How founders can grow a business without turning every coaching conversation into more pressure
By Andy Hosgood | Unlock with Coaching
There is a particular kind of tiredness I hear from business owners. They are ambitious. They care about their people and customers. They have ideas for where the business could go. But their days are already full of decisions, interruptions and unfinished work.
They seek business coaching because they want clarity and room to think. Sometimes they leave with a fresh plan and an even longer list. They return a fortnight later having done little of it, feeling that they have somehow failed at coaching as well as everything else.
If that sounds familiar, I want to offer a different question: What if the problem is not your commitment, but the amount of change the plan expects you to carry?
I am not arguing that coaching should avoid challenge. Founders often need someone who will ask the uncomfortable question, help them confront a decision or notice where they are holding on too tightly. But a challenge only becomes useful when it can be integrated into the life and business that actually exist.
The research does not give us a definitive trial showing that one small coaching action is always better than five. It does give us compelling reasons to take workload, autonomy, the coaching relationship and capacity to act seriously. Here is what that might mean in practice.
Why more good ideas can feel like more weight
Running an SME often means carrying several roles at once: owner, strategist, salesperson, manager and, when the printer breaks, the person who knows where the spare paper lives. The tasks compete for the same hours and attention.
Qualitative research with small business owners in Germany describes high workload, long hours, financial uncertainty and difficulty stepping away when ill. A small, self-selected pilot study of self-employed people links quantitative work demands and work intensification with exhaustion. These studies do not tell us that a particular coaching programme causes overload. They do show why adding work to an already pressured system deserves scrutiny. [1, 2]
Entrepreneurship research also describes role overload as a real feature of founder life, while experimental psychology finds that limited deliberation time and cognitive load affect how people prioritise competing goals. A plan can be strategically sound and still arrive at the wrong moment, or ask for attention that is already committed elsewhere. [3, 4]
Think of a founder who wants to develop their team. In one session they identify five sensible moves: rewrite job descriptions, introduce weekly meetings, delegate client follow-up, review pricing and develop a new manager. All five may matter. But who will do the work, when, and what will be paused to make room? If those questions are missing, the plan is incomplete.
A helpful session should sometimes end with a shorter list than it began with.
What the coaching evidence can and cannot tell us
Meta-analyses suggest workplace and executive coaching can improve a range of outcomes, including goal attainment and work-related behaviour. This is encouraging, but study designs, participants and outcomes vary. The evidence is stronger for coaching as a broad intervention than for any one recipe for a founder in a small business. [5, 6]
A meta-analysis of coaching relationships found a moderate association between the quality of the working alliance and client outcomes. In plain English, shared goals, agreement on how to work together and a relationship that feels usable matter. An association does not prove that the relationship alone causes the outcome, but it is a sound reason to keep checking whether the coaching still fits the person. [7]
Research informed by self-determination theory adds another useful lens. Autonomy, competence and connection are associated with healthier motivation and work outcomes. A founder is more likely to own a decision when they have genuinely helped shape it, understand why it matters and believe they can take the next step. That is an application of broader motivation research, not a claim that a particular Unlock method has been clinically validated. [8]
There is also early evidence that coaching can support leaders experiencing burnout and engagement challenges, but findings from specific programmes should not be generalised to every founder or taken as a substitute for addressing unsustainable workload. [9]
Taken together, the evidence points towards a simple principle: the work between sessions needs to be meaningful, chosen and feasible. An impressive action plan that never meets the calendar is just a beautifully formatted burden.
“At the founder’s pace” does not mean staying comfortable
Pace is often misunderstood. If I say we work at the founder’s pace, I do not mean that we avoid hard conversations or wait for a mythical week when everything feels easy. Growth usually involves uncertainty. Delegating a responsibility, raising a price or having an honest conversation with a colleague may feel uncomfortable even when the timing is right.
The distinction I find useful is between productive discomfort and unmanageable overload. Productive discomfort has a clear purpose. The founder understands the risk, has some agency and can see a plausible next move. Overload feels like a pile of obligations with no room to think, test or recover.
That distinction is a working practice, not a diagnostic scale. It needs a conversation. A coach can ask: “Does this feel stretching but possible, or are we adding something you cannot currently carry?” The answer may differ from week to week.
There is no prize for a coach being more comfortable with the pace than the founder. Equally, an honest founder may need to hear that a growth target requires resources, decisions or trade-offs they have been avoiding. Respecting pace means negotiating reality together.
The capacity check: before adding anything, look at what is already there
Before setting another goal, take five minutes to map the current load. Try these four questions:
1. What is already committed? Include delivery, family commitments, management responsibilities and recovery time, not just free squares in a diary.
2. What is draining capacity? A difficult hire, cash flow uncertainty or a team conflict may consume attention well beyond the hours it occupies.
3. What can stop, shrink or move? If the new priority matters, name the work that will make way for it.
4. Who else can carry part of it? Delegation, a clearer process, external expertise or a decision to wait may be more valuable than another personal task.
This is not a formal research instrument. It is a practical way to apply what workload research makes difficult to ignore: attention, time and energy are finite. A founder can choose an ambitious target while being honest about the capacity required.
For the coach, the question becomes: “What does this action displace?” If the answer is sleep, every evening with family or the one hour set aside for strategic thinking, it is worth reconsidering.
A better ending to a coaching session
Imagine the same founder who wants a stronger leadership team. Instead of assigning five projects, they choose one experiment: for the next two weeks, the operations lead chairs the Monday meeting and brings two decisions for discussion. The founder blocks 20 minutes after each meeting to note what happened, what felt difficult and what support the lead needs.
This is small enough to test and large enough to reveal something. It might uncover a confidence gap, unclear authority, a process problem or the founder’s own habit of stepping in too quickly. The learning can guide the next move.
Psychology research on implementation intentions suggests that specifying when and where an action will happen can help close the gap between intention and action. The finding does not guarantee that every plan will succeed; it does give us a better prompt than “I’ll try to delegate more.” [10]
Try finishing a session with:
● One priority: What is most important now?
● One next action: What will you actually do before we meet again?
● A time and trigger: When will you begin, or what event will prompt it?
● A trade-off: What will you stop, postpone or hand over?
● A learning question: What will you observe, even if the experiment does not work?
A founder may leave with no new action at all when the most valuable decision is to finish an existing commitment or recover enough space to think clearly. That is still movement if it is deliberate and reviewed.
What to do when the action did not happen
“I didn’t do it” can be one of the most useful things a founder says in coaching, provided it does not trigger a performance review disguised as curiosity.
There are many possible explanations. The task may no longer matter. It may have been too large, poorly timed or dependent on someone else. The founder may have been avoiding an uncomfortable conversation. An urgent client issue may have changed the week. Each explanation calls for a different response.
Start with: “What happened between the plan and today?” Then ask:
● “Is this still the right priority?”
● “Where did the plan meet reality?”
● “What support or decision was missing?”
● “What is the smallest useful version we could try?”
Accountability should make it easier to tell the truth and learn. If every check-in makes someone conceal what is happening, the coach and founder lose the information needed to make a better plan. The working-alliance findings are relevant here: a relationship strong enough for honest feedback is part of the work. [7]
A founder can also challenge their coach: “This feels like too much,” or “I need us to spend less time generating ideas and more time deciding what to leave alone.” A good working agreement leaves room for that conversation.
Sometimes the business needs a structural answer
Not every problem is solved through mindset or better prioritisation. If a founder has a full clinical diary, manages all enquiries, handles payroll and has no manager, the pressure may be built into the operating model. Coaching can help identify the choices, but insight cannot create twenty spare hours.
Look for repeated signs: important work moves from week to week, every decision waits for the owner, holidays create a backlog, the team is unsure what it can decide, or the founder is routinely working when they had intended to rest.
Possible responses include narrowing the offer, changing pricing, reducing low-value work, defining decision rights, investing in an operations role or slowing a growth target while foundations catch up. Which option makes sense depends on the numbers and circumstances. Coaching may sit alongside financial advice, operational expertise or healthcare support where those are needed.
This matters because “be more resilient” can become an unfair answer to a capacity problem. The goal is a business that can grow without requiring its owner to become endlessly available.
A 30-minute reset for founders
If you currently feel too busy even to think about coaching, try this short exercise. Do it on paper, away from your inbox.
Minutes 0–5: Name the pressure. Write down the three demands taking up most mental space. Do not solve them yet.
Minutes 5–10: Define what matters. Ask: “If the next six weeks went well, what would be different in the business and in my working week?” Choose one outcome, not a whole new vision document.
Minutes 10–15: Find the constraint. Is the obstacle time, cash, a decision, a skill, a relationship or an unclear process? Avoid assuming it is your motivation.
Minutes 15–20: Remove before adding. Identify one activity to stop, defer, simplify or hand over. Be specific about who needs to agree.
Minutes 20–25: Choose a test. Select an action that can give you useful evidence within two weeks. Put the first step in your calendar.
Minutes 25–30: Decide what to notice. What would tell you the test helped? What would tell you it needs changing? Include how it affected your workload, not just revenue.
You do not need to fix the business in half an hour. You need a little more clarity about the next decision and a way to learn from it.
For coaches: five questions worth taking into the next session
If you work with founders, the challenge is to notice when your own enthusiasm for possibility gets ahead of the client’s ability to implement. Here are five questions I keep coming back to:
1. “What would make this conversation genuinely useful today?”
2. “How much capacity do you have for change over the next fortnight?”
3. “If we choose this priority, what will you consciously leave for later?”
4. “What part of this feels stretching, and what part feels unmanageable?”
5. “How will you tell me if our way of working is adding pressure?”
Revisit the coaching agreement as the business changes. Some months call for strategic exploration. Others call for making a decision, supporting a difficult conversation or protecting time to execute a plan already made. A coach should be able to challenge without becoming another source of urgency.
Grow at a pace you can actually sustain
A founder may need courage to make a bold move. They may also need courage to say, “That is a good idea, but it is not the next idea.” Both can be acts of leadership.
At Unlock with Coaching, our approach is to build enough trust for honest conversations about ambition, capacity and what is really happening in the business. We work with the founder to find a pace that supports action and learning. When a harder push is needed, we name it together. When the plan needs to be smaller, we make it smaller without treating that as a failure.
Good coaching should leave you clearer about what matters and more able to act on it. If it keeps producing a growing list of work you cannot do, that is information worth bringing into the next conversation.
A question to take away: What is one thing you could remove from your business this week to create room for the growth you actually want?
References and further reading
1. Caught Between Autonomy and Insecurity: A Work-Psychological View on Resources and Strain of Small Business Owners in Germany (2020). Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.525613
2. Self-employed and stressed out? The impact of stress and stress management on entrepreneurs’ mental health and performance (2024). Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1365489
3. Entrepreneurs’ role overload and empowering leadership: A reciprocal relationship based on conservation of resources (2023). Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1118099
4. The impact of cognitive resource constraints on goal prioritization (2023). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38039935/
5. Cannon-Bowers, J. A., et al. (2023). Workplace coaching: a meta-analysis and recommendations for advancing the science of coaching. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1204166
6. The effects of executive coaching on behaviors, attitudes, and personal characteristics: a meta-analysis of randomized control trial studies (2023). Frontiers in Psychology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37333584/
7. Graßmann, C., Schölmerich, F., & Schermuly, C. C. (2020). The relationship between working alliance and client outcomes in coaching: A meta-analysis. Human Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718819725
8. McAnally, K., & Hagger, M. S. (2024). Self-Determination Theory and Workplace Outcomes: A Conceptual Review and Future Research Directions. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11200516/
9. Coaching leaders toward favorable trajectories of burnout and engagement (2023). Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1259672
10. Changing Physician Behavior With Implementation Intentions: Closing the Gap Between Intentions and Actions (2016). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27008360/
