Leading with Values: How Coaching Builds Confidence, Visibility and Authentic Influence

In this episode of the Leaders Who Coach™ Podcast, I speak with Laura Shrieves, VP of Engineering for Ultra Maritime, about values, confidence, self-advocacy and the shift from answering every question to helping others think for themselves.

Laura brings over 20 years of experience in systems and software engineering across defence and transport. She is also a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in engineering, and her reflections in this conversation show how deeply she thinks about leadership, visibility, family, confidence and the development of others.

What comes through most strongly is how coaching helped Laura become clearer about who she is as a leader.

Not louder.
Not performative.
Not trying to become someone else.

Clearer.

Maternity leave as a leadership turning point

Laura describes returning from maternity leave after her second child and feeling that something had shifted.

She had changed.
The business had not changed in the same way.
And she had a strong sense that she wanted more.

She did not necessarily know exactly what that “more” looked like, but she was able to have an open conversation with her line manager. That support mattered. Her manager helped her explore options, encouraged her development and supported her joining Leaders Who Coach™.

There is such an important leadership lesson in that.

People do not always arrive with a perfectly formed development plan. Sometimes they arrive with a feeling. A sense that they are ready for more. A sense that they have capacity, energy or ambition that has not yet found its shape.

A good leader can help someone explore that. Not by owning the development for them, but by creating the space for them to articulate what they want to grow into.

Own your development

Laura shares a piece of advice that stayed with her: No one is going to be the biggest advocate of your development apart from you. That is something she now shares with her own direct reports.

Leaders can support you.
They can open doors.
They can challenge you.
They can offer opportunities.
They can advocate for you.

But they cannot own your development for you. That ownership has to sit with the individual.

This is a powerful distinction for leaders and team members. When someone owns their growth, the conversation changes. They are not waiting passively for someone else to notice them, choose them or tell them what to do next.

They become active in shaping the direction.

Visibility without ego

Laura also talks honestly about learning to advocate for herself. Earlier in her career, she held the belief many capable people hold: keep your head down, do good work and people will notice.

Sometimes they do. But not always.

Laura had to learn that doing the work and talking about the work are not the same thing. She also had to find a way to do that which felt authentic to her.

This is such a useful point. Self-advocacy does not have to mean walking into a room and saying, “Look how brilliant I am.” It can be quieter and more grounded than that.

It can be taking an opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved before talking about what comes next. It can be showing the contribution of your team and your leadership through context. It can be developing a point of view and using that to demonstrate your experience, thinking and strategic value.

Visibility does not have to be ego. It can be clarity.

Values give you language for who you are

One of the strongest themes in this episode is the personal values exercise from Leaders Who Coach™.

Laura describes identifying three values at the time: purpose, authenticity and relationships. Those values gave her a way to talk about herself in an interview for a director role. When asked to share more about herself, she answered through her values, explaining what mattered to her and why those values would help her in the role.

That answer landed. It gave the interviewers a real sense of who she was, not just what she had done. That is the power of values. They give you a shorthand for yourself.

A way to explain your leadership.
A way to assess opportunities.
A way to make decisions.
A way to connect with others more quickly.

Experience tells people what you have done. Values help them understand how you will show up.

Values change as life changes

Laura also reflects that her values have shifted over time. Family, and particularly being present with her children, has become more important as her children have grown. She describes how her daughter knows immediately when Laura is not fully present during their make-believe play.

That is such a human example. Our values are not a fixed statement we write once and never revisit. They can sharpen, evolve and become clearer as our lives change. The exercise is not only useful for career moments. It is useful for life moments.

When an opportunity appears, when a role changes, when something feels uncomfortable, values can help you ask:

Is this aligned with who I am now?
Does this fit what matters to me at this stage of life?
What am I being asked to compromise?
What do I need to protect?

That kind of clarity helps leaders make more grounded decisions.

Sharing values helps teams connect

Laura shares how she used her values when stepping into a new role. In her first one-to-ones with team members, she explained who she was, what she was about and what mattered to her. That helped people connect with her quickly.

She then used values more broadly as a team exercise, helping people understand where they had shared values and where they had diversity in values. That is such an important point.

The aim is not for everyone to value exactly the same things. A team benefits from difference.

Different values can bring different strengths, different perspectives and different ways of thinking. What matters is that the team can understand those differences and use them well.

Values create a shared language. Not to make everyone the same. But to help people understand each other better.

Coach-leadership elevates people

When I ask Laura what matters most to her as a coach-leader, Laura talks about the ability to elevate people. That shift is at the heart of coach-leadership. Instead of answering every question, the leader starts asking better questions. Instead of becoming the point every decision has to pass through, the leader creates the conditions for others to think, decide and grow.

Laura describes how her default used to be quick answers.

Question. Answer. Move on. That can feel efficient in the moment. But it is not always scalable.

If every decision has to come through the leader, the leader becomes the bottleneck. The people closest to the problem are not being given the space to own the thinking.

Coaching changes that. It helps decisions happen closer to the work.

The silence is where thinking happens

One of Laura’s biggest learning points was learning to ask a powerful question and then leave space for the other person to answer. That silence can feel deeply uncomfortable. Laura talks about counting in her head, and once reaching 17 seconds before someone answered. In the moment, it felt far longer. But that pause mattered. It gave the other person time to think.

This is one of the hardest shifts for busy, operational leaders. When the pace is high, silence can feel like wasted time. But often, it is the space where ownership begins.

The leader is not filling the gap.
The leader is not rescuing.
The leader is not rushing to solve.

They are allowing the other person to think their way into the answer. That is where confidence grows.

Normalising the discomfort of growth

Laura also speaks openly about sharing her own discomfort with other leaders. She explained that leaving silence had felt awkward for her too. She shared the techniques she used, including counting and finding ways to stop herself jumping in too soon.

That honesty mattered.

Because once someone has mastered a technique, they do not always talk about the struggle it took to get there. But people learning the same skill need to know that discomfort is normal.

Growth can feel awkward. Practising new leadership behaviours can feel unnatural at first. That does not mean you are doing it wrong.

It often means you are doing something differently enough for it to matter.

Final reflection

This conversation with Aditi is a reminder that trust, growth and accountability are built through everyday leadership habits.

Bringing people together.
Clarifying the problem.
Creating belonging.
Welcoming useful disagreement.
Listening for what is said and unsaid.
Using small feedback loops.
Helping people build confidence.
Asking for help when the work is too much to carry alone.

Accountability does not have to feel heavy or harsh. It can be built through clarity, consistency and care. And when leaders create the conditions for people to think, speak, contribute and grow, the team becomes stronger than any one individual could be alone.