3 Lessons From Last Week's Leadership Coaching Sessions

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Sometimes the best lessons come from watching your peers solve similar problems. That’s why the group coaching in our MGMT Accelerator is so highly rated.

Here’s a peek behind the curtain. Three actual cases where our proven frameworks meet the messy reality of leadership.

These aren’t hypotheticals.

They’re the real conversations of leaders working to move their teams forward.

1. The High-Performer Dilemma: When Forced Curves Meet a Great Team

The Situation:
You’ve built a high-performing team. Everyone’s delivering. Now HR says you have to fit people into a 9-box. Some “top.” Some “middle.” some “Bottom.” A demoralizing proposition when you’ve worked tirelessly to build a high-performing team.

My Coaching:

• Get your team to embrace reality: The bar always rises. In high-performing organizations, “good” is a moving target. If you’re not getting better, you’re falling behind. And AI isn’t just accelerating this reality, it’s making it exponential. Even Arsenal has a “worst” player.

• Fight back: Don’t follow systems that don’t make sense. This is real ownership. This is the courage required of real leaders. If you know your team is outperforming, use data to make your case. Escalate as high as you have to. Just make sure your team is truly stacked top to bottom.

• Export talent, don’t hoard it. If you can’t promote everyone, help your best people find bigger opportunities elsewhere. Your reputation as a talent developer will attract more A-players. Let your brand fuel a perpetual motion machine of talent.

2. From Expectations to Agreements: Getting Real Accountability

The Situation:
You’ve got team members who aren’t meeting expectations. Every time you confront them, you get a new excuse. You feel stuck.

The Coaching:

• Vague expectations = vague results. If you’re not getting what you want, check if you’ve made it explicit. “This is the standard” isn’t a fair standard.

• Turn expectations into agreements. Co-author what success looks like, by when, and how you’ll measure it. Have them agree to it explicitly. In writing. People are more likely to deliver on what they’ve helped define.

• Dig for the real blocker. Don’t stop at the first excuse. Use the “5 Whys” to get to the root cause. Is it skill, will, or something structural?

• Revisit and reinforce. Accountability isn’t a one-and-done. Make agreements living documents, not set-and-forget.

• Power and culture matter. Sometimes, escalation is a sign of a healthy system, not a failing one. Make it clear that surfacing blockers is part of the job.

3. Transforming Culture and Performance of an Established Team

The Situation:
You inherit a team with mixed performance and a transactional, not transformational, approach to work. You want to raise the bar.

The Coaching:

• Start with curiosity, not judgment. Spend your first weeks learning the people, the history, and the unwritten rules. Don’t rush to fix what you don’t understand.

• Synthesize and co-author the new standard. Use “keep, stop, start” to clarify what behaviors and practices should continue, end, or begin. Invite the team to help shape the new chapter.

• Declare a new day one. If you want to change the culture, you have to mark the shift. Give people a clear choice to opt in to the new way—or opt out.

• Align incentives and feedback. Reward what you want to see, address what you don’t. Don’t let legacy behaviors slide just because “that’s how it’s always been.”

• Culture change is a process, not an event. Set the new standard, reinforce it, and build momentum with early wins.

The Takeaway

Frameworks are only as good as your willingness to apply them.

The best leaders don’t just learn the playbook.
They apply it, adapt it, and make it their own.

And they get help from other leaders along the way.

Lead on,
Dave & Mar