Leadership Development Articles with a Coaching Mindset
Browse the practical, research-backed articles on a variety of leadership development topics from Dr. Bethany Peters, a leadership professor and professionally certified coach.
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Dr. Bethany Peters, Ph.D., PCC
With over 20 years of experience in leadership development and a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership, I take a coach approach to help leaders and teams thrive. As an expert thought partner, I facilitate clarity, inspire creative thinking, and help growth-minded professionals overcome barriers to make meaningful progress. Meet Bethany.
How to Practice Growth by Design: 7 Books That Redefine Your Development
Intentional growth doesn't happen by accident. In a world of constant demands and distractions, it's easy to get stuck in a reactive cycle, focusing only on the urgent tasks in front of us while our long-term development stalls.
To help you reframe how you approach growth, I’ve curated a list of seven essential books that provide the science-backed frameworks and practical applications you need to approach your growth with greater intentionality.
More Than Words: 12 Visually Rich Books To Inspire Creative Thinking
Discover 12 visually rich and inspiring books that will spark your creativity and help you cultivate a growth mindset. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or lifelong learner, this carefully curated list offers practical tools, innovative ideas, and fresh perspectives to fuel your personal and professional growth.
This energizing list of books combine thoughtful content with captivating visuals to keep your imagination engaged and your mindset expanding.
From Prompts to Progress: How to Use ChatGPT as your Life & Leadership Coach
Despite all of the innovation, ChatGPT probably won’t ever fully replace the power of real human connection. But it can be a strategic companion for self-reflection, clarity, and creative thinking—especially when you’re between coaching sessions, working solo, or just need a fresh perspective fast.
Discover how better prompts can turn AI into a powerful reflection partner. This guide walks you through practical strategies, specific life and leadership coaching prompts to help you get started.
7 Simple Self-Reflection Tools You Can Use in 10 Minutes or Less
Self-reflection sounds great, but finding the time feels impossible, right?
That's why I’m sharing 7 simple reflection exercises – like the Gratitude Walk and the Resilient Reframe – that take 10 minutes or less. Learn how to easily build self-awareness and manage stress, even on your busiest days.
Find your simple starting point here.
20 Strengths-Based Coaching Questions to Inspire Hope & Resilience
Feeling stuck in a rut? Facing a challenge that seems insurmountable? Or, perhaps you’re managing or coaching someone who needs a boost of energy or confidence? Taking a strengths-based approach through asking positive questions offers a powerful tool to shift negative perspectives and cultivate hope and resilience in the face of challenges.
4 Strengths-Based Strategies to Support Your Team
The rewards of a strengths-based team are undeniable, but building this positive team culture takes time and dedication. While it requires an upfront investment, the payoffs are compelling. By prioritizing strengths development, you're fostering a more engaged workforce, which leads to many bottom-line increases, including a thriving and fulfilling work environment.
In this blog post, I will cover four ways to support your team members with a strengths-based approach: job crafting strategies, individual development plans, team building, and giving feedback.
Mindset Mastery: 5 Coaching Techniques to Transform Your Thinking
Discover five powerful coaching strategies that you can use to cultivate a growth mindset in yourself, clients, or colleagues. Learn practical tips to challenge your assumptions, reframe negativity, and embrace possibility.
Hitting the Reset Button: How to Reinvent Your Career in 5 Steps
Feeling stuck in a dead-end job? If so, you're not alone. Many people reach a point where their careers no longer spark joy (or even a flicker of interest). However, making a change - even if there’s a promise of a more engaging career on the other side - can be an overwhelming endeavor. The RESET method described in this post will provide you with a structured, strategic process to navigate a courageous journey towards a more fulfilling career.
4 Questions to Build Your Confidence
When you find yourself lacking confidence, this state of lower confidence does not need to define you or derail you. In fact, confidence can be learned, practiced, reset, and refined.
The four questions here provide a simple but streamlined guide to helping you develop stronger confidence for a new task, an unfamiliar situation, an unexpected transition, or a challenging role.
12 Books to Read in 2024 for Personal & Leadership Growth
Find some new inspiration for your reading list with these titles. Whether you are planning to take the next step in your personal growth or a dedicated leader looking for new strategies, we’ve curated a list of books that will fuel your motivation and stretch you to new levels.
7 Ways to Live in Alignment with Your Core Values
When your actions and choices reflect what truly matters to you, you create a life that is authentic and meaningful. However, let’s be honest, living out your core values is simply easier said than done.
But, with some inspiration and a few extra measures of intentionality, it is possible! The key strategies I share here will make your work easier when you are striving to live in greater alignment with your most important values.
5 Steps to Identify Your Core Values
Values are the broad goals and guiding principles that we want to shape our beliefs, decisions, and actions across contexts and circumstances. Values serve as an internal compass, influencing the way we interact with the world and the people around us. Identifying your values is an essential step in living a purposeful and fulfilling life.
In this blog post, I will explore what values are, why they matter, and how you can identify your own values.
10 Questions to Clarify Your Purpose
Purposeful living takes regular, intentional reflection to recenter, so that we can refine our decisions, our mindsets, and our behaviors. Use these 10 coaching questions to help you regularly evaluate your purpose.
How to Get Unstuck: 8 Questions to Find Your Next Step
Have you ever found yourself trapped, feeling stuck and unable to move forward?
Whether it's in your personal or professional life, getting stuck can be incredibly frustrating and demotivating. In this blog post, I will explore strategies and tips to help reignite your motivation and momentum.
5 Steps to Find the Right Coach
Finding the right coach can be a daunting task, but it’s a critical step towards greater growth if you want to achieve your goals and reach your full potential. Whether you’re looking for a life coach, business coach, fitness coach, or any other type of coach, there are a few key factors to consider when choosing the right one for you.
How to Start a Mastermind Group: A Practical Guide for Leaders
Are you feeling stuck or not making the progress you want in your personal or professional life? Are you looking for a supportive community of like-minded individuals who can help you achieve your goals? Consider joining or starting your own mastermind group.
8 Coaching Questions to Inspire Growth & Change
Change and growth don’t happen by accident—they begin with the right questions. Whether you’re coaching a client, leading a team, or reflecting on your own next steps, thoughtful questions can spark clarity and open new possibilities.
In this post, I’m sharing 8 coaching questions designed to inspire meaningful change and lasting growth. Use them to deepen reflection, challenge assumptions, and move forward with confidence.
3 Tools for Self-Reflection
Points of transition provide us the powerful opportunity to pause and reflect, to consider what’s working and what’s not. Get some fresh insight with three tools to help make your reflection times more meaningful and strategic.
The 2022 Gift Guide for Leaders
Find a thoughtful gift for the leader in your life … or add these items to your own wish list!
7 Steps to Less Stress
Unhealthy stress is a major challenge for workplaces, schools, and homes across the world. As leaders, we need proven stress relief strategies to effectively self-manage and to provide support for those around us.
Read on to learn the top research-based strategies to support healthy stress management.
The Coaching Design Co.Practical tools to put the ideas to work
Guides, journals, and coaching question sets that turn what you read here into what you do next.
This mastermind toolkit shows you how to start your own mastermind group and keep it running well. It covers every stage, from checking your readiness to facilitate and designing the group to running strong spotlights, holding members accountable, and checking in on how the group is working.
Templates and scripts are ready to use, including six editable Google Docs templates you can copy and share with members, so you can spend your energy on the people in the room.
What's inside
What a mastermind is, why it works, and why groups form, with examples across industries and roles
A facilitator readiness self-check, design canvas, screening questions, orientation checklist, and ground rules
15- and 20-minute spotlight formats, plus how to facilitate a spotlight well
Community-building activities, ways to celebrate wins, and options for closing a session
Accountability tips, common challenges, SMART goals, and a progress tracker
Coaching tips, questions to get unstuck, and the GROW model
Evaluation forms, a digital platform guide, and six editable Google Docs templates
Who it's for: leaders, coaches, consultants, and professionals who want to start a peer mastermind group, whether in person or online.
Format: 54-page fillable PDF, plus links to six editable Google Docs templates, 8.5 x 11 in. Type directly into the file or print it. Created by Dr. Bethany Peters, Ph.D., PCC.
This guide gives you 100 coaching questions for leaders, sorted by the conversations you have most often. Each set comes with a note on when to use it, so you can find the right question quickly in a one-on-one, a team meeting, or a coaching session.
Before the questions, a short guide to workplace coaching helps you ask well: what the leader-as-coach role looks like, how to tell when coaching is the right fit, and how to listen and ask in ways that help people think.
What's inside
100 coaching questions in ten topics: Self-Awareness, Vision & Strategy, Communication & Influence, Team Building, Managing Stress, Managing Performance, Decision-Making, Growth & Development, Productivity, and Change Management
An introduction to workplace coaching and a diagnostic for when to coach, teach, or direct
Listening and asking-questions self-checks with practical tips
Research on coachable moments and coachability, with two readiness assessments
A coaching mindset prep sheet, the GROW model, a conversation planner, and a conversation log
A page to save your own go-to questions
Who it's for: managers, leaders, and coaches who want better one-on-ones and more useful development conversations.
Format: 50-page fillable PDF, 8.5 x 11 in. Type directly into the file or print it. Self-assessment totals calculate in Adobe Acrobat Reader and most PDF apps. Created by Dr. Bethany Peters, Ph.D., PCC.
There's a particular kind of fatigue that comes from leading without a pause.
Your patterns harden. Your boundaries blur. Habits that once served you start running you. The pace continues, but somewhere along the way, your alignment slips.
The Mindset Reset Journal is a 30-day reflection practice designed for when your leadership needs a reset
When you feel like you are stuck, fatigued, or living out of alignment with what matters most, this journal offers you a structured developmental arc, built around the Reset Rhythm™ — a four-week sequence that walks you through Sync, Stop, Start, and Sustain.
Each week opens with a guided introduction that names what you're practicing and why and each day offers a focused prompt that moves the work forward.
The Reset Rhythm™:
Week 1 — Sync. Slow your pace and tune in to what's actually present. Practice listening to your thoughts, body, and energy without rushing to fix anything.
Week 2 — Stop. Interrupt the routines, habits, and assumptions that no longer serve you. Practice creating space for intentional choice instead of defaulting to autopilot.
Week 3 — Start. Build new rhythms, boundaries, and habits aligned with your values. Practice designing your daily life from the inside out.
Week 4 — Sustain. Anchor your insights so the shifts last. Practice grounding new patterns into your real, demanding life.
This journal is for you if:
You're leading well but feeling stretched thin across the board
You can name what's draining you, but the patterns keep showing up anyway
You're out of sync with your values and ready to recalibrate
You're running on autopilot and want to recenter how you're showing up
You want a structured reflection practice grounded in real coaching pedagogy
What's inside:
A 30-day guided journaling practice
Four weekly introductions framing the Reset Rhythm™
Daily prompts designed for focused 10-15 minute reflections
Beautifully designed pages with space to write, breathe, and return to
Digital download — print at home or use on your tablet
Please note: This is a digital product. No physical product will be shipped to you.
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WOrk With BethanyReady to turn these ideas into progress?
Book a free 45-minute consultation to talk through your leadership goals, your team, or the next step that feels stuck.

