What do Pep Guardiola, Phil Jackson, and your mom have in common?

They’re all world-class coaches without being better than the people they’re teaching. In other words, they combine a leadership mindset and a coaching mindset to achieve amazing things.

In this article, we’ll explore this crucial mindset shift for leaders and the value of embracing that you aren’t the smartest person in the room, and how in leadership, it’s probably a bad thing if you are the smartest. We'll also look at how this can create the structure and space for others to thrive, and how you can deliver the support needed to drive business growth.

Let’s get acquainted with the concepts of leadership mindsets vs coaching mindsets, shall we?

What’s The Difference Between a Leadership Mindset and a Coaching Mindset?

The best leaders, be it in the world of sports, child-rearing, or business, need to lead from the front. However, they also need to know how to grow from the inside, which means they must understand and apply two mindsets.

1. A leadership mindset, which is all about direction, decisions and outcomes. It’s basically being strategic and thinking big picture.
2. A coaching mindset, which is all about development, reflection, and growth. This one is more personal.

Many leaders focus too heavily on leadership mindsets and don’t understand the power of coaching, but the very best leaders combine the two.

They also understand one thing after they’ve pushed their ego to one side…

You Don’t Need to Be the Best to Coach (or Lead) the Best

Here’s the truth that a lot of leaders find surprising, especially high performers who are used to being the best at everything they do.

You don’t have to be better than your team to get the best results.

Instead, you need to understand how to bring the best out of them, which is a totally different skillset.

Take Pep Guardiola, Manchester City’s current manager and one of the most successful football (soccer, if you insist) managers to grace the game. He’s led some of the best players in the world, including Lionel Messi, to countless championships, and while he had a relatively successful playing career, you wouldn’t stick 54-year-old Pep on penalties in the Champions League Final.

The same goes for Phil Jackson, who, as we all know, won 2 NBA titles as a player, but 11 as a coach, making him one of the most successful NBA coaches ever to live. Again, he wasn’t coming on as a sub in crunch time to hit the winning three pointer, but he coached those better than him to win regularly and become stars.

Then, there’s your mom, who taught you you’re A-B-Cs, how to ride a bike, and how to count to five, but whom you wouldn’t ask to write your master’s thesis.

Despite not being better than the ones they’re teaching, all three of these people have mindsets that prioritize someone else’s development over their own discomfort. That’s what coaching is all about, and it’s something leaders must embrace to achieve greatness, just like Pep, Phil, and your .

So, if you’re still trying to outsell your top salesperson or out-code your dev team, you’re probably getting in your own way, and theirs. Because your job isn’t about proving you’re better, it’s about creating the conditions for others to do their jobs brilliantly.

Time For a Cigar (Model)

No, we’re not advocating smoking, here, we’re talking about the Cigar Model, a fantastic coaching structure.

Here’s what it looks like:

• Current State: Where are we now?
• Ideal state: Where do we want to be?
• Gap: What’s missing, broken, or misunderstood?
• Actions: What needs to change?
• Review: How will we track and adapt?

Generally speaking, the Cigar Model is used for coaching conversations and encouraging a mindset shift between the coach and the coached. However, it’s also a blueprint for business growth and helps leaders differentiate between telling people what to do and helping them figure out what to do themselves.

These are those eureka-style leadership moments where everything clicks and progress starts to manifest.

A Simple Tool To Shift Your Leadership Mindset

Of course, it’s hard to emulate the success of the likes of Phil Jackson, Pep Guardiola, and your mother. However, it’s one of the biggest myths about coaching that there’s some special training needed.

What you really need is self-awareness, which is where leadership journaling can change the game.

Leadership journaling helps you build the muscle of reflection by practicing it over time. This helps you pause before taking action and ask before giving your own answer. Maybe most importantly, it helps you support instead of being overbearing, which turns reactive managers into intentional leaders.

This gives you the ability to let go of the pressure of being the expert and letting the actual experts excel in their field of expertise.

Here are some leadership journaling prompts to help you develop a coaching mindset as a leader:

• Where in your business or team do you feel the need to prove yourself?
• What would it look like to bring out someone’s best in that area instead?
• Have you ever been coached by someone who wasn’t better than you, but still helped you improve? What made that work?
• How might adopting a coaching mindset help you step back, without losing influence?

And remember, leadership journaling doesn’t have to take hours of your day, just ten minutes to reflect and spark a meaningful shift.

Final Thoughts

Exceptional leadership isn’t about dominating the room or proving you know everything. It’s about elevating others to thrive, because your value as a leader comes from your ability to help other people grow, not overshadow them.

This means that if you spend your hours trying to outwork or outsmart your team, you’re missing the point. You’re also probably missing out on serious innovation.

And the next time you find yourself caught between thinking like a leader or a coach? Ask yourself how you can use both together, rather than relying on one or the other.

Find Out What Kind of Leader You Are

Check out Episode 7 of the Stop Managing, Start Leading podcast to uncover more about your leadership mindset and how a coaching mindset could be incorporated. We also discuss the number one book for leaders, how leadership models are best used, and much more.