If you’re thinking about investing in your own development next year and coaching is on your list, I wanted to offer some guidance. In my years working with organizations—from early-stage tech companies to established professional services firms and non-profits here in the Seattle area—I’ve noticed a pattern when leaders seek out coaching for their professional development.
The initial conversation almost always focuses on a crucial business problem: a specific deliverable, a team performance issue, or a looming organizational challenge. And that’s exactly where the confusion begins. To make coaching effective, we have to recognize that in addition to business goals, coaching goals are helpful and offer a unique opportunity for leaders to focus on themselves and how they operate.
If you’re considering leadership coaching, understanding this distinction is key to setting yourself up for added success.
The Business Goal: The Organization’s Scorecard
Let’s call the business goal the “What.”
These goals are typically what gets measured in performance appraisals and during business reviews. They are concrete, tied to outcomes, and directly impact the P&L or the mission of the organization.
When I meet with a client or their sponsor, the business goals might sound like this:
- “We need the marketing team to increase lead conversion by 8% this quarter.”
- “The leader needs to get the new software platform launched on time and under budget.”
- “We must reduce turnover in the engineering department next year.”
These are important company objectives. They are the desired destination for the business.
The Coaching Goal: The Leader’s Behavior
A coaching goal, by contrast, focuses on the “How.”
A coach cannot directly increase lead conversion or launch a software platform. The coach works with the leader on their skills, habits, and mindset. These may be things that are currently preventing those business outcomes from being met, or if done differently could make it even easier to meet those business goals and deliverables.
The goal isn’t the number; it’s the shift in behavior that makes the number achievable.
Coaching goals are focused on what the leader will do differently:
- Delegation: “I need to stop doing my team’s work and develop a reliable system for delegating effectively, allowing me to focus on strategy.”
- Presence and Stress: “I need to learn how to manage my own time and boundaries better so I can reduce my chronic stress and show up as a calmer, more consistent leader.”
- Conflict: “I need to improve my ability to address conflict directly and constructively with my peers instead of avoiding difficult conversations.”
- Communication: “I want to be more proficient at translating strategic vision into clear, executable steps for my team.”
The shift from the “What” to the “How” is what separates successful coaching from simply being an expensive status check. If a senior executive is struggling to launch a platform (the “What”), coaching addresses the potential cause—maybe it’s the executive’s difficulty delegating or their tendency to get lost in unnecessary detail (the “How”).
The Connection: Why Both Matter
Effective leadership coaching ensures the two goals are always connected. The business goal provides the context for the coaching, and the coaching goal is the lever that achieves the business result.
It’s easy for a leader to feel like they are “failing” when a business goal isn’t met. Coaching helps them see that the issue is often not a lack of commitment, but a specific, observable behavior they need to change.
Here is how the behavioral changes (Coaching Goal) fuel the organizational result (Business Goal):
| If the Business Goal Is… | The Behavioral Change (Coaching Goal) Needed Might Be… |
| Launch a major project on time | Improve time management and prioritization by mastering the “two levels up” perspective, avoiding unnecessary tactical distractions. |
| Retain high-performing talent | Develop active listening skills to better understand and respond to the concerns and ambitions of direct reports. |
| Scale a department rapidly | Shift from an individual contributor mindset to one focused on building and trusting high-performing teams through delegation. |
Ultimately, investing in leadership coaching means recognizing that achieving the organization’s goals isn’t just about strategy or capital—it’s about the everyday habits and skills of the people in charge. Coaching is an investment in the human engine that drives the business forward.
Would you like a few suggestions on how to structure an effective coaching goal for yourself or one of your leaders? We’d love to help. Reverb’s Leadership Development services provide customized management training solutions that deliver the practical power skills your leaders need.
