HOME OF COURAGEOUS COACHING

There is a moment most coaches will recognise. You are in a session. Something shifts in the room. You feel it before you can name it. A tightening, a pull, a quiet alertness. Something in you says: pay attention.

There is a concept in Susan David's Emotional Agility work that I keep returning to.

There is a particular kind of moment that I find quietly fascinating. Something happens. A message arrives with an unexpected tone. A client says something that catches you off guard. A plan falls through at the last minute. A piece of work you cared about is met with silence.

The phrase about the space between stimulus and response is often attributed to Viktor Frankl. Whether he wrote those exact words or not, the idea carries weight. Between what happens and what we do next, there is choice.

Coaching is a profession that lives with uncertainty. We sit alongside clients who are navigating change, tension, competing values, and questions without clear or immediate answers. We accompany them as they make sense of complexity, ambiguity, and the human consequences of their choices. And as coaches, we are not neutral observers in this work. We feel things too.

I’m midway through my Emotional Agility certification with Susan David, and even though I’m still deep in the learning, one insight is already standing out loud and clear: We can’t coach courageously if we’re at war with ourselves.