LEAD 6133 Module 4 Coaching Plan Example

Twelve Weeks to Let Go of Intake: A Cognitive-Behavioral Coaching Plan for a Medical Assistant Lead Who Does the Work Herself

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD6133: Models of Leadership and Coaching

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

November 2, 2026

Introduction

The course's first three modules settled which leadership aims, coaching methods and evidence would guide my work with the health center's team leads. This paper applies that work to one lead. Denise, a pseudonym, leads seven medical assistants and was promoted two years ago after eleven years as the clinic's most reliable assistant. On busy mornings she still rooms patients and takes vital signs herself, which leaves her assistants underused, her own leadership tasks undone and the morning schedule running late. This plan sets out twelve weeks of coaching aimed at that one behavior.

Understanding the Behavior

Delegation has long been studied as a leadership behavior. Leana (1986), studying supervisors and their subordinates, found that delegation was related to supervisors' perceptions of their subordinates' capability and trustworthiness. Denise's own explanation fits that finding: in our first conversation she said that intake "goes faster and right when I do it," and that two of her assistants are new. Her belief is partly accurate, since new assistants are slower, and partly a habit from her years as the best assistant on the floor. The cognitive-behavioral approach chosen in Module 2 suits this mix, because it treats the belief as something to test against evidence rather than something to argue her out of.

The Coaching Agreement

Before the first session Denise and I will agree in writing on four points. Coaching is separate from her performance review, and nothing said in sessions will appear in it. She chooses the goal, within the general aim of strengthening her leadership. Sessions are every two weeks for 45 minutes, in the small conference room rather than my office. She may end coaching at any time or ask for a different coach. Bozer and Jones (2018), reviewing research on what makes workplace coaching effective, identified factors including the coachee's self-efficacy and motivation, trust in the coaching relationship and support from the coachee's supervisor; because I am both coach and supervisor, the agreement is designed to protect trust while making my support explicit.

Goals

Denise proposed the goal herself in our first conversation: "I want to stop rooming patients unless someone is out." Refined into measurable terms, the twelve-week goals are that she rooms patients on no more than one morning in five, that the clinic's first appointment starts within ten minutes of its scheduled time on at least four mornings in five and that she spends at least two hours a week on lead tasks she currently neglects, such as competency checks and the assistants' schedule. These targets are deliberately specific and somewhat hard, since decades of goal-setting research found that clear, demanding goals produce more effort and persistence than vague intentions, provided the person is committed to them and gets regular feedback on progress (Locke & Latham, 2002). The scheduling system supplies that feedback weekly without any extra work, and Denise's own authorship of the goal is the best available guarantee of commitment.

Session Plan

Session 1 builds the relationship and explores the goal: what a good morning would look like and what is already working on mornings when she does not room patients. Session 2 identifies the beliefs behind the behavior, such as "new assistants will make mistakes patients will notice," and asks what evidence supports and contradicts each. Session 3 designs a behavioral experiment: for two weeks, she will assign intake to her two experienced assistants on Tuesdays and Thursdays and record start times and any errors. Session 4 reviews the experiment's results and the feelings it provoked. Session 5 extends delegation to the new assistants, pairing each with an experienced one, and plans how Denise will use the freed time. Session 6 reviews progress against the goals and plans how she will sustain the change. The experiment in session 3 is the heart of the plan: it lets Denise's own data, not my opinion, test her belief.

Measures

Three kinds of measure will be used, following the review in Module 3. The first is behavioral and comes from records: the clinic's scheduling system logs the time each first appointment begins, and Denise will log which mornings she roomed patients. The second comes from her team: at the start and the end, the seven assistants will answer two anonymous questions, how often their lead lets them handle their own work and how often she helps them improve. The third is Denise's own rating of her confidence in delegating, on a scale of 1 to 10, at each session. No single measure is decisive; together they show whether the behavior changed and whether others noticed. All three will be reviewed with Denise at session 6, and she will see the team's answers as averages only.

Anticipated Obstacles

Two obstacles are likely. A bad morning with a new assistant, such as a missed allergy entry, could confirm Denise's belief and end the experiment early; the plan addresses this by pairing new assistants with experienced ones and by agreeing in advance that one error is information, not a verdict. The second obstacle is my own role. If Denise feels the coaching is a disguised performance correction, trust will suffer; the written agreement and her control of the goal are meant to prevent that, and I will ask at session 3 whether the arrangement feels right to her.

Ethical Considerations

Coaching a direct report raises ethical questions. Confidentiality has a limit: if Denise disclosed a patient safety problem, I would have to act on it as her supervisor, and the agreement will say so plainly. The goal must remain hers; if she decided midway that delegation was not her priority, the plan would change rather than continue under pressure. And the measures from her team must stay anonymous and be reported to her only in aggregate, so that coaching never becomes a way of gathering complaints about her.

What Success Would Look Like for the Team

The plan is about Denise, but its purpose is her team. If she delegates intake, her two experienced assistants gain responsibility they have been ready for, and the new assistants learn faster by doing the work with a partner rather than watching their lead do it. Denise's freed hours would go to competency checks that are now months overdue and to a fairer schedule, which the assistants raised as a complaint in last year's staff survey. Those changes could matter for retention, since two of the seven assistants left last year, and both cited a lack of growth in their exit interviews.

Conclusion

This plan applies the course's earlier choices to a single lead and a single behavior: a cognitive-behavioral approach for a belief-driven habit, a relationship protected by a written agreement, goals Denise chose and measures that include her team's view. If it works, the morning schedule will show it first and her assistants will confirm it. Module 5 will step back to evaluate how these coaching choices would travel to other settings and to build a personal coaching model.

References

Bozer, G., & Jones, R. J. (2018). Understanding the factors that determine workplace coaching effectiveness: A systematic literature review. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 27(3), 342-361. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2018.1446946

Leana, C. R. (1986). Predictors and consequences of delegation. Academy of Management Journal, 29(4), 754-774. https://doi.org/10.2307/255943

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705