To Coach and Human Better, We Must Stretch

When I set out on a solo nomadic adventure on January 1, 2018, I had no idea it would transform me as a coach, a facilitator, and a leader.

To be sure, I knew that this adventure would challenge me. I knew that there would be obstacles and growth that I couldn’t anticipate. I predicted that this bold venture would support and expand my work, because I’d be meeting people all over the country, and taking the opportunity to visit and speak at several ICF chapters. I expected I’d need to upgrade some skills and conquer some fears. And I was grateful for and ever mindful of the immense privilege of being able to continue to do the work I’m passionate about as I set out on this odyssey.

What I couldn’t foresee was that my journey would not only catalyze my own growth, but also enable me to serve my coaching clients, workshop participants, and keynote audiences on a dramatically higher level. I could never have predicted that my adventure would unlock insights and expansion that would not only transform my own life, but would also crystallize my mission, deepen my purpose and my skill in working with my clients, and lead me to develop resources and programs that would significantly expand my level of contribution, reach, and impact.

It’s not that I’d been stagnant or that I had ever stopped growing; on the contrary, like most coaches I know, I’d been engaged in ongoing learning since my earliest days of coach training. Soon after I loaded up Mr. Pri (the Prius) and got on the road, though, it rapidly became obvious that my nomadic adventure had catapulted me into a new level of expansion, courage, and positive risk-taking, and that I had signed up for a level of transformation that would give me a fresh perspective on my clients and their goals. 

Today, I look back and can’t imagine how different my coaching, training, speaking, and creative leadership would be had I not stretched myself with this adventure. I can now see clearly how an initial decision to stretch, and continuous daily decisions to keep stretching, are key to our development and future-readiness as coaches, leaders, and humans.

Here’s the great news: coaches don’t need to upend their lives and pack up their practices into Priuses in order to stretch. You can tap into this super-strategy for growth, agility, leadership, and service from right where you are.

Stretching Expands Our Empathy … and Our Humility

When coaches and leaders voluntarily stretch, we activate our vulnerability and courage, and refresh our empathy for people experiencing expansion.

If you’ve achieved some degree of confidence, competency, satisfaction, and success, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be on the other side of change. When we stretch ourselves, we re-access the not-knowing, the impatience, the longing, the self-doubt, the excitement, the exhaustion, and even the existential uncertainty that a change process can entail. As a result, stretching ourselves humbles us, getting us more deeply in touch with our own complexity and humanity.

While we needn’t have experienced what our clients are experiencing in order to coach them effectively, anything we do to increase our empathy has the potential to upgrade our coaching.

We can never really know what it’s like to be in a client’s shoes, no matter how many similar experiences and circumstances we may have shared. We can reinvigorate our awareness of what it’s like to journey into the unknown — as our clients must do in order to achieve the goals and growth they seek.

Stretching Inspires Our Clients, Group Participants, Colleagues, and Other Audiences

Before I set out on my nomadic adventure, I shared my plan with my coaching clients. My focus was on reassuring my clients that even as I would be constantly moving, our coaching work would remain stable. It never even occurred to me that my clients would take my choice to stretch as an added value.

As it turned out, my clients were surprised and excited by my adventure. More than one of them expressed some variation of the following: “It feels good to know that while I’m pushing myself, you’re doing something brave too.” One client said, “I feel like I’ve got a seat on the Carrie bus!” While I understood that he was playfully speaking to the geographical variety of our coaching calls, I came to understand that it was more than the vicarious novelty factor of this adventure that lit up my clients. They were watching me venture boldly into the unknown, while they were doing the same in their lives. We were in this growth thing together. We were walking the talk.

You may be surprised to discover how your own stretching impacts the people you are here to serve, and how just by doubling down on your own growth, you end up growing your coaching impact, influence, and thought leadership.

Stretching Taps Into Our Own Innate Creativity, Resourcefulness, and Wholeness

As coaches, we view our clients as creative, resourceful, and whole. We can deepen the in-our-bones conviction of this principle by tapping into and nurturing our own creativity and resourcefulness, and discovering (or rediscovering) the multitudes we contain.

By virtue of engaging in a coaching relationship, we challenge our clients to stretch; to move outside their comfort zones; to dance in the unknown with us. We confidently hold space in which they can dare to declare what they want to create — itself a tremendous act of courage — and invite them on a journey full of questions they may not yet have answers for, actions that may lead them into unfamiliar territory, and results that call forth aspects of themselves long dormant or unknown.

As we voluntarily engage in continuous stretching, we develop the competencies that will allow us to thrive in our own work and lives, and equip ourselves to serve our clients, teams, stakeholders, and others we serve even more powerfully. We position ourselves to have ideas we can’t yet have from where we are; we give ourselves the skills that will make us brave enough to create offerings and pursue goals that we haven’t yet conceived. (I marvel to think of the tools, insights, courses, and keynotes that I never would have thought to create, let alone created, had I not stretched myself so deeply and constantly as a nomad.) And when we encounter setbacks and stretch through them, we increase our resilience and resourcefulness.

When coaches make stretching an everyday practice, we make ourselves ready to meet whatever moments await us.

Stretching Helps Coaches Human Better in an AI World

Choosing to continuously stretch is one of the most powerful ways coaches can serve our clients in a rapidly evolving and increasingly automated world. It’s so important that it is one of the keys I’ll explore at ICF Converge 2025 taking place October 23-25 in San Diego, California, USA, this fall in my Coaching Spotlight Talk, I’m Not a Robot: How to Human Better in an AI World.

The most vital soft skills in an AI era — such as critical thinking, problem solving, learning orientation, creativity, adaptability, communication, and collaboration — are not just buzzwords. They are competencies that we can practice on purpose. These competencies help us thrive as humans, coaches, leaders, community members, and business owners, and they allow us to serve at a higher level, authentically and courageously stepping more and more deeply into the work we’re here to do.

In this moment of massive, collective transformation, as we absorb the explosion of AI into our lives, coaches find ourselves thrust into a position of rapidly adapting while our clients are doing the same. The nearly ubiquitous incorporation of AI across industries and areas of life impacts all coaches — both as individuals with our own goals and needs, and as professionals supporting clients who are navigating this unknown territory. As we undergo this seismic shift alongside our clients, we must proactively seek ways to increase the competencies that will help us thrive in change. In other words, we must stretch.

Back in 2018, as a tech civilian, I couldn’t know what was coming around the bend in terms of the rapid, transformative impact of AI models being made widely available. Or that every mile of my journey was preparing me to adapt to an unknown future.

While coaches can’t predict the future, it turns out that we can stretch ourselves to practice essential, evergreen competencies every day, so that they’ll be strong when we need them most — and we can help our clients do the same.

You Can Begin Stretching From Right Where You Are

At Converge 25, I’ll share many strategies and insights that will help you support yourself in stretching. In the meantime, you can warm up by taking on small, everyday stretches.

Ask: What’s something you’re just the tiniest, littlest bit afraid to do — in your coaching, leadership, or another part of your life? (Pro Tip: if you can’t find fear, look for discomfort.)

Check: Check in with your body and your intuition to discern: What is this fear or discomfort telling me? (Does it come from a place of knowing that this isn’t right for me? Or from a place of knowing that this would stretch me in directions I want or need to go?)

Act: If it passes that discernment test, make a plan to take that small step outside your comfort zone.

Repeat: Repeat this process at least weekly.

Low-stakes, bite-sized acts of boldness build your capacity in ways that will sneak up on you! As you stretch yourself in small, everyday ways, your comfort zone will expand.

© 2025 Carrie Spaulding. All rights reserved.