Your Growth Is My KPI: Why Coaches Can’t Also Be Bosses (Without Breaking Trust)

Your growth is my KPI. It sounds supportive—empowering, even. But dig a little deeper, and it reveals the quiet contradiction at the heart of leadership: the attempt to be both your coach and your boss.

Coaches are supposed to create safety, listen without judgment, and encourage growth for its own sake. Bosses, by contrast, are tasked with evaluating performance, making pay decisions, and—when it comes to it—letting people go. These roles don’t just differ; they pull in opposite psychological directions.

The Emotional Contract of Coaching

When someone shows up as your coach, you expect unconditional regard. You can speak openly, even messily. You can admit confusion, fear, or failure. Because a coach is there to support your evolution, not assess your worth.

But when that same person is also your boss, something changes. The psychological contract is broken. You might not even realize it at first. But part of you starts holding back. You wonder:

“Will this be used in my review?”
“Are they really listening—or collecting data?”
“Is this feedback safe to give?”

False Coaching: When Empowerment Becomes a Mask

The result is what I call false coaching: it looks like a coaching conversation, but the power dynamic is still in the room. Questions sound open, but they’re tied to an agenda. Reflection is encouraged—until it threatens performance.

This isn’t always done with bad intentions. In fact, it often stems from a desire to be a “better leader”. But what gets lost is the core of coaching: trust, choice, and emotional safety.

The Internal Conflict of the Leader

Trying to wear both hats also does something to the leader. You start splitting yourself. One part wants to be the empowering coach; the other feels responsible for delivery, targets, and people decisions.

Over time, this creates internal friction:

You begin to rescue people instead of helping them grow.
You confuse compassion with control.
You coach to steer outcomes rather than support emergence.

This is how even well-meaning leaders end up undermining the very trust they’re trying to build.

Organisations Loves Ambiguity—But People Don’t

Many organisations reinforce this confusion:

Job descriptions blend “servant leadership” with line management.
Coaching and performance review get rolled into the same 1-on-1.
HR systems ask managers to track development and drive output.

The result is systemic ambiguity. And in ambiguous systems, people default to self-protection. They say what they think you want to hear. They stop taking real risks. Innovation dries up—not from lack of creativity, but from lack of safety.

What Can We Do Instead?

Let’s stop pretending we can master both roles simultaneously without cost. Here are better options:

Separate the roles. Let someone else coach your team if you’re also responsible for performance management.
Name the hat you’re wearing. Be explicit: “Right now I’m your manager. In this context, I can’t promise confidentiality.”
Use shared coaching models. Train peer coaches, use external facilitators, or build coaching into retrospectives.
Redesign the system. Structure feedback, performance, and development processes to align with clear psychological boundaries.

Leadership Without the Hero Mask

Organisations don’t need more heroes. It needs more honest, self-aware systems of support. If you really care about someone’s growth, don’t make it conditional on your KPIs. Create the space, get out of the way, and trust the process.

Because the paradox is this:

You can’t coach someone whose fear of you outweighs their trust in you.