Leadership coaching case study
How a senior leader began delegating thinking, not just tasks, across a team of 30
Reducing team dependency and creating more space for strategic leadership.
She was an Associate Director at Warrington NHS Trust, leading a team of 30. Capable, respected and deeply committed, she had become the person people turned to for decisions, reassurance and judgement calls.
Each “Can I borrow you for a minute?” was entirely reasonable on its own. But together, those requests filled much of her working day. Because she was experienced, responsive and often able to see the answer quickly, stepping in felt like the most efficient way to keep things moving.
The cost was that the work requiring her senior-level attention — strategic planning, forecasting and developing the team — was repeatedly pushed into evenings and personal time. She wanted people to take greater ownership, but had not yet recognised how her instinct to help could sometimes leave her doing the thinking for them.
She described her goal to us like this:
At a glance
A note on the outcome. Three sessions were enough to create real movement, but not to completely change the habits of a team of 30. Here’s what changed, what was still developing and what we learned from the engagement.
Is this you?
- Your team increasingly waits for you to provide the answers, and you have started to notice the pattern.
- You are doing your real job in the evenings because the working day belongs to other people’s decisions.
- You have tried delegating, but the work comes back, or comes back differently from how you expected, so you take it on again.
- You have high standards and a quiet suspicion that they may be contributing to the problem.
- You know your people are capable, but you cannot understand why they are not taking greater ownership.
When this may not be the right fit
It is worth being clear about this, because not every leadership challenge is a coaching challenge.
If your team is genuinely under-resourced, coaching cannot compensate for an ongoing lack of capacity. We will help you identify that, not pretend a change in leadership style can solve it.
If you want your team to change without examining your own habits, this work is likely to feel uncomfortable. It begins by looking at what you may be doing — often with the best of intentions — that is helping to maintain the pattern.
If you need the issue completely resolved within a month, coaching may not be the right intervention. Our client saw movement within three sessions, but her team was not suddenly “fixed”.
If you cannot protect an hour every few weeks, it will be difficult to create momentum. The sessions provide the space to think; the deeper work is noticing and changing your habits between them.
The pattern underneath
She was delegating tasks, but she was not always delegating the thinking. Without fully realising it, she would guide people towards an answer through a question that already contained a suggestion, a “Have you thought about…?”, or a small correction offered before they had finished working the issue through.
Each intervention was intended to help, and often solved the immediate problem. But over time, it could create a powerful pattern: the team learned that she would reach the answer faster, while she remained the person everyone came back to.
That is one of the hardest leadership patterns to recognise because it rarely feels like directing. It feels like being responsive, supportive and efficient. Yet sometimes a team does not lack initiative because people are unwilling or incapable. They have simply learned that asking the leader is quicker than doing the thinking themselves.
What we worked on
Locating the pattern. We mapped where her communication sat using the Leadership Communication Spectrum, adapted from Peter Hill’s work — the range from fully directive to fully non-directive. Seeing the different approaches laid out clearly helped her notice that stepping back involved more than simply making her advice sound gentler.
The same conversation can sit anywhere on this spectrum — the skill is choosing where.
Reviewing the moments where it happened. In coaching, we looked closely at recent conversations: what had been said, where she had begun to steer, how her response might have landed and what she could try differently next time. The aim was to help her recognise the pattern as it happened, so that in a meeting three days later, she could notice the familiar sentence forming and choose a different response.
Working with the two things that made this difficult. The first was tolerating silence and giving people space and time, the phrase that became her mantra. This is much harder than it sounds when you already know the answer and could resolve the issue quickly.
The second was holding high standards without those standards being experienced as a judgement on someone’s competence. The goal was not to lower expectations, but to communicate them in a way that supported confidence, learning and greater independence.
What changed
She stopped automatically supplying the answer. When someone brought her a problem, she began resisting the urge to solve it on the spot. Instead, she asked them to step away, think it through and return with the options they had considered and their recommendation.
The problem might still come back to her, but it now arrived with someone else’s judgement and thinking attached.
She changed what she asked people to prepare. Before a team development day, she gave people time to reflect and asked them to arrive with their own examples, observations and ideas. They came ready to contribute rather than waiting for her to provide the answers.
It was a relatively small change in process, but it began to change who was doing the thinking in the room.
Her language changed and she could hear the difference. Some of the feedback she found most valuable concerned the specific words she was using: the distinction between a genuine question and a suggestion dressed up as one.
She created time to reflect on situations she would normally have moved straight past. In her own words, this was something she would not usually have done without the sessions. That is a large part of what a coaching hour offers a busy senior leader: protected space to examine not only what happened, but the part they may have played in it.
What had not changed yet
The team development day showed early movement, but not a complete shift. The preparation helped: people arrived with examples, reflections and ideas rather than waiting for her to provide the answers. However, by the end of the engagement, the team was not yet consistently demonstrating the level of initiative and proactivity she wanted to see.
That was not unexpected. Three hours of coaching had begun to change how one leader responded; it had not yet changed every habit across a team of 30. The signs were encouraging, but this was clearly work that would need to be continued and reinforced over time.
We include this because it gives a more useful picture of what a short coaching engagement can realistically achieve: meaningful movement, clearer insight and new behaviours to build on, not an overnight transformation.
There is also one thing we would now do differently. Her line manager was not involved in the engagement. This is typical of NHS Coaching Hub coaching, where the arrangement sits directly between coach and coachee. That model creates valuable confidentiality and makes coaching more accessible.
But it also meant that she changed while the system around her remained the same. Nobody above her was invited to examine what they escalated to her. Nobody around her was explicitly told that expectations were changing. She returned to the same environment, carrying responsibility for the new behaviour largely by herself.
This is one of the most common reasons leadership coaching does not achieve its full potential: the leader begins to change, but the surrounding system continues to reward the old pattern. It is why, in organisationally funded coaching, we now recommend involving the line manager at the beginning and end of the engagement.
In her own words
“Following coaching with Alison, I’ve started to take a different approach to my leadership. I now delegate more, giving individuals the space and time to think about solutions and how they would approach things themselves.
Having the time and opportunity to reflect on recent situations was really valuable. I wouldn’t normally have done that without the sessions.
The open questions, feedback and observations — particularly around some of the language I was using — really helped challenge my thinking. I appreciated the feedback, validation and the way the conversations were structured.
The sessions were more reflective than I expected, which was a good thing. Overall, the impact has been very positive and the approach is working well.”
Associate Director, Warrington NHS TrustThis coaching was provided through the NHS Coaching Hub and was free at the point of use to the client. Her feedback was given voluntarily at the end of the engagement.
For sponsors, commissioners & L&D leads
Assessing this for your organisation?
If you are a sponsor, commissioner or L&D lead rather than the individual leader, this is the part that is likely to matter most.
The organisational risk. A senior leader who becomes the single point of decision for 30 people represents both a capacity risk and a continuity risk. Their strategic time is consumed by operational escalation, their team has fewer opportunities to develop, and the wider function becomes dependent on one person’s availability.
What is repeatable. A capable leader, a capable team and a growing escalation loop. This is one of the most common patterns we see, and it is not unique to the NHS. It appears wherever a strong and conscientious operator is promoted and continues to be the person who can solve things fastest.
What is realistic. Three sessions produced meaningful change in the leader and early movement within the team. For organisationally funded work, we would usually recommend six sessions across three to six months and set expectations accordingly.
Three-way coaching
This is the change we have made since this engagement, and the approach we would now recommend for most organisationally funded coaching.
An opening session with the leader, their line manager and the coach. Together, we agree what the coaching is intended to support and what would be noticeably different if it worked. The line manager hears and contributes to those outcomes and considers their own role in creating the conditions for change.
Confidential one-to-one coaching. The leader then has six private coaching sessions. The content of those conversations remains confidential.
A closing session with all three. This is less about coaching and more about taking stock: what has changed, what remains in progress and what needs to happen next. The leader presents and the coach facilitates.
That order is deliberate. It keeps ownership with the leader and makes their development visible to someone who may influence their future opportunities. It is intended to support the leader, not to create a report about them.
Why this matters. Coaching often underdelivers not because the leader fails to change, but because they return to an environment that continues to pull them towards their old behaviour. Involving the line manager helps make the environment part of the solution rather than something the leader must work against alone.
How we would evidence it
We keep this deliberately proportionate. A leadership coaching engagement does not require an elaborate evaluation exercise, but it should produce evidence that is meaningful to the leader and organisation.
At the opening session, we ask one central question:
The answer becomes the basis for:
- Three outcome statements, expressed in the leader’s own words.
- A 0–10 self-assessment against each outcome at the beginning and end of the engagement, clearly identified as self-reported.
- One observable indicator for each outcome, something that could be seen without revealing anything confidential.
In this case, one useful observable indicator might have been:
Do team members arrive with possible options and a recommendation, or do they bring only the problem?
At the closing session, the leader presents a concise one-page summary of progress.
We keep evaluation proportionate and grounded. At the outset, we agree a small number of meaningful outcomes and observable indicators, then review what has changed at the end of the engagement.
What this would cost you
The engagement described above was funded through the NHS Coaching Hub, so it cost the client nothing. For transparency, this is what the equivalent support costs privately.
Three sessions
Enough to explore the pattern and begin making changes.
£675
Six sessions
The full leadership coaching programme.
£1,200
Six sessions with three-way coaching
The organisational programme: line manager involvement at both ends, agreed outcomes and a concise closing summary.
£1,800
Start with three sessions if you are unsure. Continue to the full six within eight weeks and the remaining balance is £525, so you pay no more for choosing to begin with the shorter commitment. We would rather you test whether the approach is valuable than commit to a longer programme before you have experienced the work.
Three-way coaching is designed for organisationally funded engagements, and we do not offer it alongside the three-session block. Two additional facilitated meetings around only three hours of coaching would create a disproportionate amount of structure for a very short intervention.
There are also situations where three-way coaching would not be appropriate. For example, when the leader needs to explore their relationship with their line manager, or that relationship is itself part of the coaching focus, the standard confidential programme may be a better fit. We will discuss this openly and recommend the approach that best protects the usefulness of the coaching.
Before any paid engagement, we offer a complimentary 60-minute coaching session. Bring a real leadership challenge and use the time to work on it. It is a genuine coaching session, not a disguised sales call, and by the end you should have a much clearer sense of whether the approach is useful for you.
Ready to test the approach?
Bring a real leadership challenge to a complimentary 60-minute session. We’ll use the time to understand what’s happening, explore what may be contributing to it and identify a practical next step.
Book your complimentary coaching session →One Life Coaching provides one-to-one leadership coaching and leadership coaching training for middle managers and senior leaders. Coaching is delivered by one of our qualified coaches. The engagement described in this case study was delivered by Alison.
