The Question That Changes Everything

There’s a question I ask every leader I coach, usually somewhere in the first few sessions, and almost without exception it produces a pause that tells me everything.

The question is this: When did you last say something true that cost you something? 

Not true in the sense of factually accurate. True in the sense of honest. Honest about what you actually think, what you actually see, what you actually believe needs to change. True in the way that requires courage rather than just clarity.

The pause that follows isn’t nothing. It’s a leader meeting themselves.

What coaching actually is

I think there’s still a version of coaching in people's minds that is either remedial (something you are sent to when you are failing) or performative (something you do to collect a certificate that says you care about development).

What I do is neither of those things.

The leaders I work with aren’t struggling in the conventional sense. Most of them are high-performing, respected, genuinely committed to doing good work. What they share is something quieter than failure. A sense of operating slightly below the surface of themselves. Doing what is required and doing it well, while something that is harder to name stays unexplored.

Sometimes that unexplored thing is a conversation they have been avoiding for months because they aren’t sure they can have it without making it worse. Sometimes it’s a decision they have reached privately but can’t bring themselves to act on, because acting on it means accepting a discomfort they aren’t yet ready for. Sometimes it’s a pattern in their relationships (with their team, with their peers, or with their own leadership) that they can see from a certain angle but can’t quite address.

This is the terrain of coaching. Not skill-building, though sometimes skills matter. Not problem-solving, though sometimes a problem needs solving. It’s the work of becoming more honest about what is actually true, for you, in this moment of your leadership, and finding out what that honesty makes possible.

What I see in the room

I work with a lot of women leaders, and there’s something I observe in those conversations with particular frequency that I want to name, because I think it deserves to be said out loud.

Many women arrive in senior leadership roles having become very, very good at reading the room and adjusting accordingly. They have learned what gets rewarded. They have learned which qualities to lead with and which to hold back. They have developed a finely tuned ability to make themselves acceptable in environments that weren’t designed with them in mind, and they have paid a price for it that isn’t usually named in their performance reviews.

That price is the distance between who they are and who they are performing. 

In coaching, the work is often about closing that distance. Helping women leaders reconnect with their actual perspective, their actual values, and their actual way of seeing, not the version they have refined for palatability. The version that has been refined for palatability, while it may have got them to the room, doesn’t usually produce the kind of leadership that stays with people, that shapes cultures and that builds the trust it takes for teams to do their genuinely best work.

Authentic leadership isn’t a style, it’s a practice, and it’s a practice that requires knowing yourself (honestly, not aspirationally) first.

The moment it shifts

I have sat with leaders in the moment when something shifts. It isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s a single sentence said differently than the sentences before it. Sometimes it’s a decision that was previously too frightening to name, named and then claimed. Sometimes it’s a tearful recognition that what they have been calling strength has actually been avoidance, dressed in very professional clothing.

What those moments share is that they are real and unperformed. The leader isn’t managing how they appear, they’re just present with what’s true.

From that place, everything is different. Not easier, necessarily, but clearer. And clarity, in my experience, is the beginning of everything useful.

If you lead a team, run an organisation, or if you are somewhere in the middle of a career that looks successful from the outside while something on the inside is restless or uncertain or simply ready for something more honest; I want you to know that this work is available to you.

Not because something is wrong with you, but because something in you knows there is more.

A question to sit with

I want to leave you with the question I leave many of my coaching clients with at the end of a session. Not to answer immediately, but to carry.

What is the most honest thing you know right now that you haven't said yet?

It doesn't have to be said today. But it’s worth knowing what it is.

For further reading

• Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés — not a business book, but one of the most profound things I have read on what it means to reclaim the wild, instinctive, knowing parts of ourselves that social conditioning has trained us to suppress

Grace Mosuro is an executive coach, organisational culture specialist, and founder of Aquaintz Consulting. She works with women leaders and senior teams to do the honest, courageous work that real leadership requires. She is also a speaker, an autistic woman diagnosed at 42, and a breast cancer thriver.

To explore coaching or to invite Grace to speak at your event or podcast, visit aquaintzconsulting.co.uk or book a discovery call at tidycal.com/gracemosuro/20241014174023