Blog

SolutionsAcademy

December 26, 2025

Coaching as a Foreign Language

Learning to coach is like learning a foreign language: early enthusiasm, awkward correctness, accents, misunderstandings, and, with practice and exposure, the gradual emergence of natural, fluent, human conversations.

December 13, 2025

Why Coaches Can Be Dangerous for Organizations

Coaches are “dangerous” because they think ethically, refuse harmful orders, protect people, and encourage independent sense-making—challenging toxic systems while strengthening organizations that value decency and learning.

December 12, 2025

When Matter Gets Uppity: Coaching Ourselves Through Tiny Rebellions

Uppity matter weeks bring clumsiness, delays, grey skies, and tiny rebellions from the world. Noticing our stories, staying curious, and responding lightly turns chaos into a small apprenticeship in presence and humour.

December 5, 2025

Smart Ways to Use Reciprocal Coaching in Your Development

Reciprocal coaching helps coaching students gain experience, deepen learning, and exchange meaningful feedback. Clear agreements, real topics, reflective practice, and attention to boundaries make peer-to-peer coaching safe, effective, and genuinely developmental.

November 28, 2025

Learned Helplessness?

Learned helplessness has drifted from a descriptive theory to a subtle blame narrative. Instead of “fixing beliefs,” coaches can stay collaborative, assume clients’ good reasons, explore exceptions, and build on existing hope and agency.

November 21, 2025

Obstacles on Your ICF Credentialing Journey

Many coaches tense up during ICF credentialing, trying to “perform” instead of coach. Focus on presence, record freely, improve one thing at a time, and treat evaluation like a natural, flowing conversation.

November 14, 2025

When the client does not want to change

When clients resist change, coaches can’t force transformation, but they can explore what the client does want, align goals ethically, and invite fresh perspectives that open possibilities for real movement.‍

November 7, 2025

Tango and Teams

Tango mirrors team life: it can be graceful or exclusionary. Managers who notice rhythm, presence, and inclusion can transform toxic dynamics into a connected dance of collaboration and trust.

October 31, 2025

How can performance evaluations contribute to a coaching culture?

When performance evaluation shifts from judging “good or bad” to exploring differences and possibilities, it stops being a ritual of frustration and becomes a space where coaching skills build clarity and growth.

October 24, 2025

Adding (Self)-Insult to Injury

When life hurts, we often make it worse by blaming ourselves. This piece explores self-compassion — how to stop adding (self)-insult to injury, for ourselves and our coaching clients.

October 17, 2025

Practicing Coaching in Everyday Conversations

Everyday conversations are opportunities to practice a coaching stance — not to perform coaching without permission, but to live curiosity, presence, and co-creation in how we meet others.

October 9, 2025

Language as Co-Creation: How Small Shifts in Wording Change the Space Between

Language in coaching doesn’t just describe — it creates. Each question and reflection shapes shared worlds. Attuning to this co-created space turns coaching into dialogue, discovery, and mutual becoming.

October 3, 2025

Coaching ≠ therapy: What is the real difference?

Coaching ≠ therapy. But the difference isn’t just past vs. future or health vs. illness. A 2×2 matrix shows it’s about stance: expert vs. co-creation, causality vs. meaning. Surprising insight: postmodern therapies look a lot like coaching

September 26, 2025

Receiving Context in Narrative Practice: Why Stories Need Audiences to Last

“Receiving context” in narrative practice ensures new, preferred stories survive beyond sessions by building supportive audiences and relationships, protecting fragile identities from relapse into problem-saturated narratives and sustaining long-term change.

September 18, 2025

Summarizing, Mirroring, Paraphrasing… What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter?

Coaches often “do the same thing”: summarizing, paraphrasing, or mirroring what a client says. But the why behind it? That differs enormously — from empathy to reframing to co-construction.