Coaching with Confidence and Care

The world our clients are navigating is changing, and so are the challenges they bring to coaching. Economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, shifting careers, organizational restructuring, and AI are all influencing how people work, lead, make decisions, and relate to one another. And with so many changes happening at once, are we, as coaches, keeping up with what our clients actually need?

In this episode, I'd like to take a broader look at the world we are living in these days and what that might mean to use as coaches. Drawing on my experience working with leaders and organizations, alongside recent research and conversations with fellow practitioners, I'll share some reflections on how the value of coaching may be evolving, which developmental needs are becoming more important, and what this could mean for our own professional growth.

We'll explore:

Future-proofing our practice doesn't necessarily mean learning another coaching model, collecting more certifications, or completely reinventing how we work. It may be more about broadening our understanding of human development, becoming more aware of the assumptions behind our preferred approaches, and strengthening our capacity to work with psychological, emotional, relational, and systemic complexity.

I hope this episode gives you some useful ideas for reflecting on your own professional development and deciding where you'd like to grow next. Let’s stay curious about the world our clients live in and be intentional about how we continue developing as practitioners.

Coming up next: Working with Organizational Coaching Sponsors

When coaching takes place in an organization, the person paying for the coaching isn't always the person we're coaching. So how do we manage those relationships? What should we agree on with sponsors before coaching begins? And how can we keep them meaningfully involved while protecting confidentiality and the coaching relationship? We'll explore these questions and some practical approaches to working with organizational sponsors.

Would you like to support the podcast?

Here's a donation link: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/LiubovDiasamidze

Explore My Other Resources to Deepen Your Coaching Skills:

Let's connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I'm here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your coaching journey.

Most coaches come to mentor coaching when they're preparing for an ICF credential. Naturally, a lot of attention goes into demonstrating the Core Competencies, understanding the ACC or MCC bars or PCC markers, and figuring out what needs to improve. But mentor coaching can offer so much more than feedback on whether you've demonstrated a particular behavior.

In this episode, I'd like to share how I approach mentor coaching as a developmental partnership, rather than simply an evaluation of coaching performance.

I will talk about:

Whether you're preparing for your ACC, PCC, or MCC credential, or simply want to continue developing as a coach, I hope this episode gives you some fresh ideas about how to approach your next mentoring conversation and make the most of the experience.

Coming up next: Rethinking the Value of Coaching in a Changing World

With AI transforming the way we work, organizations constantly adapting, and so much uncertainty around us, is the way we traditionally describe the value of coaching still relevant? Where can coaches make the greatest difference today, and what might need to change in how we think about our profession? I'll be sharing some reflections from my experience as a coach, educator, and supervisor.

Would you like to support the podcast?

Here's a donation link: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/LiubovDiasamidze

Explore My Other Resources to Deepen Your Coaching Skills:

Let's connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I'm here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your coaching journey.

We all bring our own experiences, beliefs, and assumptions into coaching conversations, even when we genuinely intend to remain open, curious, and non-judgmental. Those assumptions might influence what we hear, the questions we ask, and the direction we take with our clients.

In this episode, let's explore how unconscious biases can show up in our coaching sessions. I'll share practical examples of common biases, how they can influence our coaching session flow, and what we can do to recognize and manage them more effectively.

In this episode, we'll look at:

Having biases is part of being human. We can't expect to eliminate them entirely, and we don't need to become detached observers to be effective coaches. What matters is developing our ability to notice when our own thinking is influencing the conversation, question our interpretations, and remain open to experiences and perspectives that may be very different from our own.

I hope this episode gives you a few useful things to pay attention to in your coaching sessions.

Coming up next: Getting More Out of Mentor Coaching

How can you prepare for mentor coaching so you have something meaningful to explore? And how can you use those conversations to develop your coaching practice beyond simply meeting credentialing requirements? That's what we'll be discussing in the next episode.

Would you like to support the podcast?

Here's a donation link: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/LiubovDiasamidze

Explore My Other Resources to Deepen Your Coaching Skills:

Let's connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I am here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your journey.

Closing a coaching session can sometimes feel mechanical. There are quite a few things we may want to cover in the final minutes: progress towards the session goal, learning and takeaways, action steps, accountability, celebration, and the actual ending of the conversation. When we try to fit all of that into a short space of time, closure can easily turn into a checklist rather than a meaningful part of the coaching process.

In this episode, let’s look at how to make session closure more organic and developmental. I talk about closure as an opportunity to help clients integrate what has emerged during the session, understand what has shifted, and consider how their learning may apply beyond the particular situation they brought to coaching.

I’ll share my thoughts on:

I hope this episode helps you see session closure as an important part of the coaching itself: a space where clients can make sense of what happened, recognize what they are taking with them, and decide what they want to do with it once the conversation ends.

Coming up next: Unconscious Biases in Coaching.

We’ll look at the assumptions, preferences, and automatic judgments we may bring into a coaching conversation without necessarily being aware of them. We’ll explore how these biases can influence what we notice and overlook, the questions we ask, and the direction the conversation takes, as well as what we can do as coaches to become more aware of our own filters.

Would you like to support the podcast?

 Here’s a donation link: support the podcast

 Let’s connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I am here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your journey.

Coaching supervision may be perceived as a way to troubleshoot difficult coaching cases or check whether a coach is working correctly. In reality, supervision is not an inspection of your coaching, but a space to look at your practice with fresh eyes, explore what is happening in the work, and develop a greater capacity to notice, reflect, and make responsible professional decisions.

In this episode, let’s look at how supervision can support professional development, ethical and responsible practice, and the coach’s own emotional experience of the work. I talk about the functions of supervision, what topics you can explore, what to expect from a supervision session, how to choose a supervisor, and how to prepare by developing a regular habit of reflection.

I’ll share my thoughts on:

I hope this episode gives you a clearer sense of what supervision can offer and helps you approach your own practice with greater curiosity, honesty, and depth.

We’ll explore how to bring a coaching session to a close in a way that feels complete and genuinely useful for the client. We’ll look at how to balance depth with enough space to process, when to use a question, summary, or invitation to action, and how to avoid both rushing the client out and turning the final minutes into another coaching session. We’ll also consider how the ending can support the client’s learning rather than simply mark the point where the clock runs out.

Enjoy Other Free Materials for Coaches:

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I am here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your journey.

Silence in coaching is often described as “giving the client space,” but that explanation only touches the surface. A pause can represent many different processes: reflection, emotional processing, emerging awareness, resistance, uncertainty, or a moment when a client reaches the edge of what they are able to articulate.

In this episode, I explore silence as a micro-process within the coaching relationship. We look at how coaches can notice what happens before, during, and after a pause: what the client may be moving towards or avoiding, how the relational context shapes the meaning of silence, and how staying with silence can be developmental for clients, especially in leadership/executive coaching.

We also examine the coach’s own experience of silence. The difficulty is often not knowing what question to ask next, but tolerating not knowing, lack of control, and the absence of immediate evidence that we are being useful. Developing comfort with silence is ultimately about expanding our capacity to stay present with complexity.

I’ll share my thoughts on:

I hope this episode helps you become more confident in working with silence.

Coming up next:

Preparing for Coaching Supervision. We’ll explore how to make most of coaching supervision: not only bringing challenging moments from coaching sessions, but also examining your relationships with clients, sponsors, colleagues, and the wider context of your practice. We’ll look at what is worth bringing to supervision, how to recognize meaningful patterns, and how this reflective space can support you in becoming a more aware and effective practitioner.

Let’s connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I am here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your journey.

Being supportive is an essential part of coaching, and helping someone doesn't always mean agreeing, reassuring, or making the conversation comfortable. Sometimes the most useful thing we can do for a client is to be more courageous in how we interrupt patterns that are keeping them stuck.

In this episode, I explore what it actually means to challenge a client productively without turning the conversation into confrontation. I share how I think about the relationship between support and challenge, what helps me decide when a client is ready for a stretch, and how I work with the relational risks that can come with being more direct.

We also look at the difference between a courageous challenge that serves the client and a coach satisfying their own need to be insightful, useful, or right. Challenge only works well as an intervention when there is enough trust, presence, and genuine care underneath it.

I’ll share my thoughts on:

I hope this episode gives you some practical ideas for expanding your range as a coach and finding your own balance between support and challenge.

Coming up next:

Let’s connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I am here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your journey.

Preparing for the ICF Credentialing Exam (PCC-MCC Exam) can feel overwhelming, especially when in scenario-based questions several answers seem reasonable. If you've ever wondered how to think your way through the exam instead of memorizing competencies, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I share the approach and the way of thinking we've used at UpThink Coaching to help many of our graduates successfully prepare for their PCC credential. Rather than focusing only on what to study, we explore the logic behind the exam, the coaching mindset it assesses, and practical ways to develop the discernment needed to identify the most and least aligned responses. This is my personal opinion and experience, not official guidelines, so use your judgment to pick what’s most helpful to you.

Whether you're preparing for the current scenario-based exam or the redesigned version that will include both knowledge-based and situational judgment questions, the principles discussed here will remain highly relevant.

I’ll share my ideas about:

I hope this episode helps you approach the exam with greater confidence and a clearer understanding of what the ICF is really assessing.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with another coach who is preparing for their credentialing exam. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss future episodes exploring most common topics that arise in coach training, mentoring and supervision.

Coming up next:

Let’s connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I am here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your journey.

If the word "marketing" makes you feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed, you're definitely not alone. Many coaches struggle with visibility, self-promotion, consistency, or the belief that marketing somehow requires them to become someone they are not.

In this episode, I share some personal reflections on how my relationship with marketing has evolved over the years and what helped me approach it in a way that feels more authentic, sustainable, and aligned with how I want to show up as a coach.

I'm not a marketing expert, and this is not an episode about strategies, funnels, or hacks. Rather, it's an invitation to view marketing through a relational lens and to see it as an extension of the same qualities we bring into coaching: curiosity, care, empathy, and genuine interest in people.

You'll hear about:

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with another coach who may be trying to find a more human and authentic way to approach marketing.

And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss future episodes, especially if you're interested in the deeper, relational, and emotionally informed side of coaching.

Let’s connect!

Want to bring more presence, confidence, and clarity to your coaching? I am here for that.

Looking forward to supporting you on your journey.

In this episode, I’m talking about one of the more uncomfortable dynamics in coaching: working with disengaged, resistant, or uncooperative clients.

Many coaches take client disengagement personally or immediately assume something is “wrong” with the coaching process. But very often, resistance communicates something important about the client’s experience, the organizational context, the coaching relationship, or the way change itself is being perceived. My perspective is that disengagement should be treated as process information rather than personal failure.

I wanted to approach this topic with more nuance and compassion, especially in organizational coaching where sponsorship dynamics, psychological safety, performance pressure, and lack of choice can significantly influence engagement.

I talk about:

I share reflections from my own coaching practice, including situations where clients openly questioned the value of coaching, struggled to trust the process, or participated without genuine buy-in. These moments can feel uncomfortable, but they often contain valuable information about how people experience support, authority, vulnerability, and change.

This episode is also an invitation to approach resistance with more curiosity instead of defensiveness. Sometimes the most productive thing a coach can do is slow down, acknowledge what is happening relationally, and create space for an honest conversation about the process itself.

If you work with leaders, organizational clients, or simply want to develop a more relational approach to coaching, this episode will give you practical ideas for navigating disengagement without collapsing into rescuing, over-control, or self-doubt.

In the next episode, we’ll continue the theme of resistance from a different angle. We’ll talk about coaches’ relationship with marketing and why so many well trained and highly skilled practitioners still struggle to talk about their work openly. I’ll share some reflections on how marketing often becomes emotionally loaded, what helped me rethink it in a healthier way, and how to communicate your value without feeling fake, pushy, or transactional.

Enjoy other free materials:

Free Coaching Course for People Leaders:

Mock ICF Credentialing Exam (PCC, MCC) from UpThink Coaching:

PCC Marker Demo:

Next ICF-Accredited Coach Training Programs (for coaches who want to work at depth):

ACC Path:

PCC Path: