Why You Should Let Your Team Watch You Renovate

There's a moment in almost every coaching journey, usually around the second or third session, when the client looks at me, half relieved and half panicked, and asks a version of the same question.

"How do I change overnight? How do I ease my team into this without it being a mess?"

Up until this point, most of my clients have been leading the way most people lead: by trial and error. Copying whatever their old boss did, learning the hard way what actually works, getting it wrong in front of people more times than they'd like to admit. Then we start working together, and something shifts quickly. They adjust the volume knobs on how they show up, without hiding who they are, and leadership stops feeling like a costume that never quite fit. It gets easier. Less overwhelming.

But right behind that relief comes a second realisation, and it's the one that actually worries them: the way they lead is about to change, visibly, in front of the same people who've watched them lead the old way, sometimes for years. This transition is never seamless, and it's never unnoticed. Expect it to be clumsy in places, at least for a while 

I tell them all the same thing, and I'll tell you too: you're not becoming a different leader. You're the same person. You just know better.

The overnight leader is a myth, and a dangerous one

We've all been sold this idea that insight should arrive like a lightning strike. One good session and you're magically a different person, standing there smoking slightly, suddenly capable of things you couldn't do yesterday. You walk into the office as a completely reconstructed human being, and hope nobody asks what happened overnight.

It's a lovely fantasy. It's also the fastest way to make your team deeply suspicious of you.

Think about what it actually looks like from their perspective. Someone who has managed you a certain way for many years suddenly starts asking open questions and listening instead of loading their next point while you're still talking. Your team isn't going to think "how wonderful, they've grown." They're going to think "what's wrong" or, worse, "what do they want from me now."

Sudden transformation reads as suspicious. Gradual honesty reads as trustworthy. That's not a soft skill. That's just how humans process change in people they've already formed an opinion about.

Vulnerability is the mechanism

Here's what I've learned watching hundreds of capable, exhausted, long-tenured leaders go through this process: the shift that really works isn't insight applied quietly in the background. It's the journey said out loud to the people who'll be affected by it.

The version of this that works sounds something like: "I'm working with a leadership coach because I want to be able to do this better than I currently do. That's new for me, and if I'm honest, a bit scary. I'll be trying things I haven't tried before, because I want this to genuinely improve how I lead and how well I support you. It might look clumsy while I find my feet. I'd really value your feedback along the way, so I can actually lock in the learning."

That's not weakness dressed up as growth. It's simply true, and saying it out loud does more for your credibility than months of quietly trying.

So when a client worries their team will be confused by the change, here's what I say. It's not a different leader they're going to meet. It's the same one, with the layers of emulation, performance and low-grade suffering slowly getting stripped away, like someone finally taking their coat off after wearing it every day during summer.

Context is important

You don't have to deliver the full speech every time. Once your team knows what your focus is, the day-to-day version can be short. Something like, "I'm working on how I show up in meetings, so if I seem to be pausing more than usual, that's deliberate. I'm not having a stroke."

This does two things. First, it gives your team a frame for the change, so they're not baffled trying to understand what's going on, or drawing their own conclusions, which are usually worse than the truth. Second, and this is the part my clients love once they hear it, it means they can blame me. "My coach has me trying something new" is a wonderfully freeing sentence. It gives you room to be clumsy. Your team will be more forgiving.

I've watched leaders try to hide the work entirely, terrified that admitting to coaching makes them look like they needed fixing. It has the opposite effect. Teams don't lose respect for leaders who say "I'm working on this." They lose respect for leaders who won't be human first. The ones who hide their journey usually see it as a weakness to manage, even a kind of punishment for not already being finished. People follow people. Not robots.

The power is in the feedback

Once you've told people what you're working on, the next move is to invite them into it. Ask them how the shift is landing for them, specifically, not in general terms.

Be ready for what happens next, because it's rarely a flood of thoughtful commentary. Usually it's silence. Sometimes it's a jaw-dropping look of confusion, the kind that says they can't quite believe you just asked that question.

Sit in the silence anyway. Don't fill it, don't rescue the moment, don't laugh it off. The discomfort is doing something useful. It's showing your team that you can ask a genuine question and survive not getting an immediate answer. That's a leadership skill in itself.

The point of asking isn't really about the feedback you get back, although some of it will be gold once people trust that you meant it. The point is what it reveals about you. It helps them see you're human, fallible, and genuinely trying.

More renovation than demolition

I think about it the way you'd think about a house renovation. Some parts of how you lead are just dated, the mission brown and apricot of your leadership style, choices that have been embarrassing you for years. Some parts still work perfectly well and just need a fresh coat of paint. Some parts genuinely need to be pulled out and rebuilt from scratch, because no amount of styling will fix a structure that was never right.

What most of my clients have, without exception, is good bones. A strong foundation of care, competence and intent that got buried under years of DIY. The work isn't demolishing the house and starting again. It's an honest inspection, not a teardown.

That's why it never happens overnight, nor should it. You can't properly renovate a house in a weekend. Real change in how you lead is the same.

Every leader I've worked with who tried to force overnight change ended up either reverting or burning themselves out trying to maintain a performance of a performance. Every leader who said, "I'm figuring some things out, bear with me," built more trust than the ones who tried to fake it.

You were never meant to become a different leader. You were meant to strip back the layers of wallpaper, the performance, the emulation, the years of doing what worked for someone else, until what was underneath the whole time finally gets some daylight.