Coaching With Clear Intention
Good coaching depends on more than asking thoughtful questions. It requires a conversation in
which both people understand what is being explored, why it matters, and what should happen
next. The CLEAR Communication Model offers coaches and leaders a practical way to create
that understanding.
Stay Curious About the Leader You’re Becoming
Leadership development often focuses on becoming better at something: communicating more clearly, making stronger decisions, building trust, managing conflict, or navigating change. We learn models, develop skills, gain experience, and gradually form ideas about what good
leadership looks like. Along the way, however, we can also become increasingly certain about who
we are as leaders.
Experience gives us good reason for some of that confidence. We learn what works. We recognize
situations we have encountered before. We develop instincts that allow us to respond without
having to reconsider every decision from the beginning. But experience can also make it easier to
stop being curious about ourselves. What began as a deliberate leadership choice can eventually
become simply “the way I lead.”
Curiosity offers another way to think about leadership development. It also has an important relationship with understanding. Curiosity keeps understanding open. When we remain curious, we leave room for something we have not yet noticed, considered, or learned. That matters when we are trying to understand an organization or another person, but it matters just as much when the subject we are trying to understand is ourselves.