The journey of an ordinary leader who overcame the pressure to do things ‘the right way’ and carved an unlikely path to success.

How does a shy, precocious, introvert end up building a national consulting firm from nothing?  The journey of Advantage Management Consulting starts with Gil Davidson but gathers momentum as other amazing people join along the way.  Most are still with us; some have left to live their extraordinariness elsewhere and we thank them for their part in the journey.   

It’s tempting to read about others success in an effort to duplicate it – a strategy that seldom works because our paths are as unique as we are.  When my Head of Marketing asked me to write this blog my first thought was that no-one would be interested in the story.  I am excited about our milestone, but why would others be interested… then, the more we talked about it, the more excited I became to share my journey – Advantage Management Consulting’s journey. A journey of an ordinary leader who overcame the pressure to do things ‘the right way’ and carved an unlikely path to success. A journey guided by values-based decisions with all the costs, soul-searching, joy, struggles, tenacity, learning, growth and deep gladness that accompanied them. 

My journey is a non-traditional narrative, one that refuses to be defined by expectations by ‘shoulds’ and ‘can’ts’ and my hope is that it frees you from any of your limiting narratives so that you can craft your journey to success – complete with its costs, joys, struggles and successes.  So, if you choose to read further, do so to discover your own journey rather than to duplicate mine. 

Despite knowing better, we often imagine a linear path to business success. If you take away one thing from this blog, I hope it is a new permission to follow whatever non-linear path your success is calling you down. 

A consulting business needs to be in a big city where you have an extensive network.

Assumption 1

A consulting business needs to be in a big city where you have an extensive network.  That would be the logical way to do things, and it certainly would’ve made things easier, but it didn’t fit with the broader context of our life, so I chose a different path. I started my business by moving to a town where I knew no one at all (I.e, I had no network to draw on), and where less than 2% of the businesses are large enough to fit our “ideal client”. Not to mention, I was pregnant, with two toddlers in tow.  This was also my first time leaving the corporate world to strike out on my own in the field of Coaching – which, 20 years ago, was an unknown entity that few leaders understood or could rationally justify investing in. Fortunately, there were enough early adopters to tide me over the lean start-up years while I figured out how things worked outside the safety of a large corporate structure.  As our reputation grew so did our clarity that we’re not in the ‘coaching business’, but rather in the business of ‘equipping leaders and teams’.   

I never wanted to be a ‘kept woman’. Yet, as a mother in my early-30’s starting a business with a clear boundary around being a ‘full-time Mom and part-time business owner’, I had to admit that I was, in fact, such.  My income did not even come close to adding significant value to our bottom line.  My work was, however, of high quality, and added real value for my clients, while also giving me the stimulation and purpose outside the home that I sorely needed. In short, it was highly valuable to me and to the people I served, it just didn’t fit my idealistic view of what a successful trajectory as a young adult should look like.  

Although I was confident that I was making the right values-based choices, I struggled to accept the very real identity cost of those choices. Acknowledging they were my choices to make and continuing to actively pursue them – despite the cost – made it easier and I eventually made my peace with it – but this was a journey all of its own.   

Looking back, I see how fortunate I was to have the luxury of a slow start to my business.  It allowed me lots of focused, energised time with my kids while also providing a leisurely space to gain clarity on the clients, services and structure of the business that is now reaching exponential growth.  We recently became empty-nesters freeing me up to nurture this next stage of the business and transition into being a full-time business owner more smoothly – thanks in large part to the unusual path I took.   

I am grateful for the gift of growth from this struggle, both for myself and, ultimately, for my business. 

There is only one way to be an entrepeneur.

Assumption 2

I’m not an entrepreneur. In my family my brothers were the ones ‘made of entrepreneurial stuff’.  Their entrepreneurial spirit earned them all the attention and grooming from the business relatives and friends. I envied them and their ability to ‘fake it till you make it’ – I just wasn’t wired that way.   

During the ‘slow start’ of the first 10 years of my business I periodically contemplated returning to the corporate world I so loved, questioning if I was cut out for this or if I was trying to be something I’m not.  Three things kept me at it:  

First, I didn’t want to give up the flexibility I allowed myself. I couldn’t see myself finding a corporate job that would allow me to work at the same level I was and still have time for the things I valued, like going on family adventures. 

Secondly, I was beginning to realize that while I may not have the same entrepreneurial wiring as my brothers, it is precisely my wiring that makes me good at what I do. My approach enables me to build long-term, external strategic partnerships with organizations to create lasting impact for the leaders and teams in those organizations.  I came to understand that entrepreneurship has many forms and I was my own version of an entrepreneur.  

Thirdly, Christine Bonney (then a member of our team) was coaching me through an existential crisis one day and reflected to me that “I know many successful business owners and none of them have anything that you don’t” – it was a turning point and the final strand in the logic I needed to believe and commit to building a business beyond myself – in short, I realized I wanted to and could scale the business.   

The next logical step would be to dig down deep and focus on scaling – right?  Once more, it didn’t quite fit with our broader circumstance or stage of life, so instead we chose something different. 

If I am not constantly working myself to the bone

I won’t make it.

Assumption 3

If I take 9 months off my business will die.  Our family has a high value around adventure and exploration.  In 2013-14, we decided to enroll our three kids (then ages 14, 12 and 9) in online schooling and drag them around Europe and South Africa for nine months.  Again, it was a decision based on deeply held values and priorities and I had to own that a potential cost might be the death of my business.  I decided it was worth the risk, and that I was going to mitigate that risk as much as possible.  One of my team members stepped forward to be the face of the company while I was away, and I made a point of introducing her to all our key stakeholders as such.  A month into our trip, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to step away – the business was left without a caretaker. 

The business didn’t die in those nine months; rather, it went on life support. Upon my return it took 6 months to revive. More importantly, it solidified for me that, as soon as the kids were old enough, I wanted to start the process of scaling the business. 

Scaling should always be the focus.

Assumption 4

Scaling is a natural next step. That may be true sometimes, but it isn’t a step one should take without being sure.  The timing and the energy to scale was finally right and in 2015 I threw myself into it.  I was again in unknown territory, and it took 3 years before it finally made any difference to the bottom line.  I had set myself an aggressive financial target to reach by December 2017, otherwise I would regroup and do something different.  By the summer of 2016 when it felt like we were making no progress and I was about to admit defeat. My husband urged me, ‘don’t you dare give up while you’re down’.  By the end of that year the new trajectory had declared itself and, with the exception of the Covid blip of 2020, we’ve stayed above my 2017 target and will have quadrupled it by the end of 2022! 

Scaling is multi-faceted and demanding – it forces us to stray from our area of expertise and requires that we pay equal attention to People, Products/Services and Systems all at the same time.  Although our numbers have been exciting it feels like I’ve been swimming in the deep sea, sometimes in rough waters, without many islands to rest on since the needed focus-shift to include building systems occurred in 2018.  That is the year I finally decided we needed systems and invested in both paying people to help develop the back-end as well as in an office-automation system – none of it very sexy, all of it essential and life-saving (after the life-sapping development stage)! 

I was keenly aware that to build a business that is ‘bigger than me’, I’d better get out of the way.  Sounds simple, but it takes ongoing conscious choices to let others decide the details – details that for years you’ve meticulously held, nurtured and looked after.   

I have a strict policy of only recruiting (or, as I prefer to say, inviting) people I am excited to work with to join our team.  People with courage, compassion and a deep understanding of context. People who are skilled and certified and are compelled by the value of service and impact. People who are exciting to be around.  If you’re going to recruit such people, you’d better make sure that you give them the room to influence how things are done.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning to get out of the way and seeing our business grow as a direct result of some uncomfortable conversations that have increased engagement and fostered a sense of shared creativity amongst us all. 

Leaders aren’t allowed to screw up.

Assumption 5

We model what we teach.  And that includes our flawed humanity.  As a leader I’ve worked hard at building a fantastic team with a healthy, innovative, productive culture.  These are all people I deeply respect, despite times where trust felt thin, or expectations differed enough to threaten relationship.  Each time I was tempted to follow the ‘easy’ path of avoidance, I reminded myself that leadership is not for the faint hearted, that courageous leadership is good leadership.  No team or leader is perfect, and each time we’ve created space for that while still upholding our shared core values. Because of this, we’ve emerged as a stronger team, better equipped to serve our clients.  

We’re a leadership and team development company.  We recruit leaders who are committed to life-long learning, excellence and a heart of servant leadership.  We believe at our very core that how you show up provides as much, if not more learning for our clients than any leadership and team principles we may share. 

When circumstances are chaotic, it is easy to justify ‘lowering our standard’. Because of all the growth and structure-building, I have an endless to-do list to complete which can result in trying to take on too much, leaving me failing those I’m committed to serving. 

I recently found that simply asking “How am I honouring my team and my clients?”, “How am I honouring those I’ve pledged to serve?”, cuts through the excuses and creates the energy and clarity I need to live in integrity.  I think it is largely this company-wide commitment to integrity that has set us apart.

Given the tragically high numbers of 82% – 95% of coaching businesses that fail within the first 2 years, I am particularly proud to be marking 20 years in business, marked by exponential, national growth in the last 5 years. I am grateful for our team that has kept us out of that statistic and on a clear trajectory towards becoming a nationally recognised brand. 

With such a strong team I have been taking a step back from being the face of the company. Advantage Management Consulting has grown into an entity that is beyond me and bigger than any one of its members. We now have regional VPs for the East and West Coast as you will hear more about in the coming weeks.

Thanks to our wonderful team for spreading life-giving leadership wherever you go, you are Advantage Management Consulting

Our current team in chronological order:

  1. Anita (Kelowna, BC)
  2. Bruce (Toronto, ON)
  3. Maja (Kelowna, BC)
  4. Amanda (Calgary, AB)
  5. Sarah (Vernon, BC)
  6. Doug(Port Coquiltam, BC)
  7. Toni (Vancouver, BC)
  8. Hellen(Vancouver, BC)
  9. Sunmbo (Calgary, AB)
  10. Philippe (Montreal, QC,; COO – Partner – Regional VP Eastern Canada
  11. and coming soon Arlene (Mill River, PEI – Regional VP Atlantic Canada) 
Meet The Team

1. It Drives Innovation  

Keen learners, those who cultivate a growth mindset within themselves and their broader organizations, are more likely to be early adopters of new technologies, strategies and stay ahead of the curve.

People who expect to learn things that require change and entertain new ideas drive innovation.

The habit of challenging assumptions and thinking critically emerges from this ongoing learning and growth mindset, which are necessary skills in future-proofing any organization. Not only by virtue of these behavioural shifts, but also the kinds of people that these behaviours attract.

One of the hardest parts of innovation is embracing failure as an unavoidable part of learning. In order to successfully implement a culture of innovation there needs to be a culture where failure is an accepted part of the process.  Fear of making mistakes is the number one killer of learning and innovation.

 As leaders, it is your role to model how to fail successfully – taking the lesson and leaving the rest.

Leaders cultivate this capacity by regularly putting themselves in learning positions where they aren’t the expert, where they’re outside their comfort zone and where they have to admit that they don’t have all the answers.

2. It Strengthens your Team  

When leaders value their own learning they are more likely to see the value in it for the rest of their team. Modelling a value around constant learning and growth permeates the work culture, eventually effecting priority shifts in spending and time investments in courses, coaching and other forms of learning for your team which have been proven to increase talent retention.

According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report, a whopping 93% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers.

Teams that grow together stay together.

Providing opportunities and support for teams to access learning, growth and development in various areas of their role will see retention rates improve, building a stronger company. This is particularly with Millennials, although it applies to those of all ages who value learning.

Building a reputation as an organization that values learning is more important than ever in the midst of the great resignation where holding onto talent is increasingly challenging.

When hiring cutting-edge people, movers and shakers, those driving innovation – they come with a hunger for learning.

Providing an environment that fuels their fire and logistically supports their need for learning is a sure way to attract and retain talent. See this Forbes article for more data supporting how investing in the learning and growth of your team increases the retention of top talent.

3. It Increase Resilience  

Research has shown that people who are constantly learning and stretching themselves are more resilient when responding to change, resolving problems, giving and receiving feedback and staying calm in the face of crisis.

Those who are in the habit of learning and growing may view a change in the industry more like the next challenge or puzzle to figure out rather than the rug being pulled out from under them. 

Adaptability is an increasingly coveted skill in today’s world and developing a pattern of learning inevitably leads to increased adaptability.

View our Leadership Coaching Offering

How to Implement the Value of Life-long Learning into Your Leadership and Team

Two impactful ways of building a culture of life-long learning include how you behave yourself (modelling) and being intentional about the behaviours you reward in your team.

Look for, and ‘Sunshine’ team member behaviours that create life-long learners.  

Reed Hastings from Netflix talks about shining a light on behaviours you want to encourage – linking the behaviour to the positive impact and publicly ‘Sunshining it’.

Important in cultivating the capacity and desire to learn is having someone with whom you can safely express new ideas without repercussions or judgment.  Modelling life-long learning yourself creates that safety for your team.  This isn’t always easy, and is done best when walking alongside an executive/leadership coach and/or mentor.

The growing ubiquity of coaching as a core investment focus for the development of executives and other leaders is largely because of its effectiveness in building habits of learning – especially behavioural learning.  

Coaching develops the leaders’ comfort in the ‘unknowningness’ of a life-long learner which, in turn, strengthens confidence, resulting in strong, timely decision-making and resilience.  Leaders who learn the ‘secret’ of life-long learning, inevitably pass it on, creating cultures of innovative life-long learners.

View Our Coaching Offerings

How many of you, who are responsible for delivering outstanding business results, take pride in your ability to navigate the complexities of the market and achieve those results?

How effective are your skills and behaviors in maneuvering through the uncertainties of team dynamics, shifting priorities, and market challenges?

The Spacious Complexity experience offers a process and coaching that will help you discover your internal compass and external support systems, creating clear pathways for improved performance with reduced effort and stress. It is a thought-provoking process rather than one that provides ready-made answers. It ensures that you find the right answers for yourself instead of receiving them pre-digested.

Organizations can be complex mazes with many turns, dead ends, quick routes and choices. The best path to reach your destination is rarely a straight line…

The key to being successful in navigating complex organizations is easily and successfully finding your way through the maze to your goal.

The best way to do that is to embrace the complexity and ambiguity of organizations, rather than resisting them, and to become a “maze-bright” person.” (FYI For Your Improvement, Lombardo & Eichinger, 236)

Being a “maze bright” person requires that you tune into and utilize the “forces” introduced in Spacious Complexity, such as Invisibility, Continuum, Belonging, Choice, Reciprocity, and Creativity. These forces provide valuable support in becoming adept at handling complexity:

Invisibility: Similar to how thermals enable a skydiver to soar or crash into a cliff, there are always invisible forces at play behind every visible response or action. While you cannot see the thermals, you can learn to read them. The same is true for the invisible forces at play within your organization, and learning to “read” them will mean the difference between initiates flying or dying.

Continuum: Recognising that, outside of a few scientific disciplines, like engineering and mathematics, there is never only “one best answer”. Rather, everything exists on a continuum, with dysfunction at the extremes and a series of contextually dependent best solutions or approaches in between.

Reciprocity: Understanding and experiencing the complex dynamics of the give-and-take of reciprocity, allowing the positive impact of reciprocity to naturally emerge in collaboratively building solutions to complex issues.

Creativity: Utilizing deep listening and understanding to ignite and allow the contributions and creative abilities of individuals and teams throughout the organization.

Belonging: Building relationships with others that go beyond getting tasks done, accessing a higher sense of commitment, contribution, fulfillment, and purpose.

Choice: Realizing and harnessing the power of individual choice to create new business realities and successes. Invisibility and Continuum provide the context in which these forces live, influence, and impact both you and the business world.

While each force can be seen as independent, it is the invisibility and complexity of their dynamic interactions, along with the leader’s ability to access their natural power that underpins the concept of Spacious Complexity.

By tapping into the wisdom and power of these forces within the context of your current challenges or problems, you can create internal spaciousness and breathing room to navigate the myriad of decisions, options, and roadblocks in today’s business world.

Accessing these natural forces grants you the gift of increased clarity and wisdom, along with an enhanced competence in managing both complexity and ambiguity.

View Our Spacious Complexity Program

We encourage you to start noticing where the forces of Spacious Complexity manifest in your environment and experiment with demonstrating their impact for yourself

For more information on why we developed this program, please refer to our blog post: The NEED Driving the Innovation

Our previous blog was on what it means to be a Coach-Like Leader, and why so many get it wrong.  

This month we look at ways in which organizations can leverage and reap the benefits of their investment into developing Coach-Like Leaders.

There are a number of steps companies can take when thinking of introducing Coaching Skills (or any behavioural shift initiative) that directly impact the success of the initiative and the ‘stickiness’ of behavioural learning.  

In this blog we highlight 7 areas to pay attention to when developing and implementing any behavioural shift initiative.

1. Assessing Organizational Readiness

Behavioural change, at minimum, requires effort and often involves discomfort, even pain.  The greater the shift, the greater the discomfort. 

 Human beings naturally move away from effort (or discomfort/pain) towards ease.  

Adults, in particular, have spent a long time developing behaviours to maximise efficiency – maximising the benefit to effort ratio and, as people, this means that without a compelling reason to shift that behaviour, our default is to ‘protect’ ourselves from any need to change our behaviour.  

This natural tendency is one of the significant blocks to ‘sticky change’ that organizations run into when trying to bring in a new culture or establish new leadership behaviours.  

The result is that we take new learning and look for ways we’re ‘already doing that’, subconsciously proving to ourselves that very little, if any, change in behaviour is needed.

Ask

“How big is the gap between current behaviour/thinking and what we want to create?”

  “What can we do to ease the discomfort and/or increase the appetite for the change, so that it is easier for people to truly engage with the shift?” 

2. Key stakeholders

When planning an initiative for an organizational shift, it is imperative to identify and bring on board the key stakeholders.  

Having a senior level sponsor who not only understands the initiative but believes in its importance plays a huge role in ensuring the success of the initiative.  

This is true because of obvious reasons like budget support. It is also true because key stakeholders are people with influence.

If they don’t see the value in the initiative, they may speak out against it. However, even their silence undermines the ‘compelling reason’ needed to create readiness for change.

It is vital that you get your key stakeholders on board
and excited for this shift.

Ask

“Which key stakeholders does success depends on?”

“What is their understanding of and belief in this value of the shift?”

“What role can they play and how to best engage them?”

3. Budget

Organizational shift requires two types of budgets – Dollars and Time.

Some key stakeholders play an important role in planning for and/or freeing up dollars for the initiative.  

Others may play the equally important role of ensuring that the time participants need for the training is factored into their key priorities and not simply added to the edge of their desk.  

Whether action learning, reading, coaching or classroom time, when training is simply dumped on top of an already heavy workload a mixed message is sent about its value and it is a real barrier for participants to fully engage.

Ask

“What dollar and time budgets do we need to have commitment on before we launch the initiative?”

4. Communication Strategy

Often those planning an initiative have spent so long thinking about the Why, What, When and How of a training (or any other) initiative that it is easy to forget that others haven’t had the same time to process why this is even happening.  

It is not uncommon for participants to hear nothing more than some vague rumours of an initiative/training until they get an email informing them of the date and time they need to be at the training.  

The result can be a (virtual or actual) room full of participants who have little to no idea of why they’re being asked to neglect their (typically already overwhelming) workload to attend the training.  

When this happens, we’re setting the scene for disengagement and frustration – making it hard for participants to be excited about the learning and the behavioural shifts that have the potential to move them to a new level of maximising the benefit:effort ratio.

A communication strategy thinks through what needs to be communicated to whom so that key stakeholders are on board, budgets are appropriately allocated and participants are excited (or at least not sceptical) about how this initiative is going to improve their effectiveness and their lives.

It also includes thinking through which decisions will benefit from broader input and who needs to be heard and/or give input into the design at each stage from inception to implementation and beyond. A good communication strategy maximises the ROI of any initiative.

Ask

“How do we need to communicate this initiative and to whom?”

5. Sourcing Providers

The size of your organization as well as the extent of internal expertise will be determining factors as to whether you look within the walls or beyond them for your training providers.  Other factors include the political sensitivity of the initiative and the capacity of the people with the right expertise to take on the initiative (ie do they have the time?).  

Regardless of whether you look internally or externally, there are a number of things you should expect:

i. They should be paying attention to and asking questions about the Organizational Readiness for the type and scope of behavioural shift you’re looking to create.

ii. Their solutions should be tailored to your needs/vision. It can be problematic if they are a one-size-fits-all solution.

iii. They should be able to clearly articulate back to you your core drivers for the initiative in a way that resonates and makes you even more excited about it.

iv. They should be working with you to determine the Key Stakeholders and the Communication Strategy.

v. They should be willing to work with your budget where possible and give you realistic adjusted outcomes if your budget isn’t going to allow you to get the outcome you’re aiming for.  They should clearly articulate what they are committing to as well as what will be required of the organization and/or Key Stakeholders for success to occur.

vi. They should refuse to do the work if it is evident that the budget and organizational readiness isn’t what is needed to get the outcomes you need.

vii. Their expertise and understanding of how to create behavioural shift should be modelled through their interactions with you during the selection process.

While everyone has different price sensitivity,

remember to make VALUE, and not PRICE, your primary determinant.

Ask

Download our free form to determine if you should be looking internally or externally for the providers of any initiative you’re considering.

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“Internal or External Provider?”
Resource

6. Implementation Strategy

Once you’ve determined what is needed and have selected your providers (internal or external) it is time to think about how you will implement the training/initiative.  Thinking about implementation overlaps with and includes the Communication Strategy, Key Stakeholder involvement, Budget implications/restrictions and Organizational Readiness.  

It also factors in busy and quiet times, other training loads and any extraneous factors that will affect the readiness and ability of either the whole organization or the particular participants to fully engage.  

It includes balancing expediency and effectiveness (eg. what can we do virtually without compromising effectiveness and where do we need to budget for bringing all the participants together in-person).  

An Implementation Strategy thinks through 3 separate and equally important stages; Before, During and After.  Each stage should be designed into the plan.

Ask

Download our free worksheet to think through the 7 Steps for Introducing Coaching Skills to Your Organization.

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“What needs to happen before the official start date?” (What will create readiness?)

“How the initiative will be rolled out?” (format, time-frame, etc?)”What structures/processes need to be in place to anchor, sustain and grow the positive shift after the intervention?” (Things that support ‘sticky change’)

7. ROI – what and how to measure 

ROI, or Return on Investment, is something that is usually measured with facts and figures.  The question usually asked is; “How do we prove a direct correlation between the intervention and either increased profits, decreased costs, improved safety record, etc?”

The thing about measuring the benefit of shifts in human behaviour is that even clearly evident benefit is almost never linear and often very hard to measure directly.  This often results in no measure at all.  We have a few principles on how to measure ROI on behavioural shifts. Behaviour shift initiatives are always launched with an outcome in mind and that outcome can be measured – anecdotally (qualitative data), and with a mix of quantitative and qualitative data.  

The ROI of any behavioural training/initiative is most valid when it takes a long-term view.

Measuring outcomes needs to be over the short, medium and long term  

with expectations that, sustained behaviour shift will continue to have

positive qualitative and quantitative benefits in the long-term.

Examples of Real ROI with Clients

Behavioural Shifts – resulting from team initiatives

View Team Offerings

Behavioural Shifts – resulting from individual coaching initiatives

View Individual Offerings

Much of the ROI from a coaching culture is non-linear, making it difficult to pinpoint or quantify while still revolutionizing the workplace. Having an emphasis on openness, learning and mutual trust allows people to step into freely into increased:

The honing of these skills is difficult to quantify but it leads to better quick decisions, more collaboration and innovation because there is less fear. More comfort navigating unchartered territories, which as we all know from these past few years is an invaluable skill and the confidence in yourself and your team to take the risks which are necessary to be at the cutting edge of your field.

Some things to keep in mind when trying to assess the ROI of establishing a coaching culture are:

1. The timeline of change

Lasting behavioural time takes practice, ongoing effort and time to establish. One cannot expect an individual to change overnight, let alone a whole company of individuals. It is important to exemplify the patience necessary for a coaching culture to truly take place.

2. Identify incremental changes in behaviour

There is no such thing as a perfect company culture – yes, even one’s with an established coaching culture have their faults.

It is important to identify and celebrate the incremental changes individually and company-wide, you are striving for growth, not perfection.

3. Place emphasis on evaluation from the beginning.

All this being said, ROI is a foundational motivator for establishing a coaching culture. It is important to have clarity on what you are hoping to get out of this process and clear measures by which you will evaluate the success of your training/initiative. This can be co-designed with whichever trained facilitator you have selected, but it must be informed by the company’s specific goals.

Ask

“What is the outcome we’re aiming for?”

“What indicators can we measure in the short term?”

“What are the longer-term periods over which we need to measure the indicators to get a true ROI of the initiative?”

Interested in learning more?


Here are two useful articles that lay out more detail of how to measure behavioural shift:

https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2015/03/designing-evaluating-behaviour-change-interventions/documents/00472843-pdf/00472843-pdf/govscot%3Adocument/00472843.pdf

https://finalmile.medium.com/how-to-measure-behaviour-change-f0a23897ca63

And Why so Many Get it Wrong…

Nowadays, it is widely accepted that good leadership requires us to employ coaching skills. In fact, many have been told that coaching is now required of them as a key responsibility. This is a wonderful thing in theory, however in practice, there are many misconceptions and gaps in the understanding of what this means and how to do it.

Countless times I have had a client express frustration about how their “coaching” is not giving the promised results, only to have them describe methods that are not coaching at all.  

Gil Davidson

Now, don’t get me wrong, it is usually not their fault, most of these leaders are genuinely trying to employ coaching skills, but they really have no idea what it is they’re meant to be doing so, instead they default to being more intentional with the leadership skills they already have rather than truly shifting gears into a coach mindset. The result is that leaders often attempt to coach by telling, problem solving or giving advice, all of which have their place but none of which is coaching.

Coaching is more than a new set of skills, technique, or strategy, it’s a way of being.   To coach others, we must start with ourselves…

Coaching requires us to shift the way we bring value to those we lead and how we perceive the value that they bring.

In order to assess if you are ready to begin coaching you need to do these 3 things:

  1. Believe in your people
  2. Trust your people
  3. See their value and how it relates to the task you need done

Until you can honestly do these 3 things, you are not ready to add coaching skills to your toolbelt.

Leaders serious about developing strong coaching skill first need to shift perspective from traditional leadership views where it is our responsibility to solve problems and have the answers to where your role is to trust those you lead to figure out their own solutions, where your role is more Socratic* than explicit, where you add value by asking the right questions rather than giving advice.

The tools of a Coach-like leader include:

Coaching is a behavioural skill and therefore it cannot be learned solely in a classroom – it needs to be learned through doing.    

View our Coaching Skills for Leaders Program

Is Coaching a Fad?  

This is a fair question.  Leadership Development is guilty of jumping onto every new fad that comes along.  However, coaching is definitively not one of those cases. It is definitely NOT just a fad. How can I be so sure?

The concept behind coaching has been around since at least 400 years BC. Our earliest sense of it starts with Socrates who figured out that our actions, conviction, and commitment are driven more by what we believe to be true rather than by what we are told is true. 

Practically this means that when, as a leader, you’re allocating tasks to your team, your role includes being a catalyst for them to uncover how they connect with and believe in the value of the task as well as their understanding of how it contributes to a bigger outcome/purpose.  Doing so ensures that they are committed and can be held accountable.  

Let’s apply the principle to your own dilemma with coaching skills…

Imagine the difference it would make to your commitment to developing and applying coaching skills if you had undergone a process that encouraged you to question the concepts that are hard to trust. To test out the concepts and to draw your own conclusions?  Would do so have increased your commitment to applying them?  If they made sense, would it be easier to be accountable and committed?   

The secret Socrates discovered is that questioning to facilitate a person’s sense-making leads to clarity, and it is also one of the secret pillars of coaching.  

Fast forward to the 17th century and we find another classic example in Blaise Pascal. You may have heard of him as a mathematician. He was also a philosopher and theologian.  He lived in the early to mid 17th century and, like Socrates, he understood that “We are more convinced by that which we discover for ourselves than by that which we are told”.  The impact of this on our ownership and accountability is another secret behind the power of coaching.  

So, is coaching a fad?  I am convinced that coaching is here to stay, both because it has been around for thousands of years, and because the principles underlying it are timeless tools that tap into our human nature, unlocking commitment like nothing else I’ve encountered in my 30+ years in business!

So, if it has been around for centuries, and is such an impactful tool, why is it only being recognised as a core leadership skill now?

My personal experience taken with anecdotal experience of my colleagues as well as industry literature and research makes a compelling case for why coaching has emerged as a core skill in ‘future-proofing’ your leadership team bench strength.

Here are a few reasons:

Corporate Shifts
Requiring a new leadership skill set

Coaching Skills
Answering the new need

  • Our societies are become increasingly egalitarian and our teams expect more than “because I’m the   boss” as a reason to do something.
  • Routine work is mostly automated and, as described in Daniel Pink’s work, ‘carrot and stick’ forms of motivation only work in routine work environments. Productivity in creative (Knowledge) work environments requires a new form of motivation – one that is intrinsic, not external.  Leaders still need to motivate employees, but they need a new tool kit
  • Clear, hierarchical structures are less common, with flatter or matrix type organizational structures becoming more common. Practically, this means that leaders often don’t have direct authority over those they lead or may have too many direct reports to oversee their work directly, meaning that leading well requires a different delegation and accountability structure
  • Leaders need to equip their teams to navigate VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous – work environments. I know we’re almost as sick of hearing about VUCA, as we are of Covid, but it best describes our new reality – and is one of the reasons Coaching Skills are now emerging as a critical core Leadership competency.
  • Coaching facilitates direct reports identifying and connecting personalised purpose and motivation with assigned goals/responsibilities, resulting in increased commitment and accountability
  • Coaching skills are that tool kit.  Coaching wasn’t as important when external forms of motivation still worked in most situations. Coaching provides a motivational alternative to the “carrot and stick”
  • Coaching skills establish personal  accountability to self and the project/end goal without the need to rely on positional authority
  • Coaching skills enable leaders to delegate with confidence that direct reports understand and are committed to the end goal, that they are equipped to resolve issues that come their way and have the safety and trust in the relationship to ask for help early on should they need it. This frees up the leader’s mental energy and time, as they do not need to follow-up as often to ensure things are moving forward.
  • Leaders skilled at coaching equip their teams to be agile and respond to shifts as they happen, both because they’re clear on the connection between what they’re doing and why/how it adds value and because their leaders’ trust in them increases their self-trust in their ability to deal with VUCA situations.

What makes coaching so elusive?

Too often we try and teach a new skill simply by adding the new knowledge onto what we already know.  That works, only when the new knowledge builds on the existing framework.  Some new skills first require a dismantling of old learnings and entrenched beliefs before we can build a new scaffolding on which to hang our new learning.  Coaching is one of those skills.

Part of what makes it elusive is that we must experience it before we can trust it.   

We must first discover it for ourselves.  

Read our previous blog post on The Evolution of Coaching

So where do we start?

We must start by looking at our beliefs. Our beliefs about ourselves about others and about leadership. As long as we don’t believe that others are as capable as ourselves, we cannot coach.

Coaching is so counter to our conditioning. Why? Because what we have been taught is that only a few will excel and only if you have the answers, and so we don’t see the capacity of those around us.  We see ourselves as the exception. As the leader who has the answers.  

Human nature is that we only see what we’re looking for and we only trust what we see. Ironically, we only look for what we believe.  So what we believe, limits what we see.  

When doesn’t coaching work?

It doesn’t work if we haven’t changed our base level beliefs of ourselves and those around us. As a leader, you will only develop your coaching skills once you’ve experienced proof of concept.

What does that mean?  

Because coaching is so completely different from what we typically look for. Your training needs to provide you with opportunity to experience the impact of the coaching way of being.  Our existing beliefs stop us from trusting coaching principles until we’ve experienced the impact they have. And until we trust it, we will not use it.  

After all, you’re a logical, Intelligent leader so why would you do something that you didn’t trust?  

Only once we understand that leadership is not about us holding all the answers, not about us being the problem solvers or the go-to person. But it’s rather about helping others uncover and discover their own problem-solving abilities, helping them discover for themselves the best way to accomplish the desired outcomes.  This is what it means to lead as a coach.

How to select a good coaching program?

So, if equipping leaders to truly trust and adopt coaching skills is so tricky, how do you ensure that you select an effective coaching skills program for your organization?

Here is a list of questions to ask:

How is it structured?

What experience and skill do the facilitators bring?

Is the content designed with managers in mind, or for coaches?

View Our Coaching Offerings

What impact can you expect?  

As per the insight of Socrates and Blaise Pascal, using a coaching approach increases ownership and accountability because we require people to think through their understanding and alignment of responsibilities.  It results in work being connected to overall outcomes and to personal purpose – increasing a sense of personal fulfillment, commitment, and ownership.

It also provides the opportunity for people to realise what they’re unsure of and to ask clarifying questions when needed. Because coaching requires us to believe in those we coach, they know we’re in their corner and it creates safety for better communication, healthy conflict, and invites more ideas – accessing the creativity and insight of the whole team so the burden isn’t all on the leader.

Working with leaders who believe in us and where we have a greater sense of purpose and personal fulfillment naturally translates to increased loyalty and retention, which is a huge gift to any organization. All the above reasons also result in improved delegation – leaving your leaders to focus on their job, instead of fighting as many fires!

*Socratic Method: refers to question driven learning, where rather than having one person impart their knowledge upon the rest, it is more discussion based, collaborative, and question centered learning

What is coaching and why does it matter?

Almost everyone has had experience with something called coaching. While this is great, it can also cause confusion as coaching has many different faces.

Coaching, in the corporate world is not the same as the coaching you experienced on your school sports team. Yet, as you’ll see lower down in this article, the corporate or executive/leadership coaching we know today grew out of sports coaching.

Let’s simply our discussion of what coaching is and isn’t.

The coaching we’re talking about and the coaching we offer is leadership or executive coaching. It is not directive coaching (also known as consulting), it does not give advice, or problem-solve for you, but rather facilitates personal curiosity and learning that leaves you with a higher EQ, more adaptable, and with improved decision making and relational skills. It builds inner confidence and agility that produce life-long benefits.

It has significant overlap with mentoring [a good mentor will usually be very coach-like] however, unlike mentoring, a leadership/executive coach does not need to have “been there – done that”. Their value is not in having walked the path before you, but in listening intently and asking the questions that unlock your learning and success.

It is also different from business coaching. We love this simple, clear distinction from Sherpa Coaching:

Business coaching is an alternative term for consulting, as research shows: “Many business coaches refer to themselves as consultants, a broader business relationship than one which exclusively involves coaching.”

Lorber, Laura (10 April 2008). “Executive Coaching – Worth the Money?“
The Wall Street Journal

For the purposes of this article, unless otherwise indicated, coaching refers to executive/leadership coaching.

What are the origins of coaching?

Coaching is a relatively new profession with very old roots.  

At the heart of coaching is the Socratic art of asking questions to facilitate learning.  Socrates lived 470-399BC and is the father of using disciplined questioning to explore complex ideas and get to the truth of things. 

Fast forward to the 17th century where Blaise Pascale, an influential philosopher and mathematician, noted that “We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.” 

Current day coaching combines these age-old truths in a modern context.

Coaching - the inner game - Timothy Gallwey
Timothy Gallwey – The Inner Game of Tennis

Timothy Gallwey’s book, The Inner Game of Tennis, caught the eyes of the corporate world when they realised that its principles were transferable to business leadership. The thesis of his book is that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. … In short, the inner game is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.” 

And so, the profession of corporate coaching, as we know it, was born.

If working on your “Inner Game” is something you’ve been meaning to invest in, take the first step and click on one of the buttons below to explore what it could mean for you.

Leadership Coaching
Executive Coaching
As with any profession, remember to check a coach’s professional credentials.

Where is Coaching Now?

When I received my coaching certification in 2002 coaching, in Canada was still far from being a core practice and many leaders were still unfamiliar with what coaching (outside of ‘little league’) was and many who knew of coaching still saw it as primarily  ‘problem solving’, ‘fixing people’.  It has taken almost 2 decades for that way of thinking to be entirely replaced with an understanding that, while it may help when dealing with “problem people”, the real value of coaching is investing in high potential people – those you hope will have a long career with your company.

The last decade has seen leadership and executive coaching firmly established as a core tool in securing senior leaders’ success.  It is no longer considered with suspicion by those offered coaching but is now a reward and a validation of the leader by their superiors.

I first entered the business world 30 years ago.  In that time there has been a significant shift in what people expect from leadership.  Organizations are much flatter than their hierarchical forefathers and leading people as if they are ‘cogs in a wheel’ is no longer effective.  We have fully left the Industrial era behind and the Information era is fast being replaced by the Knowledge era.

“The Knowledge Age is a new, advanced form of capitalism in which knowledge and ideas are the main source of economic growth (more important than land, labour, money, or other ‘tangible resources). New patterns of work and new business practices have developed, and, as a result, new kinds of workers, with new and different skills, are required.

In this new era, knowledge is defined—and valued—not for what it is, but for what it can do. It is produced, not by individual experts, but by ‘collectivising intelligence’– that is, groups of people with complementary expertise who collaborate for specific purposes.”

Information on its own is no longer power, anyone can ‘ask Google’.  Instead, it is your ability to apply information that is the new form of Capital.  This brings with it a new requirement for how we motivate and get results.Daniel Pink’s research on what motivates us to be more productive concludes that ‘carrot and stick’ only motivates in repetitive, ‘mind-numbing’ situations (i.e. the Industrial era), “When the task called for ‘even rudimentary cognitive skills’, a larger reward ‘led to poorer performance’.  Clearly not a solution for the Knowledge Era, where our primary asset is exactly our ability to navigate data, collectively.  Pink says “This era doesn’t call for better management.  It calls for a renaissance of self-direction”.  In his book, DRiVE he outlines 3 factors that motivate increased productivity and effectiveness in our current era: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Where is Coaching Headed?

Understanding the Knowledge era and the shift in what is needed to motivate in this era explains why coaching is here to stay.  In my 30+ working years, I’ve seen coaching have a much more profound and lasting impact on our ability to connect autonomy, mastery, and purpose to our every day than any other form of learning/training.  I believe this is at the heart of why it has become an indispensable leadership development tool.  Not only in the development of leaders, but also as a skill which leaders require to motivate those that report to them.  (This doesn’t mean all leaders need to go out and get a coaching certification, however, companies who delay investing in understanding and integrating coaching skills into their leadership approach risk losing their top talent).

Leadership coaching has become a core leadership development tool and an important pillar of talent retention and development programs.  The more AI shapes our future, the more routine work will be managed by AI and the critical coaching is going to become a tool to engage and motivate – the carrot and stick will be completely ineffective to motivate the complex, creative tasks requiring human execution, and coaching will become an indispensable tool to motivate mastery, maintain and enhance productivity.  Already we’re seeing talent no longer asking if coaching could be available to them, but rather seeing the availability of coaching as an indicator of the value organizations place on their development, with a direct link to retention.

Leadership/executive coaching has proven its value and is now something most forward-thinking organizations have embraced in some manner.  Unlike in 2002, when Advantage Management Consulting opened its doors, it is now rare to meet someone who doesn’t have at least some idea of what coaching is, and very common to meet leaders who have worked with a coach or have it on their bucket list to do so.

One-on-one coaching is well established as a core practice in talent development.  Rather than the ‘passing fad’ some predicted in the early 2000s, we’re seeing coaching broadening in its form and reach. Two new coaching trends are emerging, which organizations would do well to plan for in futureproofing their people and performance strategy.The first I’ve already hinted at – Coaching skills as a core leadership competence.  Not simply a shift in the language used, but rather a fundamental shift that understands and embraces what it means to coach rather than give advice.  Leaders learn a whole new way of delegation and accountability using a Socratic questioning style to deepening learning and to engage the motivational principles from Daniel Pink’s Drive.

If equipping your leaders with coaching skills isn’t already in your budget, look for a way to get it to the top of the priority list and make sure you engage with a learning process that incorporates 6 to 9 months of practical application support, otherwise, you will not get the ROI you’re looking for.

The last decade has seen a further shift in Leadership – a shift from Individual Leadership to Collective Leadership. 

As organizations notice this shift, they’re also seeing the value of investing in team coaches to work with the team leader and the team as a whole, moving them from a collection of high achieving (often competing) individuals to an added-value team, where they understand the exponential difference in outcome that is achievable when they spend the time identifying, designing and working out the structure, values, and accountabilities that exceptional results require.  Like individual coaching, team coaching significantly leverages raw potential into a lasting, impactful benefit to leaders and the company they work for.

Click here to find out more about how Team Coaching.

Team Coaching

Names like Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence & Primal Leadership) , Brené Brown (The Power of Vulnerability), Simon Sinek (Start with WHY), Marshall Goldsmith (FeedForward), and David Rock (NeuroLeadership Institute), among others, provide us with ample research to support why it is a logical conclusion to invest in coaching.  The growing trend of organizations (including Fortune 500) incorporating coaching as a core component of their talent retention and development programs affirms the ROI.

During our 18plus years in business, we’ve seen organizations move from being skeptical about the value of coaching, to where coaching is now a core developmental pillar for their leaders where many also have an established focus on coaching skills training for leaders. This 2-prong approach is a strategic focus on establishing a coaching culture that infuses vitality, joy, and productivity into their business.

Team coaching is a newer trend that we’re seeing a gradual increase in and one we believe will soon become a 3rd prong in leadership development strategies.

We are passionate about coaching’s ability to transform leaders and cultures. If you’re curious about how to integrate the 3 coaching forms part into your organization’s strategy and/or how to increase the ROI you’re seeing, reach out and set up a free consultation by clicking the button below:

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