You can transform your coaching and the effectiveness of your leadership in fifteen minutes.
I do it in my workshops, and I always start with some facts of leadership, including: You need your people more than they need you.
To prove it, I ask participants to imagine how effective their team would be working without them for two days. Most people believe their team would be 70-100% as effective as usual, with no huge change. Then I flip it: What if only the leader showed up and the team didn’t?
The room always laughs, because they know the answer. Productivity would collapse.
This proves the facts of leadership, to be 100% true. And in that moment, the philosophy becomes obvious:
A leader must do everything in their power to help their team be as good as they can be, because when they succeed then you succeed as a leader.
And that’s where the fifteen‑minute activity begins, helping people experience what effective coaching really looks like.
The Height Activity Exercise
Each person stands facing a wall with a large sheet of paper. I set the rules first then model the behaviour first, showing them how to follow the rules to help them draw the highest line you can draw.
Everyone follows the same instructions. They repeat the rules, I motivate them, and watch carefully as each person draws their line.
Then I make a point of marking a point two or three inches above the highest line and tell them we’re doing it again with the goal: to improve by that much.
They laugh. They think it’s “impossible.” They’ve already given their best. They haven’t grown taller in the last two minutes. But then I coach them and everything changes. We don’t just talk about it, they experience being coached.
Then they draw again.
And the “impossible” happens.
Lines rise, sometimes by six inches and the room buzzes with disbelief and excitement.
The Lesson
We debrief: “How does a coach help you improve when you’ve already given your best?”
People don’t talk about theory. They talk about what they felt: the mindset shift, the energy, the encouragement, the belief. They talk about seeing someone model the behaviour first, and how that changed what they thought was possible.
In fifteen minutes, they’ve lived the core elements of great coaching:
● Clear expectations
● A starting benchmark
● A coach who models the standard
● Real‑time support and feedback
Why It Works
What makes this activity powerful isn’t the line on the wall, it’s the experience of being coached.
They see where they started, they see where they finished, and they realise they had more in them the whole time. It’s more powerful than any lecture or piece of academia, it teaches through doing rather than seeing.
And for leaders, the message is just as clear:
When you coach well – your team succeeds, and when they succeed, you succeed.
‘Leaders As Coaches’
Empowering your leaders to coach your team to deliver 10/10.
Through our award-winning two-day ‘Leaders as Coaches‘ program, your leaders will learn the techniques, behaviours and skills required to help their teams succeed in delivering service standards, ensuring your customers return and spend more.
Interested to know more? Let’s Chat
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Warm Regards
Craig Cherry