“I would like you to coach my team, but not with the usual leadership development stuff. I want you to coach us to develop and drive an audacious new strategy.”

That was the brief a CEO gave me a few years ago, and it turned into one of the most satisfying pieces of work of my career.

Why “Not Leadership Development”? Not because she didn’t believe in it — her company had invested heavily in strong leadership. But because in her experience, traditional leadership training didn’t move the needle on strategy execution.

She needed to:

Overcome stagnation
Build unity
Navigate difficult personalities
And raise the bar on collective competence

If you sense that “leadership development” is not the solution you are looking for, perhaps you can bring the team together and ask the questions:

What would it take for us to get big, hard things done together?

It’s a great feeling when the team articulates who they want to become, and the start of a fantastic journey.