Coaching Beliefs
The 10 Fundamental Beliefs of Strategic
Coaching: Unlocking Strategic Potential
By Flemming Videriksen and Lina Aldana
The Foundation: Awareness and Responsibility
"The person with the challenge also holds the key to its solution."
This foundational belief must guide every strategic coaching interaction. Strategic coaching ultimately boils down to cultivating awareness and fostering responsibility.
Ten Core Beliefs That Transform Strategic Execution
1. The person with the strategic challenge holds the key to its solution
The strategic coaching leader uncovers untapped resources by helping employees gain deeper self-insight and discover new strategic solutions. This fuels determination and courage to drive results.
Success depends on employees aligning with company strategy and values. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demonstrated this by asking questions that help people connect their work to the bigger strategic picture rather than dictating specific approaches.
2. Have unshakeable confidence in others' potential to execute strategy
We must believe that others possess vast, untapped resources they want to use. People typically have the resources they need to achieve strategic goals!
Your job is to free yourself from perceived constraints in your employees and work from the premise that they have what it takes to achieve strategic goals they consider realistic.
3. Base work on future potential rather than past achievements
We naturally judge others based on past actions. However, as coaches, we cannot let such rigid views limit potential.
Strategic coaching leaders open doors and windows, not block paths to future achievements. In principle, we assume anything is possible until proven otherwise.
4. People who connect their work to strategic purpose produce the best results
When personal interest aligns with strategic purpose, we gain self-driven, motivated employees who enable better strategic execution.
Your questioning ability helps employees find the key that unlocks awareness of what truly drives them—the gateway to strategic success through ownership.
5. Every strategic challenge has multiple solutions
Good strategic coaching operates on the principle that all challenges have more than one solution. As strategic coaching leaders, we offer employees various strategic maps, allowing them to see the range of solutions available.
Strategic coaching leaders view skepticism as a challenge to their reflective abilities and questioning skills that will unlock untapped potential.
6. Transform challenges into desired states
The GROW model reminds us to focus first on Goals (the desired state) before examining Reality, Options, and the Way forward.
Strategic coaching holds to the principle that we must focus on what we want to achieve strategically, not what we want to avoid. As a strategic coach, help employees define specific desired states based on strategic challenges.
7. Every strategic action has a positive intention
Have faith that every action is positively intended, even when the action itself might not be viewed positively by all. As a strategic coach, you look for potential inherent in every situation.
Consider a division leader who must reduce staff by 25%. If the company faces existential pressure, the intention behind the decision is ultimately positive—preserving the organization. People usually make the best possible decisions from the options available to them.
8. Relinquish control to gain broader alignment
In genuine strategic leadership coaching, you neither steer employees toward predetermined directions nor control which routes they choose. You become a process partner, trusting that employees want to achieve strategic goals and can find innovative ways to do so.
Resist the impulse to check whether employees are performing required tasks. Have confidence in your employees' potential and trust they will achieve agreed strategic goals using solutions they discover through your coaching.
9. Trust is essential between employees and leaders
When someone opens up about their strengths, aspirations, and barriers, your duty to that person exceeds normal leadership responsibilities.
As a leader, you function as a process tool facilitating development. You must compartmentalize confidential information shared during coaching, using it only within the appropriate context.
10. Strategic coaching is voluntary and requires positive agreement
To use strategic coaching effectively, establish necessary cultural conditions in the workplace. Hierarchical, top-down organizations provide poor foundations for coaching leadership, whereas learning, values-based organizations welcome this leadership form.
The Strategic Coaching Compass
These interconnected beliefs create the foundation for successful strategy execution through engaged, committed teams. When leaders embrace these beliefs, organizations transform strategy from documents gathering dust to living initiatives that drive meaningful results through human potential.
At Mastercoaching, we help leaders develop strategic coaching capabilities through our tailored programs. Connect with us to learn how strategic coaching can transform your organization's strategy execution.