Coach Approach Blog

There's a moment in every coach's journey when technique falls away and something more profound emerges. It happened to me during a session last week – my client and I sat in silence for what felt like minutes, yet neither of us rushed to fill the space. In that sacred pause, something shifted. Not because of what I said or did, but because of what I allowed to be.

This is the essence of MCC-level coaching. It's not about accumulating more tools or perfecting your questioning technique. It's ab…

If you’ve been around Awaken Coach Institute for a while, you’ve probably heard the word loving-kindness. It’s the way we like to be. But how does it relate to compassion, another of our favorite words in coaching and community?

There’s a saying I love:

“When the sunshine of loving-kindness meets the tears of suffering, the rainbow of compassion appears.”

When sorrow or difficulty arises, and we stay connected to that kind, caring state we’ve cultivated in ourselves, compassion flows natu…

My friend Clare Norman, MCC (who's written several wonderful coaching books, including The Transformational Coach, which I highly recommend) has offered a guest blog for the Awaken community this week. The two of us have been having a joyful collaboration, sharing our thoughts on love and coaching. What a kindred spirit!

Clare writes: 

Love Doesn't Run Out

The word “uninhibited” keeps coming up for me in therapy. We were talking about how I show up in my marriage when my therapist asked about…

Group coaching, the Awaken way, where energy, income, and impact come into alignment. In community, coaches discover how to belong to themselves while creating spaces that transform others. 

Some people think coaching is about filling your calendar with individual sessions and constantly marketing to new people. That's how I started during my first two or three years as a coach, and parts of it were incredibly fulfilling. In fact, more than fifteen years in, I still love coaching a select few…

Transformational Coaching Begins Within: The Freeze Frame® Technique for getting unstuck

If you’re like me, sometimes you get stuck in ruminating, thoughts and feelings looping on repeat with no movement or positive action. It's exhausting. The brain seems to have a mind of its own, quickly pulling you down a path to nowhere.

Wouldn’t it be freeing to step back into presence, to find your way back to balance and choice?

One of my favorite practices for this is the Freeze Frame® technique, dev…

At Awaken, empowerment coaching is about more than individual change, it’s about belonging to yourself while finding strength in community.

I was in a coach training on a Friday afternoon with a man who considers himself a real champion of women's empowerment. At one point he taught our group of mainly women, "It's so important that I, as a white man, learn to give away my power."

From his perspective, I'm sure that felt true. To me, and the other women in the room, it felt gross. Something ab…

Transformational Coaching Begins Within: Centering and Grounding for Coaches

At Awaken, I’ve learned that transformational coaching always begins with the coach’s own inner work. Before you can guide others into presence, empowerment, or spiritual growth, you must first cultivate practices that root you in your own wholeness.

Two of the simplest, most powerful practices I return to again and again are centering and grounding. These aren’t just techniques for coaches, they are foundations for l…

When I was a child, I was raised in a tradition of reward and punishment, a religious mindset that put people into categories of good and evil, of chosen and not chosen. I knew myself to be in the evil category, and was praised for that knowledge. I hid my knowledge that I was not chosen.

But when I was 28 years old and in deep despair after a miscarriage, the beauty and honour of human life became perfectly evident to me. I was so sad about the loss of my child and so aware of her inherent wor…

Why Performance Coaching Falls Short

Some people think coaching is about doing more: setting sharper goals, pushing harder, keeping clients on track, and measuring progress at every turn. That kind of coaching can look productive on the surface. When I first started in 2009, I was stunned by how quickly people could reach their goals in just a few sessions.

But in today’s AI-driven world, where apps and algorithms can already remind us of our goals and track our steps, that kind of performance…