Can coaching tools help you lead successful organizational change? Here’s how leaders build ownership and get better outcomes by adopting a coaching mindset.
Q1: “To make change work, what are some key elements?”
A1: Lots of great ideas!
Q2: “How effectively are you able to execute these?”
A2 (looking down): Ummmm…
Fifteen years ago, my coauthor, Max Ghini, and I were on a campaign to ask leaders about change as we researched our book INSIDE CHANGE. In dozens of countries, we kept getting the same picture: leaders KNEW what would make change work but struggled to make it happen.
In the book, we identified that the primary barriers often revolve around getting people (including ourselves as leaders) fully engaged in change. We offered some great structures on using emotional intelligence to do so, and rereading the book today, I still stand by those solutions. But in the years since, I’ve realized there’s a missing ingredient.
As I’ve learned more about coaching—particularly embedding coaching into organizations—I’ve seen that effective change and coaching share a crucial link centered on one essential question: “Who owns the change?”
Understanding the Role of Coaching in Change Management
The term “change management” reinforces a dangerous falsehood: it’s often conceptualized as someone outside the system monitoring, guiding, and directing the change. Picture the orchestra conductor, someone who guides but doesn’t play.
This “outside-in” mindset is one of the biggest barriers to change. Big consulting firms love the model where outside experts study, plan, and tell everyone what needs to happen. The assumption is that if the plan is smart enough, the organization will simply follow. But as every leader knows, the real challenge isn’t the plan—it’s the execution.
In other words, creating change through “external smarts” disempowers the very people who need to do the work. Real change happens when the people inside the organization, those who understand the nuances and will ultimately do the heavy lifting, take ownership.
This shift—from external to internal ownership—is where coaching comes in.
This article is from the 🌱 EQ Coach Newsletter
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Top Coaching Tools for Leading Organizational Change
Coaching operates on a principle that sounds simple but is difficult to live by: it’s a partnership. In the International Coaching Federation’s competencies, we use verbs like “co-create,” “partner,” and “facilitate” to describe the mutuality of responsibility in coaching, but it’s a big shift for many of us.
This principle can feel especially foreign in hierarchical organizations. As leaders, many of us have been trained to assert our will, sell the vision, and push for results. While that works in some cases, it’s antithetical to the mutual responsibility required for great coaching.
So, what coaching tools can help leaders step back and foster this internal ownership of change?
1. Stop Leading and Start Coaching
The most crucial coaching tool for leaders might be this: stop leading. Instead, put on your “coach hat.” Coaching isn’t about giving answers or pushing solutions — it’s about creating space for others to step up and own the process.
2. Optimize for Ownership
Encourage your team to take ownership of the challenges. Being a “lazy coach” doesn’t mean disengaging, but rather stepping back enough for the team to make decisions, take risks, and learn. Let them carry the rocks up the mountain—not because you can’t, but because they need to.
3. Create Space for Intentional Choice
Change leadership requires us to pause and step back, allowing room for others to make intentional choices. That’s often difficult when you’re used to being the one in charge. But this space is essential for the team to step into their own leadership roles and drive change forward.
Practical Tips for Integrating Coaching Tools into Change Leadership
Try out these reflective questions to help you adopt a coaching mindset as a leader. Or, if you’re coaching leaders, try these when working with leaders navigating change:
Which rocks do you want to keep carrying up the mountain?
In the long-game, there are way too many rocks for any of us to move ourselves. It seems efficient to keep picking them up ourselves, and it feels good to take direct action. But pretty soon, our pockets are overflowing. “Delegating” means telling someone else to carry a rock for awhile.
But what if, instead, other people learned to identify the important rocks, and picked them up on their own?
Whose power are you using?
Leadership involves exercising power – be that from role, or control, or influence, information, expertise, relationships, apsirations… Check it: are you using forms of power that requires others to give up theirs?
If your power requires you to push or others to comply, it means you’re limiting their ownership of the change. Don’t confuse compliance with motivation.
Who owns the change?
When we, as leaders, are doing the rock-carrying and directing others to pitch in, we own the change. We’re setting the agenda and “making it happen.” That is one form of leadership, and it’s sometimes possible to drive change that way. But it’s exhausting. Especially when it’s not just A Change, but continuous, evolving change.
Leading Change Through Coaching: Why It Works
Putting on the “coach hat” comes with risks—stepping back means relinquishing some control. But when done effectively, it’s a force multiplier for both leadership and organizational transformation. Coaching empowers those closest to the work to take ownership, leading to deeper engagement, better execution, and more resilient change processes.
Whether you’re a professional coach, or contemplating earning certification as a professional emotional intelligence coach*, or you’re someone who uses coaching techniques to support others: Six Seconds’ approach starts on the inside.
* Did you know? In addition to top-level accreditation from the International Coaching Federation, the EQ Coach Certification is one of a handful of coaching certifications in North America that also provides master’s level credit? You’ll earn almost ⅓ of your MBA or MA in this program.
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