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You can be a technically solid coach and still feel that something is missing and your client can feel it too. That subtle gap is what we dig into with leadership and executive coach Nancy Hauschild, author of “The Observed and the Observer: Stripping Away the Layers to Find Your Deepest Presence,” from Choice Magazine’s theme on The Gift of Presence.

We talk about the difference between the observed and the observer: the surface identities we can list on a resume versus the meta-awareness that can watch our thoughts, urges, and “coach persona” in real time. When the inner performer shows up as the fixer, the expert, or the relentlessly helpful coach, it can contaminate the conversation and quietly pull us out of true coaching presence. Nandi shares how noticing that impulse without acting on it changes how we listen, how we build trust, and how clients feel genuinely seen.

From there, we reframe presence as transmission. It is not only what we think we bring to the session, but what the client actually receives from the quality of our attention. We unpack the “glass pane” phenomenon where a session can check all the ICF boxes but still feel disconnected, and we map three layers of presence: being with another, being with yourself, and creating an environment where deeper client insight becomes possible. Nandi also makes it clear that trauma is not the price of admission for depth; the real doorway is willingness to do your own work through curiosity, mentoring, and supervision.

Listen through, try the five-minute presence exercise we link in the show notes, and then tell us what changed. If you found this helpful, subscribe, share the episode with a coach friend, and leave a review so more coaches can find it.

Watch the full interview by clicking here.

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Learn more about Nancy here.

A Free Gift from Nancy: A one page reflective guide titled "How Present Are You, Really? A Five-Minute Self-Inquiry for Coaches"

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You can hear it when someone is technically “on the call” but their body is still sprinting. That gap between showing up and actually arriving is what we dig into with executive and team coach Susan Weiss, author of Active Presence: How to Bring Yourself and Your Client Fully Into the Now. We get practical about what presence looks like in real coaching sessions, why it slips, and how to rebuild it without pretending we live in a distraction-free world.

We talk about the difference between self-awareness and self-management, and why awareness alone is not enough when you’re coaching senior leaders under pressure. Susan shares simple transition rituals and a fast “clearing” practice that helps clients move from scattered to strategic in minutes. We also explore her favorite concept, a somatic treasury: collecting embodied memories from nature, travel, or everyday moments you can recall to access groundedness, expansion, or calm on demand.

Then we go one level deeper into the neuroscience of trust in coaching. Presence is not just philosophical; it affects nervous system safety, empathy, and connection through mechanisms like mirror neurons and oxytocin. If you want stronger rapport, clearer thinking, and better outcomes in executive coaching, leadership development, and team dynamics, this conversation gives you a clean starting point you can use between back-to-back sessions.

If this helps you, subscribe, share the episode with a coach or leader who needs a reset, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What practice will you try first?

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Gifts: Meditation for Coaches - The Gift of Presence on SoundCloud
Reflection Guide for Coaches - a PDF for coaches

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Your best leaders can look calm and still be in trouble. When uncertainty stops being a short-term disruption and becomes the water everyone swims in, “stay strong and push through” turns into isolation, second-guessing, and a constant fight with their own internal signals. That’s the heart of our conversation with executive coach and coaching supervisor Maria Wade, author of “Holding It Together Is Not the Job: Coaching Leaders in Prolonged Organizational Chaos.”

We dig into what changes when the world moves from complicated to complex to chaotic and why senior leadership challenges stop being technical problems you can solve with more expertise. Maria shares how coaches can use presence and interoception, the felt sense of what’s happening inside the body, as real data in a session. We talk about why the goal isn’t to calm a client down, but to help them get accurate information from a system they’ve learned to override, and how neuroscience on constructed emotions informs a more careful, respectful approach.

From there, we zoom out to the identity shift leaders face after promotion: more autonomy, fewer guardrails, and often less honest support. We explore vulnerability with boundaries, breaking isolation without oversharing, and bringing the system into the room through psychological safety and accountability. Maria also points listeners to a practical Chaos Guide and explains how her leadership integrity framework connects inner awareness, relationships, and the larger organizational system.

If you coach executives, lead teams, or work inside fast-changing organizations, you’ll walk away with language and practical moves for staying grounded while everything shifts. Subscribe, share this with a fellow coach or leader, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Watch the full interview by clicking here.

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Learn more about Maria here.

* Gift – When Holding It Together Stops Working: A Field Guide for Coaching Leaders Through Prolonged Chaos. A free four-page companion to my Choice feature, written for coaches who work with senior leaders when a crisis stops being a moment and becomes the weather. It lays out four moves for those long engagements: reading the body in the room before you trust the briefing, noticing when a leader is solving the right problems at the wrong level, finding the isolation hiding inside hard-won autonomy, and coaching the identity underneath the performance. It closes with five questions to ask yourself before your next session, because you cannot ask a leader to stop performing composure while you perform it back at them. Download it free at chaosguide.mariawade.us.

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Chaos has a way of shrinking our thinking. One tough email, a headline, a sudden change at work and we grab for the fastest fix, the familiar answer, the script that used to work. Then the brain locks onto worst case scenarios, confidence drops, and even strong leaders start feeling stuck. We sit down with Marcia Reynolds, Master Certified Coach and pioneer in the ICF community, to talk about how a coaching approach can activate resilience when uncertainty is the only constant.

Marcia introduces the “murky unknown” and the messy middle of change, where people are transforming but nothing feels stable yet. Her core practice sounds almost too simple until you try it: coach slowly. We unpack how slowing down creates emotional connection first, why clients need to feel safety before they can access insight, and how the real topic often emerges naturally when we invite story instead of rushing to goals. You’ll hear how to listen for repeated phrases and hidden rules, then reflect them back with compassion, even if it sparks frustration, because that emotion often signals a breakthrough.

We also dig into why old solutions can be harmful when applied to new problems and why so many leaders burn out trying to be the one who knows. Marcia challenges us to let go of the expert identity and to “give it back” so clients build agency. Finally, she explains the difference between listening and receiving through therapeutic presence, opening head, heart, and gut to create felt trust that goes beyond confidentiality statements and into real connection.

If you want practical coaching tools for uncertain times, subscribe, share this episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more coaches and leaders can find it. What part of coaching slowly would make the biggest difference in your next conversation?

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Learn more about Marcia here.

* Gift – Introduction and First Chapter to Coach the Person, Not the Problem 2nd Edition. This document looks at what makes coaching so powerful in these times of chaos and uncertainty, what it takes to impact people and trigger transformation beyond what AI can do, and what are the key elements of a coaching conversation.

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Feeling stuck is not always a sign you’re failing. Sometimes it’s a sign you’re crossing a threshold where the old version of your leadership no longer fits and the next one hasn’t come into focus yet. That space can feel restless, urgent, and confusing, which is exactly why many of us try to force clarity and rush into an action plan.

We sit down with leadership coach and organizational consultant Michael Schoultz, author of “Coaching at the Threshold: Supporting Clients in Times of Uncertainty,” from choice Magazine’s Coaching in Chaos issue. Together, we unpack how to tell the difference between avoidance and real transition, what patterns to listen for beneath a client’s words, and why familiar coaching tools like goals and next steps can suddenly feel ineffective when identity is shifting.

A central takeaway is simple and surprisingly powerful: regulation before clarity. When anxiety and overwhelm tighten the nervous system, options disappear and decision making becomes reactive. We talk about slowing the conversation down, framing uncertainty as transition rather than failure, holding complexity with steadiness, and helping clients choose aligned action instead of rushed action. We also explore the Goldilocks question of timing so reflection doesn’t become another form of hiding.

If you coach leaders through complexity, organizational change, or high-stakes decisions, this conversation will give you language, mindset, and practical moves you can use right away. Subscribe, share this with a coach or leader who needs steadiness, and leave a review with the moment that changed how you’ll handle uncertainty.

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Learn more about Michael here.

* A gift for Beyond the Page listeners, free and no sign-up required. A one-page set of "threshold-safe" coaching questions for those moments when a client is between identities — designed to slow the rush to clarity and help them find orientation before outcome.

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Chaos can feel like whitewater: loud, fast, destabilizing, and impossible to control. That’s why I invited award-winning change agent and master coach DJ Mitsch back to Beyond the Page to talk about what it really takes to find peace amid chaos and lead through meta change with courage and compassion. We explore a practical metaphor that sticks: change as a river, where rapids test us, quiet pools integrate us, and the goal is not perfect control, but conscious navigation.

We also go straight at the modern stressors leaders and coaches face every day: emotional contagion, the way negativity multiplies online, and the growing problem of AI-generated content shaping what people believe. DJ shares why what we “hold” in thought and feeling becomes part of our experience, and why leaders can’t ask teams to be calm if they’re bringing frantic energy into the room. From grounding practices like breathing, visualization, Tai Chi, and barefoot grounding, to heart-led courage and intuitive sensing, we outline how coaching presence becomes a leadership advantage.

From an ontological and meta-relational leadership lens, we look at the wider field: resources, systems, and uncertainty that no single person can “fix.” The work is to create steadiness, invite contribution, and listen for the second conversation in every room: the underlying energy. If you care about executive coaching, change management, team coaching, and building leader-as-coach cultures, you’ll walk away with language, questions, and next steps you can use immediately. Subscribe, share this with a fellow coach or leader, and leave a review with the one idea you’re taking into your next conversation.

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**Please note this correction on the book mentioned in the interview.**
This book by Gloria D. Karpinski has been a go-to for me over the years. It is a study of the seven levels of consciousness and offers rituals and exercises throughout …the Guided Imagery mentioned in this interview can be found on pages 274-278, but read the entire work before guiding someone through this visualization, so you understand the context and power! Copyright 1990 Ballantine Books, NYC. https://a.co/d/0ciEE1u6

A Gift for our listeners: The meta-relational handout : https://drive.google.com/file/d/100n2LLAvd16RPdMs9nDmvtiAjGuBb3vZ/view?usp=drive_link

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The world does not change because we agree with the idea of change. It changes when we show up differently on an ordinary Tuesday morning, in the meetings we dread, the choices we rush, and the habits we repeat. That is the heart of my conversation with master coaches and authors Janet Harvey and Silvia Tassarotti about their book, Regenerative People, and why regeneration is not a trend but a personal and leadership practice.

We draw a clear line between sustainability and regeneration. Sustainability aims to reduce harm through mitigation and adaptation. Regeneration asks something bolder: how do we build living systems, organizations, and cultures that restore and give back more than they take? We talk about the mindset shift many leaders skip, the step where we admit our role as causal agents in extractive norms, and how coaching is uniquely positioned to bridge the “personal versus business” divide. Along the way we explore seven-generation thinking, vision, and real examples of long-horizon decisions, from national policy choices to companies willing to reimagine success.

You will leave with practical tools, not just inspiration: a coaching-friendly way to see challenges as living systems, a four-dimension decision lens (inner state, system impact, purpose, and more), and an invitation to inventory the core attributes of being regenerative across self, family, team, and organization. If you have been looking for a grounded approach to regenerative leadership, sustainable growth, well-being at work, and culture change that actually sticks, this conversation is your next step.

Watch the full interview by clicking here.

Learn more about Janet here and reach out to Janet at janet.harvey@invitechange.com

Learn more about Silvia here and reach out to Silvia at tassarottis@gmail.com

Take the 5 question survey here: Go.invitechange.com/regen

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Chaos has a way of making smart people reach for old tools harder, even when those tools stop working. We sit down with Coach Carrie Sackett, author of “Saying Yes And To Chaos: Building Resilience with Our Clients in Uncertain Times,” to explore a surprisingly practical answer: improv. Not stage improv, but structured, embodied exercises that help coaches and clients get out of their mental loops and back into real-time presence, connection, and creativity.

We dig into the heart of “yes, and” as a coaching method. Carrie explains how coaches can treat the client’s words as an “offer,” accept what is true without negating it, and then add something that moves the work forward. You’ll hear why she often uses improv games early, how experiential learning beats long explanations, and what shifts when “no, but” language turns into collaboration. The party planning game makes the contrast instantly felt, not just understood.

From there, we zoom out to coaching in uncertainty and the feeling of living in a “poly” world where multiple, conflicting demands hit at once. Carrie shares a we lens grounded in social therapeutic coaching and both-and thinking, plus additional practices like mirroring, collective storytelling, and an emotions chorus that can transform group coaching, couples coaching, and family dynamics.

If you want coaching tools for resilience that actually work in modern complexity, press play. Subscribe, share this with a coach friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Learn more about Carrie here.

Visit groupandcouplescoaching.com/practicing-social-therapeutic-coaching to register and receive 20% Weekend Intensive Training in Social Therapeutic Coaching Nov. 7 + 8. ENTER DISCOUNT CODE CHOICE20

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