Leaders Coaching Leaders: One Secret to Sustainable Leadership Development

Leaders as Coaches: The Secret to Making Leadership Development Stick

You’ve probably seen it before—your sales SVP isn’t exactly fired up about leadership development. If they think it’s a waste of time, guess what? Your sales managers will half-listen while multitasking, and nothing changes.

But imagine this instead: that same SVP shows up as an active coach. They kick off the training with a powerful story, stay engaged with the team, and later, check for understanding. They make sure their managers not only get the new techniques but also understand why they matter. And when they see those behaviors in action, they celebrate them.

That kind of leadership development program has a real shot at changing your culture.

Now imagine if leaders at every level did that with their teams.

How to Make Leadership Development Sustainable

When you involve leaders as coaches, you create a ripple effect. Your managers don’t just learn skills—they model them, reinforce them, and cultivate them in their teams. They’re not just attendees; they’re facilitators of real-world applications.

Think about it. They’re practicing essential leadership skills:

• Asking great questions
• Drawing out quiet team members
• Listening without bias
• Reflecting before responding
• Running a meeting that matters

And here’s the kicker: these coaching conversations aren’t just about theory. They’re tied directly to business priorities. They make work smoother, improve team dynamics, and drive results.

Your leadership development ROI skyrockets when managers coach what they learn. Train ten managers this way, and you don’t just impact those ten—you impact their entire teams. Suddenly, training ten turns into influence over a hundred.

How to Get Leaders to Engage as Coaches

You might be thinking, “It’s hard enough to get my managers to attend a leadership development program. And now you want them to be coaches too?”

We get it. No one has time for meetings that don’t drive real results. But we’ve seen this work because it’s not extra work—it’s high-ROI leadership in action.

Here are two ways to make it happen:

1. Challenge & Support Groups: Senior Leaders as Cross-Functional Coaches

One of the best ways to create long-term impact is through Challenge and Support groups. Senior leaders mentor participants, helping them apply what they’ve learned. Here’s how it works:

• One or two senior managers who’ve taken (or are taking) the course lead a group of 7–10 participants.
• They facilitate discussions on how to apply the training to their work.
• Ideally, these groups pull people from different regions, departments, or functions—broadening perspectives.
• The leaders get support with mastermind sessions and a simple facilitation guide to make it easy.

This approach creates real cultural change in four ways:

1. Teaching reinforces learning—leaders get better at the skills they’re coaching.
2. Participants learn how the techniques work across different contexts.
3. Senior leaders model the behaviors, showing they matter.
4. Everyone builds a network of trusted peers for ongoing support.

The Bottom Line

If you want leadership development to stick, it takes more than an executive sponsor. It takes leaders at every level engaging as coaches.

Because when leaders coach, they don’t just develop skills—they shape culture. They facilitate practical conversations about how the team can take performance to the next level.

Challenge and Support Groups: Senior Leaders as Cross-Functional Leader Coaches

Get a glimpse of some of the outcomes of challenge and support groups here:

Team Accelerator Programs: Video-Based Guided Learning for Managers to Accelerate Culture

Another way to create sustained culture change is through a manager-led, video-based Team Accelerator program.

Managers actively guide their teams through a co-learning and application process. This is a great way to build culture, by including all employees (not just managers) and training them on the common vocabulary and human-centered tools.

In this model, the managers take an hour each month with their team to watch a short video, learn a new concept or skill, and then use a provided discussion guide to help their team apply the concept to their work.

The team ends each meeting by creating a mutual behavioral commitment based on the topic. By the end of the program, they have a robust, co-created team agreement.

Between sessions, the manager and team members watch for opportunities to celebrate when they follow through on their commitments and call each other back to their agreement when they don’t fulfill it.

Topics include aligning key priorities and behaviors, holding accountability conversations, taking appropriate risks, developing deeper connections, and helping the team share their ideas.

As leaders facilitate conversations on these topics with their teams, everyone develops the skills (not just the manager).

As in the challenger group model, your managers continue to hone their own leadership and facilitation skills while they work as leadership coaches.

And, your teams learn practical skills to become more productive team members and prepare them for continued responsibility and leadership. Your teams work on practical, tactical ways to improve their performance, while managers become more accountable for the leadership skills they learned.

Learn more about bringing a Team Accelerator Program to Your Team.

 

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