In an era of distributed teams, generational divides and accelerating change in the workplace, many leaders are under extreme pressure to keep driving results. To succeed, they must make sure their teams are always engaged, connected and ready to meet evolving challenges head-on.
As president at Talking Talent Americas, Teresa Hopke has spent years helping leaders navigate uncertainty and unlock the potential in those they lead to build stronger, more resilient teams. Drawing on her coaching expertise and experience across diverse industries, she discusses what connected leadership actually looks like in practice.
What does connected leadership mean to you – and why is it critical for business success right now?
Connected leadership is a human-centred approach that emphasises self-awareness, inclusion, purpose, and the cultivation of meaningful relationships. Instead of directing people, it prioritises coaching them to be their best.
It relies heavily on four essential layers of connection:
- Connection with yourself.
- Connection with others.
- Connection to purpose and meaning.
- Connecting people to one another.
When leaders focus on building trust, fostering community and creating a clear sense of purpose, they help people feel like they’re part of a culture they want to stay with and bring their best selves to.
How have you seen coaching accelerate leadership impact and organisational performance?
Coaching is a catalyst for transformation at every level. The main thing that happens in coaching is that there’s individual growth, but there’s also a significant ripple effect alongside that. When a leader has a breakthrough in self-awareness or understanding, it often trickles down to their team.
As leaders grow in self-awareness and relational capability, you see more engaged teams, lower turnover and stronger results. Coaching can also spark lasting behavioural change by helping leaders move from directive styles to more collaborative, empowering approaches. In the short term this enhances performance, and in the long term, it creates a culture of organisational resilience.
Why should coaching be prioritised at the executive level, beyond being seen as a development perk?
With so many senior leaders retiring, we don’t have a ready leadership pipeline. For a lot of the organisations I’m talking to, there’s a need to accelerate leadership capability and get people ready for those positions. At that point, coaching becomes a strategic imperative that’s needed to sustain growth and build a company that’s going to survive and thrive in the future.
Business complexity is also at an all-time high. There are a lot of shifting dynamics around changing markets, hybrid work and AI. There is a lot of pressure on leaders to create high-performing teams, which are made up of individuals with different motivations and work styles.
To succeed, leaders need support. They need to be able to bounce ideas off a coach, share the things that aren’t working, and be vulnerable – even when they think that they’re supposed to have all the answers.
What challenges do leaders face in building connections across distributed or high-pressure environments, and how can they overcome them?
There are lots of pressures. Time is probably the number one pressure, because everyone’s busy and we’re all trying to do more with less. It takes time to build relationships and it takes time to figure out what people bring to the table and how you put that together in a way that’s going to foster a high-performing team. Leaders are often concerned about the investment of time it takes to lead in that way given everything else on their plate, but sometimes you have to go slow at the beginning so you can go faster later.
Another thing many leaders struggle with is relational capability. Many of them got to where they are because they are really good technical experts. A lot of the time, they need to build their capabilities around relational skills like empathy, curiosity, compassion, listening, understanding and learn how to be vulnerable and authentic and connect with people.
Finally, when your teams are virtual, it is important to figure out how you can make intentional time to connect with people, and you need to understand that connection looks different for everyone. You need to ask yourself: what do I need in terms of connection, and how is that different from what my teammates need?
Are you able to share a moment when leadership growth unlocked potential that benefited the wider business?
I worked with a leader who had been promoted for his technical expertise but didn’t feel ready for leadership. He was afraid to show any weakness, and his impostor syndrome meant he tried to have all the answers, avoided seeking input and shut people down.
Through coaching, we worked on authenticity and vulnerability, helping him see the value in being open about what he didn’t know. When he shared this honestly with his team, the shift was immediate. They trusted him more and felt safer to contribute.
The biggest change was in his mindset. He moved from trying to prove he was a leader to understanding leadership as bringing out the best in others. He began acting like a coach, rather than a lone expert carrying all the weight.
What sets Talking Talent’s coaching approach apart from others in the market?
At Talking Talent, we take a holistic view of leadership development. We focus on the intersection of work and life – looking at the whole person and understanding that leaders bring all of that to the table. It isn’t just about their work or their leadership style. Rather, it’s about how they show up as a whole person.
Our programmes are science-backed and designed by organisational psychologists. Everything is rooted in the latest research and behavioural changes. We combine the personal insight of coaching with the rigour of behavioural science. This helps us drive real mindset and behaviour shifts that ripple across the entire organisation, and creates a culture where people can thrive and do their best work.
In an era of distributed teams, generational divides and accelerating change in the workplace, many leaders are under extreme pressure to keep driving results. To succeed, they must make sure their teams are always engaged, connected and ready to meet evolving challenges head-on.
As president at Talking Talent Americas, Teresa Hopke has spent years helping leaders navigate uncertainty and unlock the potential in those they lead to build stronger, more resilient teams. Drawing on her coaching expertise and experience across diverse industries, she discusses what connected leadership actually looks like in practice.
