You’ve invested years mastering your clinical craft. You’ve hired a team to help share the load.

And yet, you’re still the one solving all the problems, making the key decisions, and – let’s be honest – doing the heavy lifting on the revenue too.

Sound familiar?

If you’re a practice owner billing $40K–$50K a month, but your team members are barely hitting half that… you’re not alone.

What you are, though, is likely wearing the wrong hat at the wrong time.

It’s time to step into the one that actually scales your business: the coaching hat.

Mentor, Trainer, or Coach: What’s the Difference?

When we talk about growing a high-performance team, “coaching” often gets lumped in with mentoring or training. But they’re different roles, each with a distinct purpose.

• Mentors share wisdom and experience.

• Trainers teach specific skills or processes.

• Coaches unlock potential and help people think for themselves.

Practice owners often default to trainer or mentor mode, even when coaching is what’s really needed. Why? Because it feels faster and more comfortable to show or tell than to slow down and coach someone through their thinking.

But if you want a team that makes smart decisions, drives their own growth, and contributes meaningfully to your business, you’ll need to embrace the slower path that creates exponential returns.

The Trap of Being “The Genius”

In her book Multipliers, Liz Wiseman asks a provocative question:

Which will you be, a genius, or a genius maker?

Practice owners are often the genius. You’ve built the business. You’re the top biller. Your standards are high and your instincts are sharp.

But when every decision, idea, or solution has to flow through you, you become the bottleneck – not just in operations, but in your team’s growth.

Wiseman defines two leadership mindsets:

• Diminishers believe: “They’ll never figure it out without me.”

• Multipliers believe: “People are smart. They’ll figure it out with the right support.”

Be a multiplier – build teams that are capable, motivated, and self-directed.

Introducing the Situational Coaching Model

The Situational Coaching Model gives you a simple but powerful framework to adjust your leadership style based on where your team member is at with a given task or skill.

Too often, practice owners interpret underperformance as laziness, disinterest, or lack of motivation. But in reality, many team members are either:

• Unclear on what’s expected

• Lacking feedback on where they stand

• Operating without the right kind of support for their current level

The Situational Coaching Model helps you fix that. It lets you:

• Pinpoint where a team member is at in a specific area

• Adjust your coaching style accordingly

• Gradually build them toward full autonomy and contribution

• Create a culture where people grow, own their role, and stick around

And the best part? You stop being the bottleneck and start being the genius maker.

The model moves across four levels:

1. Prescriptive/Directive – “I’ll tell you what to do.”
   Best for: New skills or systems, when someone is unaware or unskilled.
   Example: A new grad learning your practice management software.

2. Consultative – “Let’s talk about it, and I’ll decide.”
   Best for: Early competence, where they know the outcome but need guidance.
   Example: Developing confidence in your clinic’s consultation structure.

3. Participative/Supportive – “Let’s talk about it, and you decide.”
   Best for: Competent team members building autonomy.
   Example: Deciding how to handle a patient’s complaint or reactivation strategy.

4. Delegative – “You decide. I trust you, and I’m here if you need me.”
   Best for: Skilled, confident team members performing consistently.
   Example: A senior practitioner managing their own caseload or mentoring others.

What’s powerful here is that it recognises that competence is not static. Someone can be at Level 4 in clinical decision-making but Level 1 when using a new modality like shockwave or dry needling.

Your role is to spot where they’re at and coach accordingly.

Apply This Without Feeling Like a Micromanager

Let’s say you’ve just hired a mid-career practitioner. They’ve got solid experience, and you don’t want to insult them by hovering. But you also don’t want them unknowingly delivering a subpar patient experience because their standards were different at their last job.

Here’s what a coaching-led onboarding could sound like:

“Hey, I can tell you’re confident and capable. That’s part of why we brought you on. In your first few weeks, we’ll be operating in the coaching zone, meaning I’ll check in a bit more than usual – not because I don’t trust you, but because we’ve defined what best practice looks like here and I want to make sure we’re on the same page.

I’m confident you’ll be at full autonomy in no time, but I’d rather over-communicate now than let things slide.”

If your team is familiar with the Situational Coaching Model, it gives you a shared language and context for those check-ins. They know you’re adjusting your coaching style based on their development.

Ready to Coach?

Here’s your challenge for the week: Pick one team member and list 3–5 key tasks they perform regularly. Ask yourself, “What level are they at for each one?”

Are you leading them in the right way, or defaulting to “DIY” mode?