I Almost Quit Coaching Because of My Own Team
One year, I seriously considered stepping back from coaching entirely. Not because I stopped loving it, but because I couldn’t figure out how to lead my own team of RDs, and it felt hypocritical to keep teaching other dietitians how to build teams while mine felt like it was falling apart.
I run a multi-six-figure insurance-based group practice with a team of genuinely great RDs, and from the outside that probably looks smooth. It was not. Learning to manage a dietitian team has been one of the hardest, messiest, most humbling things I’ve ever done, and for a while, I failed so badly that I questioned whether I had any business coaching anyone.
The 3 Mistakes That Nearly Broke My Team
I was micromanaging without realizing it. Handing off tasks, then hovering and redoing them myself because “it’ll just be faster.” My team felt it, and trust eroded fast.
I wasn’t actually clear. I’d say things like “let’s tighten up documentation” and expect everyone to know exactly what that meant, then quietly blame them for not reading my mind.
I avoided hard conversations entirely. Late notes, sloppy communication- I let it slide because confrontation felt awful, which just let mediocrity become the unspoken standard.
What Actually Pulled Me Out of It
What pulled me out of it wasn’t a system or a course; it was a mindset shift. I stopped trying to be liked and started trying to be clear. I repeated my vision until my team could finish my sentences. I stopped hovering and started trusting, even when that meant tolerating mistakes I couldn’t control.
Your team mirrors you. If you freeze, they freeze. If you’re vague, they hesitate.
Leadership Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait
I’m not telling you this because I have it all figured out now; I still mess it up sometimes. But leadership isn’t something you’re supposed to already know; it’s a skill you build through reps, the same way you build any other part of a profitable practice.
If you’re building a team inside your insurance-based practice and the hiring, training, or leadership piece feels like the part nobody prepared you for, that’s genuinely one of the things I help RDs work through inside Level 3 of my Reimbursement Academy. Not because you need to be rescued, but because nobody should have to learn this the hard way, alone, the way I did
