let me know. And it kind of walked away from them. And so, what we know about um horses is that there is a kind of circle style of leadership, and you can lead from five different positions. And I just want to sort of share this model with you and see what you what your preference is. Like, do you like to lead from the front, from behind, the side, within, or from the field? Right? So if you're leading from the front, you like to set direction and articulate the vision and kind of help people see where they're going, why it matters. When you're leading from behind, you're supporting others to step forward and quietly encouraging their capacity, their capability without needing to take any kind of center stage. When you lead from the side, you're walking alongside someone as a collaborator, offering perspective and challenge and companionship in that process. When you're leading from within, you're modeling integrity and alignment and allowing your values and trust and presence to sort of influence and shape how other people might be inspired to show up. And when you're leading from the field, you're kind of observing the wider culture or the wider organization of the conversation by sort of naming ideas and patterns and possibilities that can shift how people might think. So there's no um secret squirrel answer here that's the right one, but I think as leaders of businesses, as self-employed coaches, we need to be able to be a bit dynamic with our leadership. And at different times, we need to be able to lead from all five of those different positions. And I think when you're running your own coaching practice, you're leading your client work, your messaging, your offers, and you're you're kind of your own self-generating battery. Like no one's checking on whether or not you've done that thing, right? And so leadership will show up in things like what you stand for and the boundaries you hold with clients and with your business, and how you speak publicly about your ideas, like that is leadership and action, and it requires us to be pretty dynamic, to be able to lead from different positions depending on the activity that we are engaged in. You're leading your practice, you're a leader, and I know we sometimes find this really tricky to claim. And you know, this whole conversation that I'm having with you now was inspired by chatting with a coach I'm working with in Ripen. Um, Jane is deeply experienced in her industry, she's got decades of work in this particular field, and she is a leader, and I imagine considered a leader in that field, and also a coach. And we were talking about leadership as someone who is maybe at the top of an organization in that C-suite role or leading as a CEO, leadership inside institutions, and we were just contrasting that with the kind of leadership that we are called on as self-employed people. And I think that inside an institution, be that an organization or an industry, leadership often means learning how to read culture and unwritten rules and align with the board or you know, other senior leaders, manage stakeholders and politics and operate within policies and strategies and budgets and all of that kind of jazz. And it's about maintaining some stability and protecting the organization's reputation and all of that stuff. You may also be leading people, but you're doing it inside a structure that someone else has built, and that's how leadership is kind of presented to us, right? And actually, when you're self-employed, it's so much more personal. You're leading from your own decisions and standards, your own voice and ideas, your relationship with visibility, your resilience when things feel uncertain, you know, and you're responsible for the direction of your work and the experience your clients have of your business and ultimately the success of your practice, whatever that means to you. So in organizations, we learn to lead within a structure. I think that is in some ways easier than as a self-employed coach when you're learning to be the structure to hold it. So I think if you are a self-employed coach, you're listening to this, you're in a profound leadership role, even if you haven't named it as this. And this work is constantly asking you to grow your capacity for self-trust and decision making and holding complexity, right? And so, look, I highly recommend actually owning that. Yeah, owning that for yourself, like just even practicing saying I'm a leader, I lead this practice. And I wanted to give you some just practical ideas of ways you can start to embrace the leadership and your own leadership. And the sort of three or four ways that I think we can we can do this, and one of course is about leading the coaching container, right? Which is really about sure holding the space but also leading what happens in that space. And that's not to say that you're taking over and dominating, it's that you create a place where there are clear expectations, right? You set agreements with a client, you know what you're responsible for and what they are responsible for. You're willing to, you know, ask, what does this client need from me right now? What growth edge am I helping them to explore? Where might I be colluding with their comfort, right? Rather than their growth. And so I think there's something about, you know, can I lead in a way that serves the client in the best way possible? This the second thing is about leading your ideas. Like, I think we often hide our thinking, but I I think there's something really powerful about sharing. Look, this is what I believe about change, this is what I believe about the work I really care about, this is who I'm here to help. And these ideas become part of your leadership, right? And for a lot of us, we might not really know how we think and feel about different concepts. It's one of the things that we play with in the coaching well in my reflective supervision group. The idea is that we're reflecting on some different concepts and how we relate to them and how that maybe shows up for us. And I think it's so lovely to do that in a group and have the opportunity to sort of share what's come up and take in other people's ideas too. So, you know, if you're interested in learning how to lead your ideas, the coaching well may well be something to have a little look at. And the third area is really about leading yourself, right? When no one is checking, when there are no KPIs, thank goodness, right? But that means you do have to be your own self-generating battery, not just in kind of how much you get done and how productive you are and how you manage your time, but what you do in that time. Noticing your own protective patterns, developing your own internal resources, growing your capacity to hold some complexity, to be with stuff that is maybe disappointing or doesn't quite land as you wish it had, right? That is all about being a leader in your own practice. And you know, I just think this is a quiet form of leadership, right? Usually we don't really have a fancy title, there's not often a corner office or an org chart, often it's just us. And then we get into conversation where we're helping the other person grow, our clients to grow. But if you really look at what's happening in those conversations, we're helping people to examine their assumptions and rethink their choices and step into a version of their life that allows them to grow. That is leadership. And in order to have that person sitting in front of you, right, we need to run our own practice, um, to trust our thinking, to make decisions, to stand behind your work, to advocate on behalf of your future clients and show up, be visible, and to tend to all of those parts of us that feel like, oh, this is really unsafe, this is really edgy. Like often we we need support to do that, of course. But I think a lot of coaches are quietly leading people through these life changing. Conversations and still thinking of themselves as just a coach. When you're really doing leadership work, you might just not have claimed it yet. So I think as coaches, we help our clients to develop their internal authority and resources. And building our coaching practice asks us to develop that internal authority for ourselves. I do think it's almost like a universal law when you sign up for this work. Like we often have to take our own medicine. So look, I hope this has helped you spark a bit of a some thoughts around your own leadership, around where you may be claiming or rejecting the idea that you're a leader. And look, if you want some support to figure this out, whether that's about work with your clients or how to run your practice, get in touch. I'd love to support you.