Let’s do this one differently. Instead of a lecture, imagine you’re sitting across from a coach, and you just said the thing every manager eventually says.
“I don’t know what to do. Every option feels wrong.”
Good. That’s usually where the useful conversation actually starts.
So, what happens next in a coaching session?
The coach doesn’t give you an answer. That’s the part that surprises people most, especially managers who came from fields where the fastest, most confident answer wins. A good coach asks something like, “Wrong for who? Wrong by what measure?” Suddenly, the vague dread in your chest must become specific. Is this a financial risk? A trust risk? A risk to your own credibility? Those are three different problems with wearing the same nervous feeling.
Why not just tell the manager what to do? Wouldn’t that be faster?
Faster, sure. Useful long term, not really. If a coach solves your dilemma today, you’re back next month with a different version of the same dilemma, because the underlying decision-making muscle never got exercised. Coaching is built on the idea that you already have more of the answer inside you than you think, buried under stress, deadline pressure, and the fear of getting it wrong in front of people who report to you.
Okay, but big decisions have real consequences. Isn’t “figure it out yourself” a bit risky?
This is where the method matters. Most coaches use some version of a structured framework to keep a hard decision from turning into an anxious spiral. A few favorites:
The 10-10-10 rule, made popular by Suzy Welch. How will I feel about this in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years? It’s disarmingly simple, and it separates panic from actual consequence.
Pre-mortems. Instead of asking what could go right, the coach asks you to imagine the decision failed spectacularly six months from now, then work backward to figure out why. It surfaces blind spots that pure optimism tends to hide.
Values check. Which option keeps you closest to the leader you actually want to be, not the leader who is scared of Slack messages at 9pm?
None of this hand you an answer either. They just make the fog easier to walk through.
What does this actually sound like in a session?
Picture an operations manager deciding whether to let go of a long-tenured but underperforming employee. On their own, they’d spiral between guilt and avoidance for weeks. In a coaching conversation, the coach might ask: What does keeping this person cost the rest of the team? What message does inaction send about your standards? What’s the actual evidence here, versus the story you’re telling yourself about being “the bad guy”?
By the end, the manager usually already knows. They just needed someone to hold the mirror steadily long enough to look.
Is this only for huge, dramatic decisions?
No, and this is where a lot of managers underestimate coaching. The smaller decisions, whether to push back on a client, how to handle a peer who keeps overstepping, when to promote someone who isn’t quite ready, are where the muscle gets built. By the time the big one shows up, the manager has already practiced the process a dozen times on lower-stakes calls.
So, what’s the actual point of having a coach in the room?
Speed and clarity, mostly. Not the speed of a quick answer, but the speed of not spending three sleepless weeks circling the same worry. A coach shortens the distance between “I’m stuck” and “I see it clearly now,” because they’re trained to ask the one question you keep avoiding asking yourself.
At Yuwab, this is essentially the whole job description. Our coaches specialize in walking managers through exactly this kind of pressure, matching each person with someone who has actually made calls like this before, not just studying them in a textbook.
Difficult decisions don’t get easier because you found a formula. They get easier because you stopped making them alone.
