Leadership and management demand a deep sense of adaptability and foresight, especially with modern challenges. Coaching now serves as a crucial pillar, offering guidance for those steering teams through shifting expectations and goals. Managers encounter obstacles that require three pillars: management know-how, leadership and agility.

Balancing performance metrics with a focus on well-being has become increasingly significant as leaders are tasked with fostering environments that encourage adaptation, growth and collaboration. As businesses grow or reorganize, coaching plays an invaluable role in shaping the leaders who can meet these demands with clarity and resilience.

Genevieve Dicaire, the Founder of Unique coaching, embodies this forward-thinking approach to leadership. She established her company in 2013 to empower managers to create positive impacts within their teams and organizations, as well as to find a personal balance.

With a robust background in information technology, Genevieve understands the unique challenges faced by leaders transitioning from expert roles to managerial positions. Her philosophy integrates well-being with performance, advocating for a leadership style that prioritizes emotional intelligence, strategic thinking and adaptability to fast-changing environments.

Commitment to Continuous Growth

Unique coaching offers tailored management and business coaching, training, and leadership programs, all designed with a modern, human-centric approach. Genevieve’s commitment to continuous growth is evident in her expansive offerings, ensuring that her content remains relevant and impactful.

Through her work, she has guided thousands of managers toward success, making her a prominent figure in the coaching landscape. Genevieve’s journey reflects the essence of contemporary leadership, illustrating how effective coaching can empower leaders to navigate the complexities of today’s business environment.

Balancing Performance with People-centered Management

Genevieve began her career as a manager, primarily focused on tasks, similar to many professionals who transition into managerial roles. However, over time, she realized that achieving a balance between task management and people support was crucial for creating both high performance and a fun work environment.

“My experience showed me the importance of making sure team members felt valued as individuals while maintaining performance goals,” she explains.

Motivated by this insight, she pursued a one-year degree in leadership and management coaching, which profoundly transformed her approach and her team’s dynamic. The changes were evident and substantial, as she describes the process as both “enlightening and very concrete for me, for the team and for our results.”

Inspired by this shift, Genevieve decided to launch her own business aimed at teaching other managers how to strike a balance between achieving results and positively impacting their teams. It’s a lesson she wishes she had learned earlier in her career, one that could have shaped her managerial journey from the start.

Leadership Without Limits

In 2018, Genevieve experienced a significant transformation in her business when she introduced training and group coaching alongside one-on-one coaching. Both she and her first leadership program’s client evolved through this experience.

The leadership team was facing a big transformation and Genevieve’s first time leading a group in a program she was creating at the same time.

The program took an unconventional approach: Participants reviewed online content in preparation for group sessions, during which they co-created the experience based on shared goals and active participation. The goal of this approach was to facilitate the transfer of learning and to adapt the tools to the participants’ reality.

Initially, the participants were dissatisfied, expecting a set formula or ‘recipe’ for leadership, and Genevieve felt uncertain as it was her first time facilitating in such a way. “We were both stepping into new territory,” she recalls. After a challenging conversation, Genevieve encouraged the client to craft their own path, working together to build their own unique ‘recipe’ for success using the new set of tools and vocabulary. They both decided to trust each other and the process.

They observed that changes were happening, step by step and through the process, both she and her client transformed. They have been maintaining a relationship since then (it was 2018) and a new version of the program has emerged!

The initial 18-month program is now divided into three 6-month programs. The first part for entry manager was launched in 2023, the second part for middle management will be live at the end of 2024, and the last, for high management in early 2025.

When challenges arise, and both parties are open, willing, and courageous enough to engage in difficult conversations, it creates opportunities for growth, learning, and achieving meaningful results. This is the essence of leadership development.

Elevating Leaders with a Holistic Approach

As a certified professional coach with the International Coaching Federation, Genevieve continuously progresses her approach through ongoing education. Her belief in potential is central to her work. She highlights that “most clients need to be listened to, validated in their approach, and challenged” to grow faster.

In her work with leadership and management coaching, she emphasizes the importance of managers understanding what they don’t know, or giving them tools and vocabulary, especially since many managers come from areas of expertise but lack formal training in leadership and management.

This realization inspired her to create 12 online courses in 2018, which has since regularly grown almost doubled, with 15 courses currently being updated. Online courses can be bought by oneself and are used in most coaching and training packages.

Her initial focus was purely on 1:1 coaching, but over the years, she has integrated a holistic approach: online training content, group coaching and 1:1 coaching noting that “using a global approach generates more results, quickly.”

This blend of self-paced learning and interactive coaching, both individually and in teams, has proven to be highly effective. It offers clients a dynamic and engaging pathway for personal and professional growth.

Cultivating Value

Genevieve emphasizes that being agile is about adapting actions to create more value, not only for ourselves but also for others and the larger ecosystem, which includes organizations, clients and suppliers. She trained in behavioral agility in 2016. She had learned agile methodologies in her previous IT career and loved the values, but learning and now teaching about being agile makes all the difference in today’s world.

She believes it goes beyond merely following processes and requires leaders to act with heightened awareness. “It is about opening ourselves to others and our environment,” she explains. Leaders must understand the dynamics around them and adjust their behavior accordingly, ensuring that their actions positively impact the people and systems they interact with.

For Genevieve, this approach is crucial in leadership, as it enables leaders to stay responsive and connected to the changing needs of their environment, fostering both personal and organizational growth.

The Agility Advantage

Behavioral agility involves adapting to one’s environment and considering the larger system around us. It is part of her leadership model and in her coaching programs. Behavioral agility helps leaders become more aware of how they interact with their teams and the surrounding dynamics by developing more cooperation, anticipation and the ability to innovate

“Through training and practical exercises, I teach them how to be agile in their approach to leadership,” she explains, emphasizing how this adaptability leads to greater efficiency and positive results.

Her approach to coaching ensures that leaders are equipped with the tools and mindset needed to stay responsive to the ever-changing demands of their roles while fostering strong connections with their teams and the broader ecosystem.

A Leader’s Focus

Genevieve accentuates that a successful leader must focus on three key areas to build high-performing teams: impact, leadership posture and priorities.

• Impact: A leader must be aware of how their role affects themselves, their team and overall results. It’s important to assess whether they or their team are experiencing excessive stress and whether performance goals are being met.

• Leadership Posture: Leaders should avoid positioning themselves at the center of every task or decision, as this can create bottlenecks. Instead, they should work alongside their team, respecting individual roles and responsibilities.
• Priorities: Effective leaders ensure they’re focused on the right tasks for their level of management. Genevieve believes that “success comes from aligning the right priorities according to the role to drive performance.”

Genevieve guides her clients through these key areas, helping them identify where adjustments are needed, depending on their management level. She equips leaders to navigate their roles more effectively and create a positive, productive environment for their teams by providing strategies to achieve balance in each aspect.

Content That Lasts

Genevieve is passionate about creating content and constantly updating her courses to stay aligned with current trends and challenges. Most of her courses were originally developed between 2018 and 2019, but she initiated a comprehensive update in 2023, which is set to be fully completed by 2025.

As part of her commitment to offering lasting value, she has a policy of lifetime access for anyone who purchases a course. “Even if they bought a course years ago, they’ll always have access to the latest version,” she explains.

Apart from courses, Genevieve actively maintains a blog with over 150 posts, consistently writing 10-15 new articles each year and producing videos to keep her content fresh and relevant. This ongoing effort ensures her audience benefits from the most up-to-date insights and practical advice, on her website or social media.

Leveling Up Leadership: The Power of Play in Training

Genevieve believes gamification is a powerful way to make leadership training more engaging and impactful. She created a team-building game that helps participants experience firsthand the importance of behavioral agility. By working together towards a common goal, teams quickly realize that adaptability and cooperation are essential for success.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with teams finding it both fun and enlightening. This approach creates a memorable learning experience that translates well into the workplace. She created it with a partner specializing in board game creation and animation. Together they produced a corporate game that is 50% ludic and 50% educational.

Key to Trust and Collaboration in Leadership

Genevieve emphasizes that emotional intelligence is crucial for leadership. A leader who knows how to manage their own stress and emotions creates a healthier, more productive work environment. When a leader can regulate their emotions, they become more empathetic and approachable, which builds trust and fosters collaboration within the team.

In her coaching, she highlights the importance of emotional balance. Leaders don’t have to be perfect, but they should aim to be steady. By managing their own emotions, they set a positive tone for the team, which ultimately leads to greater success.

Vision for Universal Access to Coaching

Generosity is one of Genevieve’s core values. She believes knowledge should be accessible to everyone, regardless of whether their organization has the budget for coaching or leadership development. In her corporate career, she often lacked the same opportunities as others, and she knows firsthand how much faster she could have progressed with access to leadership coaching.

That’s why she created a business where managers at all levels are included, offering a range of products and services. Whether through blog posts, online courses, 1:1 coaching, team-building activities, or comprehensive leadership programs, Unique coaching provides solutions tailored to everyone’s needs.

Genevieve’s goal is to empower as many people as possible to grow in their leadership roles and make a positive impact on their teams. She shares, “When an entire organization is trained with the right product for the right person, the transformation happens more quickly and effectively.”

Mastering Management Essentials

Genevieve stresses the importance of consolidating foundational skills for effective management to create the space needed for strategic thinking. She states, “It’s essential to master key management skills such as time management, delegation, clear communication, and conflict management.”

Next, she invites her clients to focus on elevating leadership capabilities by prioritizing emotional intelligence and influence. This includes building a high-performing team, resolving problems efficiently and managing change effectively.

Finally, Genevieve advises developing skills that broaden strategic influence and organizational impact. These skills include networking and external awareness, profitability management, project and priority management, setting and pursuing long-term objectives, maintaining a clear vision and honing negotiation abilities.

Achieving Life-work Synergy

Genevieve believes that balance is essential in both professional and personal life. She emphasizes that “it all starts with you” and often advises, “Manage yourself first, so you will act better with others and get more results.”

As a hard worker herself, Genevieve understands the need to recharge. To release energy, she spends time in nature, hiking, or practicing boxing. She also enjoys traveling and spending time with her family. For her, balance comes from being present, grounded, and finding joy and fulfillment.

In her coaching, Genevieve guides clients to discover their own unique balance. She provides them with practical tools they can apply throughout their lives, helping them align their leadership style with both their personal and professional values. Through this process, she ensures that clients can maintain harmony across different areas of their lives while achieving their goals.

A Balanced Approach to Effective Leadership

Genevieve advises emerging leaders and managers to prioritize learning and developing leadership skills to have a greater positive impact on their teams and business results.

She accentuates taking the time to lead and manage your team effectively and not rushing through the process. Focus on building competencies step by step, and find a pragmatic coach or mentor who can help guide your development.

Genevieve also highlights the importance of maintaining balance: “Don’t burn yourself out.” By consolidating skills, leaders can move faster than they think and create a more positive impact on themselves, their teams, and their results.