A client told me something recently that I haven’t stopped thinking about. We were talking about what coaching has done for him over time, and he shared an analogy that captured it better than anything I could have written myself.
He compared having an executive coach to teaching someone to ride a bike.
At first, I held the handlebars and ran alongside him while he found his balance. And I was right there if he wobbled. He emphasized that once he started pedaling on his own, I didn’t turn around, walk inside, and shut the door behind him. As his coach/mentor, I sat down on the front steps and watched him circle the block. And when he started to drift, I called out to him: “try leaning right next time” before he hit the curb.
That’s what great leadership coaching does for people. Not doing the riding for them. Not disappearing the moment they can balance. Staying close enough, for long enough, to help them course-correct when it counts.
Why The Steps Matter As Much As The Handlebars
It’s easy to picture the early part of coaching: the hands-on stretch where someone learns something new about how they lead, communicate, or manage their own energy. That part gets attention because it’s visible and immediate.
The part that actually determines whether the change sticks is quieter. It’s the weeks after, when the person is back in the middle of a stressful week and has to decide, in real time, whether to react the old way or the new way. Nobody makes that decision correctly every time on their own, especially not right after learning it. That’s the point where staying on the steps matters more than anything that happened at the handlebars.
My client put it this way: the goal was never to have one good day. It was to turn that good day into a good week, then a good month, and eventually realize a year had gone by, and the new way of operating was just how he worked now. That’s consistency, not a burst of motivation. And consistency is nearly impossible to build alone, especially when the old habits are the ones your nervous system defaults to under pressure.
What Leadership Coaching Looks Like in Practice
For this client, the shift showed up in a very specific way. He used to spend real energy on things outside his control: what a coworker was doing, why someone stayed late, whether people were talking about him. None of that was work. It was rumination wearing a work costume.
Coaching didn’t tell him to stop caring. Instead, it gave him a different question to ask: does this actually require my involvement? If the answer was yes, the move was simple. Raise the concern, document it, and move on. If the answer was no, the move was to let it go, on purpose, instead of carrying it around all day.
That one shift, reinforced consistently over months, was enough for his leadership to notice a real change in how he showed up. It landed him an exceptional performance review. Not because he suddenly worked harder, but because he stopped leaking energy into places that weren’t his job.
The Real Goal of Leadership Coaching: Lasting Change
Leadership coaching isn’t a single conversation that fixes something. It’s someone sitting on the steps long enough to watch you circle the block, notice the wobble before you do, and say the one thing that keeps you upright. That kind of presence turns insight into lasting change in how someone operates.
Ready to help your leaders find their balance? Let’s talk about leadership coaching for your team. Message me at gina@ginatrimarco.com.
