Breakthrough Coaching

Join ICF Executive and Leadership Coaching Community of Practice and Dr. Marcia Reynolds on Tuesday, July 15, 2025 from 12 Noon – 1:30 p.m. (New York) for a deep dive into breakthrough coaching and discover how to blend the neuroscience of co-regulation with coaching skills to create more transformational moments. 

Dr. Marcia Reynolds will show how to integrate the neuroscience of biochemical connection with the practical application of reflective inquiry in coaching. The objective is to create a state of “co-regulation” where the intersection of emotional energy produces the safety, trust, and willingness to explore, prompting clients to fully participate in coaching even when they were hesitant or resistant. The consistent emotional energy of the coach then facilitates the processes of rooting out blocks, recognizing and transforming elements of identity formation, and promotes a confident commitment to moving forward. These skills of connection, use of reflective statements, and focusing on “who” the client is are particularly useful for executive and leadership coaching. 

Who Is This For?

• Coaches who wish to empower their coaching capabilities
• Leaders who wish to integrate a coaching approach in their conversations
• Anyone interested in understanding the neuroscience of regulating our internal states to access a wider potential

What You Will Learn:

• Learn concepts in recent brain research and apply the concepts to deepen your connection and impact when coaching leaders.
• Adopt techniques to generate the energetic presence to start coaching, then maintain this powerful connection throughout the conversation.
• Explore how to use skills in reflective inquiry to co-create creative insights that lead to expanding self-awareness, transforming outdated beliefs, and envisioning a growth path that includes renovating their identity as a leader to support their commitment to change.

Course Details:

Drawing on recent discoveries in the neurosciences and intrinsic motivation, this program teaches the latest techniques for stimulating the new thinking and long term behavioral change needed to create breakthrough results when coaching. These practices are particularly useful when coaching executives and leaders who may be resistant to interventions and change.

One of the common challenges we face when coaching leaders is revealing the blind spots and points of resistance that keep them from intentionally moving forward. We often focus on the “active competencies” of setting the agreement, listening, evoking awareness, and facilitating progress. Yet these skills are less effective if we don’t master maintaining a courageous, compassionate presence that works best without thinking. Our presence creates the safety, trust, and willingness to explore, prompting clients to fully participate in coaching even when they were hesitant or resistant.

When we use our emotions to engage our clients by generating “co-regulation,” we are better able to work at levels of identity formation and belief transformation, both critical to coaching leaders to confidently commit to long-term change.