Power play: Coaching as a leadership style

By Brian Kush, CPA, PCC

Accountants are busy.

And if you’re a leader at your organization, you may feel the need to have all the answers all the time, your plate is always full, and you’re moving from one task to the next as quickly as possible (even though you never quite get everything crossed off your list!). Your team continually comes to you with questions, and you feel pressured to have a quick and definitive response.

At the same time, you may be struggling with any or all of these challenges:

• Getting your teammates or staff to really “own” their work. 
• Creating true connection and belonging on your teams.
• Developing the next generation of leaders.

What if we told you there’s a solution that gives you back your time and mental energy, while empowering more ownership, belonging and development in those you lead?

That solution is cultivating coaching as a leadership style.

Coaching as a leadership style encompasses two things:

1. Shifting the lens through which you see teammates — your mindset.
2. Upgrading the practices you utilize to engage with your teammates — your skillset.

A coaching leadership style starts with your mindset. 

Implementing a coaching leadership style begins with a mindset shift. Before you focus on how you collaborate with others and especially, what you might say, start by examining the lens through which you view your teammates and the situations in which you engage them.  

Ask yourself three questions: 

1. What are your belief levels in your teammates?  

The less you believe in someone, the more likely you’ll feel a need to control the conversation and push your ideas and solutions. The more you extend belief and trust, the more likely you’ll want to engage with that teammate as a thinking partner and uncover their ideas and solutions (which builds their confidence in themselves and trust with you). 

A coaching leader understands their role is to unlock the greatness in others because they believe it’s there! 

2. How are you viewing your challenges and struggles? 

Why do we typically choose delay or avoidance when things get tough?  Why don’t we hold a difficult conversation we know is needed? Why do we procrastinate on that next important item on our to-do list?   

We often avoid or delay necessary actions because we focus primarily on the risks, dangers and uncertainty involved.

We focus primarily on what could go wrong, so we talk ourselves out of action before we even begin. That’s the power of a negative mindset. 

What if we instead viewed our challenges, however ambiguous or uncertain they may seem, as opportunities for growth? What if we instead asked ourselves, “How could tackling this tough, messy thing help me unlock potential in myself and others? How might it help us become better leaders and human beings?” 

This mindset shift is the choice a coaching leader makes. The coaching leader sees discomfort, ambiguity and uncertainty as necessary components of growth. The coaching leader invites their teammates to enter the unknown, to explore what feels hard, and determine what comes next — instead of avoiding it.  

A coaching leader understands their role is to increase others’ capacity to lean into hard things because that’s where growth occurs!   

3. How do you want to show up for those you lead? 

As accountants, we have to make many judgments when it comes to the numbers.  But being judgmental, especially when you’re interacting with others and judging their every word as right or wrong, does not foster creativity and innovation. And we need both when it comes to solving tough challenges. 

The opposite of judgment is curiosity. When you show up curious, you are interested in other people’s viewpoints — you’re learning and creating possibilities. Curiosity is a gift that automatically engages others, captivating them and energizing the room.  

A coaching leader understands that curiosity is a superpower they can bring to every interaction!   

A coaching leadership style requires practice.

While it’s great to focus on your mindset first (think: mindset before skillset), you must also practice coaching skills to fully embrace coaching as a leadership style. 

By utilizing coaching skills, you encourage choice and ownership in others. When someone comes to you with a problem or challenge, if you simply share your solution, that leaves very little choice for the other person (especially when you are that person’s boss). One of the biggest challenges in adopting coaching as a leadership style is the discomfort that comes with challenging your ingrained habit to provide quick answers.  

Instead of sharing answers immediately, choose something different: Pause, lean into the coaching mindset, and interact in new ways.  

Here are three foundational practices in the coaching leader’s toolbox.  

1.    Bring intention to every interaction.   

Ask yourself:

• What does this person and situation need from me right now?
• How could I best support this person’s development?
• How can I make this person feel heard, understood and empowered? 

As a coaching leader, you’ll create space within yourself to pause, slow down and reflect on what’s needed before reacting immediately with an answer or directive.  You are providing yourself space to choose!  In some cases, you don’t have to provide the immediate answer or take over the problem.  You can instead empower them to own their challenges and solutions! 

2. Lean into conversations with deep, active listening.

• Physically orient your body in the best position to hear what another person is saying.  
• Eliminate distractions.  
• Share what you're hearing from the other person by summarizing or paraphrasing. 

This type of active listening requires your presence, engagement and focus. It is work. Does this type of listening sound difficult? Coaching leaders will respectfully decline or delay conversations when they don’t have the capacity and presence required to actively listen, sending a powerful message that says, “When we do interact, you’re going to get my best listening self (and I expect the same from you!).”

3. Adopt a practice of asking questions instead of giving answers. 

By adopting a conversational style that utilizes questions, you shift your working relationships from dependence to independence, yielding your answers to theirs (cultivating ownership). You train them to think more critically by modeling the practice of slowing down and asking questions instead of rushing ahead to quick answers.  

Open-ended questions allow the person who is answering to own the answers. Some simple open-ended questions such as these can really empower:

• What do you see as the real problem here?
• What do you want in this situation?
• What can you do?
• What is next for you?

Next time you feel the need to deliver an answer to someone, choose to ask an empowering question instead.  

Embrace imperfection

Embracing coaching as a leadership style is not easy. It challenges certain behaviors that are ingrained in our profession. As accountants, we pride ourselves on speed, expertise and having the right answers as soon as possible. Thus, embracing a coaching mindset and skillset often feels counterintuitive. It will challenge your default habits, and you will likely struggle to make the shift. 

This is an opportunity to lean into your coaching mindset and remember that struggle is essential to growth, and it’s what’s needed to evolve your leadership into what we need for our profession’s future. Believe in yourself. Stay curious. Press on.  

We need you.  

Brian Kush, CPA, PCC, co-founder of Intend2Lead, a leadership development company that coaches accountants to access the “Dimension of Possible,” has served the profession as a leadership coach for more than 15 years. He believes when you become more intentional in your life by aligning your purpose with what you do, you become a better leader and a better human. 

Brian spent the first 14 years of his career serving as a CPA and consultant at both Ernst and Young and AuditWatch. During that time, he realized coaching was the best and most natural way he could support and challenge others. He is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) through the International Coaching Federation; he received a Certificate in Leadership Coaching (CLC) from Georgetown University; and he authored the book Auditing Leadership (Wiley, 2009).