The Coaching School

Welcome to The Coaching School—the podcast where leadership development is taught like a cooking school.

We've reimagined our long-running Coaching Conversations podcast into a practical, engaging learning experience designed to help leaders become exceptional coaches.

At The Coaching School, we believe coaching isn't a personality trait—it's a skill that can be learned, practiced, and mastered.

Every episode gives you another ingredient, another recipe, or another secret sauce you can immediately use to develop your people.

Our Coaching Ingredients are the different types of coaching every leader should know—from one-on-one coaching and group coaching to peer coaching, observational coaching, career coaching, self-coaching, and AI-assisted coaching.

Our Coaching Recipes combine those ingredients into proven, step-by-step approaches for real workplace challenges. Whether you're coaching accountability, motivation, communication, teamwork, difficult attitudes, performance improvement, emotional intelligence, or career development, we'll show you exactly how to structure the conversation.

Then we share the Secret Sauces—the small coaching techniques that create extraordinary results. You'll discover powerful questions, accountability strategies, learning projects, recognition techniques, feedback models, motivational approaches, and practical coaching habits that transform ordinary conversations into meaningful moments of growth.

Every episode is designed to be practical, actionable, and easy to apply. Our goal is simple: help leaders feel more confident coaching their employees while helping employees feel great about getting better.

Whether you're a new supervisor, an experienced executive, an HR professional, a coach, or someone passionate about developing people, The Coaching School will provide you with the tools, frameworks, and confidence to coach more effectively.

So grab your notebook, pull up a chair in our coaching kitchen, and let's start cooking up stronger leaders, stronger teams, and stronger workplace cultures.

The Coaching School—where great leaders learn the recipes that help people grow.

All Episodes

The Coaching School

The Power of "I Am"

July 22, 2025 • Tim Hagen

0:00 | 3:26

Send us Fan Mail

What if two minutes of your day could completely transform your team's performance and eliminate workplace conflict? That's exactly what happened when one skeptical leader implemented a simple practice of positive affirmations with their team.

The power of "I am" statements is nothing new, but its application in professional settings remains underutilized. Drawing from observations of athletes like Kyrie Irving and business leaders from Shark Tank, this episode explores how intentional self-talk literally rewires our brains for success. When we repeatedly tell ourselves "I am going to be a great coach" or "I am going to listen to the next five people I talk to," we're not just engaging in wishful thinking—we're programming our neural pathways to notice opportunities aligned with these statements.

The beauty of this practice lies in its simplicity and accessibility. No special equipment, expensive consultants, or complex frameworks required—just a commitment to spending a few minutes daily focusing on positive affirmations. One leader who tried this approach with their team was initially concerned their team would find it "dumb," but the results spoke for themselves. Week after week, performance improved, team mood elevated, and most surprisingly, conflict disappeared entirely. Even outside observers commented on the positive shift: "Your team's in a good mood lately."

Ready to transform your team dynamics with the power of intentional self-talk? Try implementing "I am" statements in your daily routine and watch as these tiny seeds of positivity grow into tangible results. What three things will you affirm today?

Welcome to Coaching Conversations

We have created a NEW and Innovative line of books called Workplace Coaching Books. These books use QR codes with embedded audio and video lessons speaking directly to the reader. Each book comes with assessments and journal based coaching pages where they document what they've learned and what they've applied. In addition each book comes with the self analysis link that prompts them to share what they've learned and what they've put into action leading to greater learner application a

Coaching Talks is a dynamic leadership development speaking series customized to your needs. Need help spreading the value and application of workplace coaching? Let us help:

We provide many styles of speaking services:

We provide virtual keynotes
We specialize in 4 part virtual series (we always customize)
We have a unique feature called "Speaker Tracks" where we send to all audience members reinforcement lessons after the talk (to the pc or cell phone), thus keeping people on track after the talk

Get More Info Here: https://form.jotform.com/241193119118149

The Power of Positive Affirmations

Speaker 1 0:37

You know this is an old concept and that is positive affirmations . And I just saw a post on Facebook and Kyrie Irving and it was someone from Shark Tank was talking about the power of positive affirmations . Specifically I am , I am going to make it to the NBA , I am going to lead a great class , I am going to be a great teammate , I am going to listen to people and when you tell yourself stuff like that for a couple of minutes a day , over and over again , it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy . You basically trigger the brain to be attentive to that thought . Now I'm not going to get into all the physiology or the neurology of the brain , because I'm not smart enough , but when they were mentioning this in this article , it was talking about how the brain reacts to self-talk . I am going to be successful . I am going to be a great coach . I am going to be less confrontational in this meeting . I am going to listen to the next five people I talk and what you do is you coach yourself , you trigger yourself to be in the moment , to be attentive . We don't do that enough . So think about having

Self-Talk That Triggers Success

Speaker 1 1:46

your people , even if they do it silently to themselves . I am , and just list out five things they want to accomplish during the week .

Speaker 1 1:56

We just had somebody do this and the leader called and said you know , I didn't want to do it because I thought they were going to think it's dumb . I noticed a difference and he said nothing specific , nothing that you put into a chart . It just seemed like it was a great week . So we did it again the next week . So now just choose three things , and you're going to start with I am . If you want to do it out loud , if you want to go to a conference room and do it out loud a couple minutes a day , take a break in the afternoon , repeat those positive affirmations . They work . Everybody Calls me up and he said again , we had a great week . As a matter of fact , somebody said boy , your team's in a good mood . And he said I can't think of a piece of conflict that we had with each other or an element of conflict . See when we talk .