The Shift Nobody Tells You About

THE COACHING EDGE: A LEADING WITH IMPACT SERIES  ·  PART 1 OF 5 From managing for compliance to leading for growth

At some point leadership stops being about what you can do — and starts being about what you can unlock in others.

I walked into one of the largest YMCAs in St. Louis with something to prove and not nearly enough confidence to prove it.

I’d spent years building community-based programs outside the walls of a facility — engaging neighborhoods, developing partnerships, running initiatives that worked. I was good at it. But I wanted to round out my leadership portfolio, to position myself for what came next. So I took the Associate Executive Director role.

What I didn’t fully appreciate was what I was walking into.

Two longtime staff members had applied for my job. Neither got it. And the team around me had years — in some cases decades — of institutional knowledge I didn’t have. Every question they brought me felt like a test I hadn’t studied for. I second-guessed myself constantly. I deferred upward on decisions I should have been making myself. I kept going back to my boss for answers I was actually capable of finding on my own.

He was patient. More patient than I probably deserved.

Then one day he said something I’ve never forgotten:

“You need to stop coming to me with your staff’s questions. Trust yourself.”

That was it. No lengthy debrief. No performance review language. Just a direct, quiet act of belief in my capacity — before I fully believed in it myself.

It changed everything.

Not because he gave me the answer. Because he refused to. He understood that what I needed wasn’t information — it was permission to lead. And by withholding the former, he gave me the latter.

He never expected perfection. He wanted me to find my voice and use it.

———

That moment was my first real experience of what it means to lead as a coach.

He wasn’t managing me for compliance. He wasn’t solving my problems or protecting me from the discomfort of uncertainty. He was doing something harder and more valuable: he was developing me. He saw potential I couldn’t yet see in myself and created the conditions for it to emerge.

That’s the shift most leaders are never explicitly taught.

We get promoted because we’re excellent at the work. We know the programs, the systems, the answers. We’re fast, capable, and reliable. And then we step into a leadership role — and suddenly the job isn’t to have the answers anymore. It’s to develop the people around us into leaders who can find their own.

That transition doesn’t happen automatically. For most of us, it requires someone who models it first.

My boss in St. Louis didn’t give me a framework. He gave me an experience. He showed me what it felt like to be led by someone who trusted your potential more than your performance — and that experience became the foundation of how I lead and coach today.

———

Here’s what I’ve learned after 38 years of leading and coaching in organizations:

The leaders who make the greatest impact aren’t the ones who have all the answers. They’re the ones who ask the questions that help others find theirs.

Managing gets things done. Leading develops the people who do them.

And coaching — real coaching, the kind that trusts potential before it’s proven — is the bridge between the two.

That’s what this series is about. Not coaching as a technique. Coaching as a leadership identity. The shift from directing to developing. From solving to unlocking. From being the most capable person in the room to becoming the person who makes everyone in the room more capable.

It’s a harder job than it sounds. And it’s the most important one you’ll ever do.

What moment in your own leadership journey required you to let go of having the answers? Share it in the comments — I’d genuinely like to know.

Jim Pacey runs Pacey Consulting & Coaching, specializing in emotional intelligence-based leadership development and executive coaching. With 38+ years of nonprofit C-suite leadership experience, Jim understands leadership because he’s lived it — including the hard transitions. Learn more at paceyconsulting.com.