I spent 7 years at adidas headquarters. It is the kind of line that looks impressive on a bio, so let me be honest about what it actually was: a long, often humbling education in how leaders are really developed, and how often we get it wrong.
A global HQ is a place where high standards are simply the norm, and where development is taken seriously rather than treated as a tick-box. That environment taught me more about leadership than any course did. Here are the lessons that have stayed with me, and that shape how I coach today.
Being the best at the work is not the same as leading it
The first thing a place like that teaches you, often painfully, is that the skills which get you promoted are not the skills you then need.
I watched brilliant individual contributors step into leadership and struggle, not because they were not capable, but because they kept reaching for the thing they were good at: the work. The instinct to prove yourself by doing is strong, and it is exactly the wrong instinct once people report to you.
The leaders who made the leap well were the ones who let go of being the best in the room and got comfortable getting results through other people instead. That shift is genuinely hard, and almost nobody is prepared for it.
The best development was never a single event
For all the resources a global company has, the thing that actually grew people was rarely the big training program.
It was the ongoing stuff. A manager who gave honest feedback in the moment. A regular conversation where someone helped you think through a real problem. Being stretched on a project just past what felt comfortable, with someone in your corner if it wobbled.
That taught me something I have built my whole approach around: development is a continuous journey, not a one-time event. The workshop fades. The steady, personal support is what compounds. We treat training as an event and then wonder why nothing changes, when the change was always going to come from the repetition.
High standards are a kindness, not a cruelty
This one took me a while to appreciate. In a high-standards environment, the expectation is high, and at first that can feel relentless.
What I came to understand is that clear, high expectations are actually a form of respect. The opposite, vague expectations and feedback that never quite lands, is what leaves people anxious and stuck. People do not grow from being protected from the truth. They grow from being told clearly where they stand and being genuinely supported to get there.
The leaders I respected most were demanding and kind at the same time. Those are not opposites. The kindest thing you can do is be clear.
Most leadership problems were avoided conversations
If I had to name the single most common failure I saw, even among senior people, it was the conversation that did not happen.
The underperformance that was tolerated for 6 months. The tension between 2 team members that everyone could see and no one named. The feedback that got softened until it meant nothing. These were not knowledge problems. The leaders knew what needed saying. They just found it easier not to.
I have come to believe that a huge share of leadership effectiveness is simply the willingness to have the conversation early, while it is still small. It is also the most coachable skill there is, because the barrier is rarely ability. It is nerve and structure, and both can be built.
Nobody does it alone
The last lesson is the one that turned me towards coaching.
For all the talent in that building, the people who grew fastest were not the ones who white-knuckled it alone. They were the ones who used the people around them: a mentor, a peer, a coach, someone to think out loud with and hold them to what they said they would do.
There are no points for working it out by yourself. The leaders who treated leadership as a skill to keep learning, rather than a status to defend, simply got better faster. The ones who assumed the title meant they had arrived plateaued.
Why I do this now
Today I lead the supply chain team and a national distribution centre at a major Australian retailer, so I am still in it, leading real people through real pressure, not coaching from a textbook. Everything above, I am still living.
What I saw at adidas, and see now, is that capable people get promoted and then left to improvise, and it costs them and their teams far more than a bit of support ever would. That is the gap I started Growth Korner to close.
If you are in that leap right now, the new title and the quiet sense that you are making it up as you go, that is exactly the moment coaching helps most. The free 30 minute strategy call is a no-pressure place to talk it through with someone who has made the same leap.
