Deeper listening and presence
Stay with what the person is saying, including uncertainty, emotion and shifts in emphasis, without rushing to a technique.
Leadership Development · Applied Practice
Leader as Coach: Applied Practice
Move beyond the model. Work with the person and situation.
Develop the judgement and conversational skill to stay useful when a coaching conversation becomes less predictable. This practice-heavy program builds deeper listening, tentative pattern recognition, constructive challenge and the ability to change leadership responses as the situation requires.
Entry and readiness
Designed for participants who have completed Foundations or have previous coaching-skills training and familiarity with a basic coaching structure such as GROW.
Short readiness / equivalency check
- What previous coaching-skills development have you completed?
- Can you describe and use a basic coaching structure such as GROW?
- Can you distinguish coaching from advice, direction, support and referral?
- What experience do you have applying coaching conversations at work?
Discuss these points with Thomas to agree whether Applied Practice or Foundations is the appropriate starting point.
Discuss training for your team →Practice beyond the model
Tentative pattern recognition
Ask what the person notices first; seek permission before offering an observation as a possibility, rather than an explanation.
Challenge with curiosity
Test assumptions and broaden perspective while preserving ownership of meaning and action.
Complex accountability conversations
Work with support, expectations and responsibility together; recognise when coaching needs to become managing or another response.
Intensive coached practice
Use workplace scenarios, observation and feedback to examine what the leader actually does in the conversation.
Reflection and workplace application
Identify one behaviour to test, review what happened and adjust the next conversation.
Capability outcomes
- Respond to the person and situation
Use a coaching structure without making the model the focus of the conversation.
- Explore and challenge collaboratively
Notice patterns tentatively, listen more deeply and invite broader thinking.
- Adapt the leadership response
Maintain appropriate boundaries and accountability while testing new conversational behaviours.
Program arrangements
Delivery format, duration and investment are agreed after discussing participant experience, cohort size and development priorities.
The focus is coaching capability within leadership, not professional-coach accreditation or therapy training.
Advanced electives: choose a lens
CBC-Informed Coaching
Explore what maintains a thinking and behaviour pattern, then test a more workable response.
Explore CBC-Informed Coaching →ACT-Informed Coaching
Build psychological flexibility and values-guided action when internal experience gets in the way.
Explore ACT-Informed Coaching →These are alternative advanced lenses. Neither is a prerequisite for the other.
Deepen coaching practice in the situations leaders actually face.
Discuss your organisation’s priorities, current capability and the appropriate next step.