Three Questions I Return to in my Coaching Supervision – and have meaning for every leader

After decades in leadership roles and many years working as an executive and team coach, I have become less interested in adding tools. What matters more now is subtraction. Clarity. Restraint. And the courage to look at myself honestly.

That is why coaching supervision has become a discipline in my work, not as a formality, but as a place where I deliberately step out of the expert role and examine my own patterns, reactions, and choices. Often with the help of other coaches.

Over the past year, three questions have repeatedly surfaced. I return to them not as exercises to complete, but as mirrors. They are simple questions. And they are demanding ones.

1. Which patterns in others affect me so strongly that they say something about me?

There are moments in coaching when a client’s behavior triggers a reaction that feels sharper than the situation warrants.

• A leader who keeps explaining instead of owning.
• Someone who intellectualizes every emotion.
• A team that accelerates when it is clearly avoiding something essential.

When I notice irritation or impatience, I pause. Not because the observation about the other person is necessarily wrong, but because the intensity of my reaction is information about me.

Strong reactions are rarely neutral. They often point to something familiar:

• a pattern I recognize,
• a behavior I have wrestled with myself,
• or a value that feels threatened.

In supervision, I ask myself:

• Why does this touch me so strongly?
• What is this revealing about my own leadership journey?

That question keeps me precise rather than judgmental and grounded as well as humble.

2. Where have I helped leaders too much, and taken something away from them as a result?

Experience brings pattern recognition. You see faster. You connect dots more quickly. You know how situations are likely to unfold. The risk is subtle but real: you start pre-empting learning.

I have caught myself doing it.

• Clarifying too early.
• Structuring too neatly.
• Offering language that leaders then adopt instead of discovering their own.

It looks like support. But it can quietly undermine ownership.

Leadership is not strengthened by being rescued from complexity. It is strengthened by staying with it long enough to develop judgment, confidence, and responsibility.

In supervision, I ask: “did I create clarity, or did I remove the struggle that would have created it?”

Sometimes the most professional intervention is restraint.

• Allowing silence.
• Letting confusion exist a little longer.
• Resisting the urge to be helpful.

That is not passivity. It is respect.

3. When did I consciously choose to slow down while speed was expected?

Modern organizations are biased toward motion.

• Speed is rewarded.
• Decisiveness is celebrated.
• Pausing is often misread as hesitation.

Yet most leadership failures I have seen did not come from lack of action, but from lack of reflection.

When tension rises, I increasingly choose to slow things down. Not to block decisions, but to improve them. That choice is rarely popular.

• Clients expect momentum.
• Teams want answers.
• Boards want progress.

But the moments where slowing down feels uncomfortable are often the moments where something essential is trying to surface:

• an unspoken conflict,
• a misaligned assumption,
• a decision driven by avoidance rather than clarity.

In supervision, I examine whether my choice to slow down came from conviction or caution. The difference matters.

What leaders can learn from this

Although these questions come from coaching supervision, they are not “coach-only” reflections. They translate directly into leadership practice.

1. Your strongest reactions are data

What irritates or triggers you is not a distraction, it is information. Leaders who learn to read their own reactions lead with more awareness and less reactivity.

2. Helping too much weakens leadership around you

Support is not the same as ownership. When leaders constantly step in, they unintentionally train dependency. Stepping back at the right moment builds capability and accountability.

3. Slowing down can be the most decisive act

Speed does not equal progress. Leaders who dare to pause at critical moments create better decisions, stronger alignment, and more sustainable outcomes.

Taken together, these lessons help leaders shift:

• from reaction to intention
• from control to trust
• from activity to impact

Not louder leadership.
Not faster leadership.
But cleaner leadership, leadership that is conscious, grounded, and sustainable.

A closing reflection

If there is one question I regularly bring into my own supervision, and into my work with leaders, it is this:

Where might I be acting quickly, helpfully, or decisively – and unintentionally holding others back?

That is often where real leadership development begins.