You have "coaching conversations" with your team. Career chats, problem-solving sessions, one-to-ones where you share your experience and point people in the right direction.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most of those conversations aren't coaching. They're mentoring. Powerful, well-intentioned, and the wrong tool for what you're trying to build. Because advice creates dependence, and coaching creates capability.
In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis breaks down the difference, why it matters more than almost any other leadership skill gap, and how genuine coaching skill transforms your team, your calendar and your career.
What's covered:
➡️ The mentoring trap — why the conversations you call coaching are almost certainly advice-giving, why that's made you the bottleneck, and the test that tells you which one you're doing
➡️ Advice creates dependence, coaching creates capability — the mechanism behind why your team brings you the same problems over and over
➡️ The Ignite Framework: Reverse, Neutral, Forward — the diagnostic at the heart of real coaching: "Reverse is 'this is happening to me'. Neutral is 'this is what's happening'. Forward is 'here's what I can do about it'. Same facts, three completely different relationships to them."
➡️ The two counterfeit states — False Neutral (calm that's really collapse) and False Forward (a plan laid over an unaddressed feeling), and why missing them is where most well-meaning leadership conversations go wrong
➡️ The 5-minute coaching conversation — you don't need an hour; you need the diagnosis and three good questions
➡️ What changes when you lead this way — the team that solves its own problems, the calendar that comes back to you, and the leadership reputation that follows
➡️ Where Ignite Coach Academy fits — the September cohort, the certification path, and the Self-Coaching + Coaching in Your 1:1s bonus module built for exactly this
If you're tired of being the answer machine, this is the episode that shows you the way out.
Useful links:
Ignite Coach Academy — enrolling now for the September cohort (starts Monday 14 September, enrollment closes Friday 11 September): tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy
Book a complimentary chat with Toni about whether Ignite is right for you: tonicollis.com/lets-chat
