HOW OUR LEADERSHIP COACHING WORKS
The Principles Behind Our Executive Coaching
Our leadership coaching method is built on six principles drawn from Integral Coaching®, developmental psychology, and decades of working with senior leaders. Each principle reflects what we’ve learned about how lasting leadership transformation actually happens — not in theory, but in the real complexity of organizational life.
Most leadership development programs treat growth like a skills gap — identify the deficit, deliver the training, check the box. It's measurable, efficient, and rarely creates lasting change.
Research from Harvard Business Review confirms what most leaders already sense: traditional leadership training transfers less than 15% of content into sustained behavioral change. The reason isn’t poor content — it’s that real leadership development requires working with the whole person in their actual context.
Our approach is different. We don’t treat leadership as a set of competencies to acquire. We treat it as a way of being to develop — through practice, awareness, and the honest work of seeing your own patterns clearly.
Our Executive Coaching Principles
Six Principles That Guide Every Engagement
Every executive coaching engagement at Ways of Being is shaped by six principles. These aren’t aspirational statements — they are active commitments that shape how we work with every leader, in every session.
They reflect what Integral Coaching® and systems thinking have taught us about how leaders actually grow: not through instruction, but through a disciplined practice of seeing clearly, leading consciously, and integrating change into the fabric of daily leadership.
Multiple Perspectives, Deeper Clarity
Every leader’s view reveals something true — and every view is incomplete. In our business coaching approach, we help leaders see their challenges from multiple angles: their own experience, their team’s reality, the organizational system, and the patterns they can’t see from inside. This is where real leadership insight begins.
Partnership, Not Prescription
Your leadership coach isn’t an advisor who tells you what to do. We meet as partners in your development — stewarding your growth, not directing it. This means we don’t diagnose or prescribe. We help you see your own system clearly and trust your own development process. Research shows that self-directed insight is 3x more likely to produce lasting behavioral change than external advice.
See Clearly Before You Act
The most effective leaders don’t react faster — they see more clearly. Our executive coaching builds this capacity first: the ability to pause, notice your own patterns in real time, and choose your response rather than defaulting to habit. This is the foundation of what leadership development researchers call “vertical development” — growing not just what you know, but how you make sense of what you know.
Sustainable Pace, Lasting Change
Leadership development that burns leaders out in the process defeats its own purpose. We work with the natural rhythm of growth: challenge and recovery, practice and reflection, intensity and integration. This is why our coaching engagements typically span 6-12 months — because lasting change in how you lead requires time to take root in your actual leadership, not just your understanding.
Leadership Lives in the Body
Your body carries your leadership patterns: the tension in your shoulders before a difficult conversation, the pace of your breath when you’re making a high-stakes decision, the energy you bring into a room. Our coaching includes embodied practices that help you access and shift these patterns directly — because the most powerful leadership changes happen below the level of conscious thought.
Your Organization Is Part of the Picture
Leadership doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your organizational culture, team dynamics, industry pressures, and structural constraints all shape how you lead — and how your leadership lands. Our approach integrates your real-world context into every coaching conversation. This systems-level view is what distinguishes our integral executive coaching from approaches that work on the leader in isolation.
"The practice of great leadership is simple — but not easy. It asks you to be present with what is, see your own patterns honestly, and lead from that clarity. When leaders do this consistently, everything changes — their decisions, their relationships, and the cultures they create."
– Ways of Being
Client Testimonial
Leadership Presence Is the Foundation
Ultimately, the most impactful thing any leader brings to their role is their presence — the quality of attention, composure, and genuine connection they offer in every interaction. Our executive coaching develops this capacity directly: not as an abstract concept, but as a practical, embodied skill that transforms how you lead in meetings, in crises, and in the quiet moments between.
Ready to find
your way?
If this resonates with you, perhaps it’s time to begin your own practice, to explore what it means to live, lead, and relate from your true way of being.
Prefer to chat first? Send us an email or connect with us on social — we’re always happy to help.