That’s where David found himself when he came to me.

So when David had his first coaching session with me, he wasn’t failing. He was driven, articulate, and ambitious. But he couldn’t understand why his leadership felt lonely. His team avoided honest conversations. He felt frustrated by their lack of initiative. His manager, seeing both his potential and his struggle, suggested coaching.

And he was critical, pretty unsure of coaching, to be very honest.

So, in our first few sessions, David was firm in his beliefs–structured, logical, focused on performance.

But emotions? Those did not have a seat at his table.

So that’s where we began: with emotional literacy—the skill of naming, understanding, and listening to one’s own inner dialogue. Slowly, David started to see that the conflict he faced with others was really a reflection of the conflict he avoided within himself.

The moment he learned to listen inward, he began to hear outward. He shifted from commanding authority to communicating clarity. From fear-based control to trust-based leadership.

We worked on feedback and then eventually on feedforward: how to speak in ways that opened possibilities instead of closing conversations. Soon, David’s team stopped fearing him. They began respecting him not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Trust me this was no overnight feat. This came after months of back and forth.

But the real transformation didn’t end there. Many many years later, David called me again—this time with a simple request:
“I’d like you to start coaching my son.”

Because the lessons that helped him lead at work had reshaped the way he showed up as a father. He had discovered the essence of true leadership that before you can lead anyone else, you must first lead yourself. And if that isn’t proof how transformational coaching can be, I don’t know what is!

Let this be your first step towards figuring out if coaching is for you.