Coaching Organization: Leadership-coaching approach

What separates organizations that consistently grow from those that struggle with turnover, burnout, and disengaged teams?

In this episode of the APEX Performance Podcast, Dr. Anthony Simmons explains why leadership coaching is no longer optional. It's the defining characteristic of organizations that develop future leaders, build trust, and create cultures where people perform at their highest level.

Drawing on more than three decades of leadership experience as a U.S. Navy commanding officer, executive coach, and scholar practitioner, Dr. Simmons shares how coaching differs from managing, mentoring, and directing. He reveals why today's leaders must connect before they lead, create environments built on trust, encourage continuous feedback, and empower others to grow through experience rather than control.

Through compelling stories from his naval command, Dr. Simmons demonstrates how allowing people to make mistakes, fostering psychological safety, and developing leadership at every level creates resilient, high-performing teams prepared to thrive in times of uncertainty and change. He also introduces practical coaching frameworks that help leaders improve communication, strengthen succession planning, reduce burnout, and build organizations where leadership becomes everyone's responsibility.

Whether you're leading a business, a military unit, a nonprofit, or a growing team, this episode provides practical strategies to help you become the kind of leader who develops people, strengthens culture, and creates lasting organizational excellence.

Because great leaders don't create followers.

They coach others to become leaders.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Do you ever feel like you're doing all the right things, but success still doesn't last? If you're struggling with trust, strange relationships, or performance that feels harder than it should, then this podcast is for you. Here's your host, executive leader, and scholar practitioner, Dr. Anthony Simmons.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hey greetings, everyone. I am Dr. Anthony Simmons, and I'm so honored and excited to welcome you to another episode of Apex Performance Podcast, where all pathways are cemented in authentic relationships through a common act. We must appreciate, communicate, and always demonstrate trust. Now, while I continue to offer accelerated pathways to excellence, today's episode will highlight the advantages of a coaching organization as presented in my book, Championing Organization Wellness. Leadership coaching is the new norm. It's the leadership approach that I have employed since day one as a young naval officer. Now, previous episodes have discussed the fundamentals of leadership and how to connect people within organizations. This episode will expand on how these practical tools are magnified through a leadership coaching approach. Different from mentoring, counseling, and leading, coaching is a broad, enduring, co-creative engagement. And coaching yields a progressive approach between the leader and the aspiring leader. Essentially, as it pertains to different personal leadership attributes and fundamentals, this discussion will provide the framework and the formulas to cultivate a leadership coaching platform to achieve organizational excellence. I always feel that a coaching organization connects people from all backgrounds and fragmented social locations. It enacts or pretty much operationalizes the leadership concepts and qualities that I have introduced in previous episodes. It reinforces people's skills. So we have to ask why is coaching so imperative? I would say in today's landscape, people value connection over competency. Therefore, according to Harvard's Bennett Review, it is important that we connect being lead. Leadership coaches, they know their people and they facilitate their successes. They have that empathy gene that's in their DNA. They create an environment that affords growth and advancement. They are not afraid to be seceded as they prepare their understudies to ascend to the next tier up the ladder. Considering that we're in an environment where multiple generations are occupying the workforce, we must have leaders who are flexible and capable of fostering relationships of co-equals. They must be able to co-locate by asking for feedback. Now, this requires leaders to be comfortable sharing the stage. So coaching organizations afford these practical applications of information in order to restore organizational relationships to facilitate team-oriented, the sum of the whole approach to problem solving. In addition to professional development and skill creation, coaching organizations they count on transparency for purposefulness and alignment, which is the key to reducing the high turnover that we're experiencing in today's environment. Also, it improves engagement across organizations. So in applied psychology, Gaddison Foster suggests that intra capabilities like trustworthiness, positive attitude, and dependability must be established before working with business's own skills and related team building attributes. This is the broad perspective to leadership in today's environment. Now, pertaining to leadership, there's a famous quote that I took from General Mattis. He says, regardless of rank or occupation, I believe that all leaders should be coaches at heart. Now, speaking of coaching, I always have fancy myself as a coaching style leader. Coaches are born to develop leaders, Anthony Simmons. And today's we find that many people are talking about coaching and studying different models. I like to feel that I have walked the coaching walk and have done so since the end of the 20th century as a junior naval officer. My leadership and command philosophy has captured this model since I first took the Reims as an engineer officer in the USS Cairn in October 1997, which extends almost three decades. And also when I commend the USS James E. Williams, the USS Lyson, and the hurricane, my command philosophy reads, My leadership philosophy is based on a coaching style. It's important that you communicate your concerns and ideas to me as well as others in your chain of command. I expect everyone to have the opportunity to grow personally and professionally. You should reach out to your shipmates up, down, and across the chain of command. Make each day a success by envisioning, persevering, and making a total commitment to excellence. Captain Simmons. Coaching is my 80 guy. I was born to serve people through this concept of coaching. I have always modeled a people-first ethos. Now I am simply sharing over 30 years of experience and key lessons to help inform the current leaders because in today's landscape, coaching approach is no longer a choice. It's a leadership imperative. And I have these three dimensions of engagement that I always like to leverage, which is my empathy, DNA, my executive experience, and also being a scholar practitioner that allows me to naturally connect with others to identify and bridge leadership gaps. And also I perform leadership development across 65 countries and afforded me a real-world opportunity to connect leaders and aspiring leaders to optimize organizations' performance. I like to think coaching is a journey where the objective is a continuous journey of growth. Now, leadership coaching, I feel is transforming aspiring leaders into a higher order of being. Otherwise, you are just pretty much managing or overseeing someone at the status quo, Anthony Simmons. I define coaching as the integrative leadership and also as an engagement continuum where you go from directing all the way to supporting and end up in a process where you're actually able to delegate. It's an enduring relationship. Now, in Physicians Executive Journal article on a subject called coaching as a leadership style, Hicks and McCracken, they recognize coaching as a collaborative process to altered perceptions. Now, the International Coaching Federation defines coaching as a thought-provoking form with clients. The bottom line: all of these definitions point to how do we draw out someone's introspective. The key is to make a difference in any capacity and extract that untapped greatness. In practice, coaching allows flexibility for a cause that transcends oneself. This capacity hinges on a coaching conversation that draws out perspective so aspiring leaders can see their way forward through what we call a powerful discussion, which consists of four phases, which is asking powerful questions, engaging in active listening, which I like to call to intuitive listening, where we listen to understand advice to respond. And also that's a call to action that we allow the coach E to develop. And also we support this process while suspending judgment. It facilitates self-reflection by demonstrating care and where we're able to feel the pulse of the coach E. Now, it's four cultures that Cameron and Quinn define within an organization. They are hierarchy, market, adhocracy, and a clan culture. And I like to look at the Klan culture where I feel it's the best culture to facilitate a coaching organization because it enables universal development and also it promotes teamwork and mutual success where people can be purposeful and encouraged to take initiatives. As I referenced in my episode 10, coaching organizations employ strategic design and acting in the same plane, the same place and the same time. It empowers others and enables them to act by fostering an environment where people feel valued and encouraged to achieve. As I stated earlier, we must connect and then lead. And this connection hinges on an authentic relationship. Relationships are built through a culture and conversation. And according to Lords and Swartz and they work powerful engagement, relationships are considered one of the most powerful sources of emotional renewal. We must nurture relationships as it is a key attribute to successful leaders. Even Dennis Donovan goes on to say that, you know, better relationships with those who may even have unfair biases about them is critical in any organization as relationships underscore trust and transparency. You know, they foster an objective environment that enables discipline and also allows a proactive discourse for problem solving. So so much leadership development focuses on strategy, execution, and performance, I think which is all important, but it's far fewer spaces, you know, where people are helping to explore who they are becoming while carrying out the responsibilities for others. So we must focus on those who enable strategy as well as it's critical in a coaching structure to underscore this process of building those people to enable this strategy. So when you go into these coaching environments, oftentimes the leaders there, the CEOs, for instance, you know, are not as engaged as I feel they need to be in order to advocate for this coaching culture. So you have to have them involved in order to get the other stakeholders on the same page, really the key stakeholders on the same page, which creates a culture where culture is factored into the daily decisions and long-term development. As we talked about burnout in some episodes, I like to look at, we look at some of the hidden factors that prevent, you know, performing teams from sustaining high performance over time. It's not developing new leaders having a succession in place. So that's why I feel a coaching organization is always in order. And my expertise, you know, as a coaching type leader has served to help me improve organizational capacity. We know that's capability, but I like to have capacity, which is a broader bandwidth. And I get this through skill development, through our versatile members, and through having what I employ in Champion Organizational Wellness, my Core Flex that enables me to do dynamic training by moving members or employees in case of the Navy, moving sailors and officers to different positions in order to speed up their training and professional development process. And this CoreFlex strategy, coupled with my strategic human resource design where I have learning needs assessments, and I do intermediate, more active performance reviews. You know, this angle plan is pretty much outdated today. We must have to be more in line with the dynamic environments by providing more feedback, a performance review. And this enables what I call an automatic leadership and employee succession plan. And coaching organizations enables the organizational success, and also it's as a multiplier for the secession plan, according to Hunt's and Wineprof. Now, this is the fun part. Let's get into some storytelling in order to bring this whole coaching organization concept full circle. I always considered my leadership as a commanding officer as a situational model, where each tour I felt I went through a continuum with the crew where we asked, what is leadership? Is it directing or is it supporting, coaching, or delegating? I always felt you go across the whole space there. You know, it's you have to scale that continuum. And so I said, when I come into the job, initially I'm gonna do more directing, but if I'm doing it right and empowering people, then I'm gonna go more into where I become coaching, whereas two-way conversation. And then I do more supporting, you know, those leaders, aspiring leaders in those positions. And then in the ideal world, I end up with a platform where I'm actually doing delegation, which is ideal. That's where we want to be as we're leaders. That's when you know your methodologies are actually working. So I always like to think that coaching always uprights leadership no matter what environment you're in. And this whole continuum is about knowing the location of your people, where they are, when you apply that model in order to oversee their development. As delegation is a force multiplier, it suppresses burnout. And you have to frame all these locations from all perspectives, whether it's socio,economical, gender, or race, or so forth. That's just, once again, it's a matter of connecting with people so you can lead them. So I talked about one of the most famous comments I recall from Vice Admiral Moore when I went through department high school in 1997, he said, always allow your sailors to make mistakes. So I look in these coaching organizations today. I see where a lot of coaches are not really, really adhering to some of the underpinning. They're not really allowing the people to make mistakes, which is really, really critical because if you don't allow people to make mistakes, sometimes you don't extract greatness from them. I was listening to the University of South Carolina renowned basketball coach Don Staley. She credits her keys to her success as a college basketball player, was having a coach that allowed her to make mistakes, you know, as a point guard. And as well, I will listen to the Connecticut coach Gino Ariema. He was talking about when Paige Becker on the date she was drafted by the Dallas Wings, and he said they would have to allow her some space to make mistakes that they want to get the best, you know, from her. So I thought those were awesome examples. And my example is I had an instant Breshaw once upon a time that he had worked with me when I was in command of the Lasson. And he wrote me a personal letter and it called his defining moment. And I read through that letter now, I just keep it filed away. And what instant Breshaw communicated to me was he had taken over the deck of the ship. I mean the deck. He became the deck officer and was preparing for a close maneuver event, which you call underwear replenishment. And we have to do steering checks to make sure the ship is properly prepared, you know, for close engagements or encounters. And he realized that he didn't go through the right process. And he also recalled that he at once, you know, he's been scolded by me for not, you know, reporting when he didn't take corrective measures or proper measures. And he said initially he wanted to defer to the quartermaster of the watch, but he just recalled that I'd always told him the most important thing for me is to report any fault and take responsibilities for actions, and that would be fine, you know, by my philosophy. So he said he wanted to take me up on this, and so he decided, let me call the captain, and he did. And when he called me and, you know, was open about accepting responsibilities, and he said my response was very calm and simple to him. He said, Okay, Mr. Bradshaw, just don't allow it to happen again. And he said that response was a game changer in his life and how he saw how important it was to really take on responsibilities. And I was one of the first leaders that he felt that ever really complied with that philosophy that once you report, you know, wrongdoings or faults, then there shouldn't be any harm or no foul. So, because of that, he submitted to me that he became a better person. He always wanted to thank me for that guidance and he would always take that into account throughout his life. So stories like that, which I really hold close and dear, you know, to my heart. And it's sort of something better than when you realize you haven't really walked the walk there. So we have to get away from these, you know, adverse risk cultures of today where people are afraid to make mistakes because it just allows people range to become more tighter in tough situations. But this starts with the leaders. They must exude the adequate confidence, you know, sufficient confidence to allow risk. And also leadership coaches must be coached, you know. Coaches, they welcome feedback as a strength. And this is leading through others via feedback. As I mentioned earlier, my commanding officer suggestion box, you know, some capitalist like to filter the feedback. No, I want open feedback, open flow from my suggestion box because I want to know what all the sailors are thinking so I can understand how to correct my course in many occasions. So leadership coaches, they are high-minded and they thrive on self-improvement, and they are coached by their coaches. They are always eager to get better emotionally, socially, and intellectually. So connecting through endless coaching as it always is appropriate, no matter when the timing is, because coaching is also leadership by walking around. That's another method I use, as I had mentioned in other episodes where I would walk around the ship and talk to the sailors. I felt that was an honor to have that privilege. So I thought the collaboration was very enriching it, and it was really critical to my growth and development, you know, the and also that of the sellers and the officers for which I encountered. And so to that end, I talk about visiting that engine room at, you know, 2 a.m. in the morning to just talk with sailors, you know, that we call the holes. I thought it was one of the keys to a lasting organizational success. And let's go into selling the process. You know, a lot of people talk about Coach Nick Saban as he oftentimes speaks about trusting the process. But I like to take that to a high order. It's not necessarily so much trusting the process. The honest is on a leadership coach to sell the process. They must convince the players that, you know, enduring those challenges and risks have benefits that exceed the coach himself. And also we must understand the bigger the reward, sometimes the higher the risk. So, what does that mean when I say the higher the risk? That means as a senior officer, we have to learn how to manage that risk. As I became more and more senior, I start to realize more that my charge as a senior leader was I get paid to manage risk and also to coach aspiring leaders, you know, through those associated challenges, which ultimately yields I into the process. And we have to lastly look at people over systems. I recall I had two officers that came into the ship. One was signed as a training officer, and the other one was a fire control officer. But the makeup of the ship's crew, I had more talent, you know, in the fire control organization than I had in the training organization. So my fire control officer was more game ready, I would say, than my training officer. So I had to rearrange those officers to where I reassigned the training officer into the fire control division so he had more support to help his development. And I took the fire control officer and made him the training officer, which was more taxing and had less room for development. So once again, team building is all about what I talked earlier about integrating and evolving, where you got to oscillate sometimes, you know, you got to realign members, you know, in order to fit the team requirements. So leadership coaches don't limit talent by plugging it into fixed spaces. They flex the system to enable the requisite growth and evolution. So, after talking about the coaching organization and my experiences, what does the future really hold? Coaching is a gift. When I'm out, I say hello, and people share their life stories almost immediately. And this is a quote from Dr. Diane Wider. She's a CEO and founder of Wider Consulting Group, and she was also my advisor for my senior project or my thesis when I earned my doctoral degree. According to McLean Institute of Coaching, 70% of improved work performance, enhanced relationships, and calm skills as a result of coaching. And also, coaching is responsible for 80% of increase in self-confidence, and it gives organizations 86% return on their investments. It's not a belief that everyone has championship in them, but they just struggle to find that vein to extract the fight inside of them. It must be coached out. Organizations must be adept at dynamically developing new leaders due to the cuts and belt tightening times that we're in today. Leadership in depth through training, the next leader is imperative. If the military has routine turnovers and they have more flexibility to build organic succession plans. But organizations in the midst of experiencing downsizing, they lack that space of flexibility to replace people to move to new roles. So they must employ what I call my team and team concepts, where we have 20% making 80% better in order to create this autonomy and increase team decision filters. Coaching is innovative, it supports what I like to call now the Klan advocacy, a blended culture to support dynamic change and leadership development during the times of uncertainty. So leadership coaching is enduring, it's a marathon of sprints. It's all about repetitions and sets. So you must pace and acclimate yourself to master this space. Sixth year enables you to do well in that space. Coaching skills must be practiced daily, almost like reading scripture. Leadership coaches don't wear titles, they elevate others. When guided by self-awareness, empty inspiration results bring out empowered, capable, and resilient teams. Coaching organizations build decisive leaders with the edge to make those decisions with 80% of the information at hand. They are good doing hard times, they are timely and also they are built with toughness. Coaches don't have titles again, they have effects. I always implored my aspiring leaders to follow me and not my position. I always would ask my understudies if I turn my color devices inside out, would I have the same influence? As I will discuss in my next episode, let's talk. Town hall settings and relationships of co-ecos will be the new norm. So please subscribe to Apex Performance Podcast and enjoy game changing pathways to excellence right there at your fingertips. Thanks for listening. I look forward to seeing you next time.

unknown 24:53

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

So that's it for today's episode of Apex Performance. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts will win a chance to win a grand prize drawing worth $5,000 for a private VIP day with Dr. Simmons himself. Be sure to visit ApexPerformance Podcast.com to pick up a free copy of your gift. And ask your questions for Dr. Simmons in your own voice, and he'll answer you back privately in his. Then join us on the next episode.