Coaching often begins with something a client wants to change.
A decision they want to make. A pattern they want to interrupt. A conversation they want to have differently. A way of leading, working, relating, or living that no longer fits quite as well as it once did.
And sometimes, the client knows what they want to do differently. They may have a plan. They may have done it successfully before.
And still, something familiar returns.
Not because the client lacks insight, motivation, or commitment. But because knowing what to do and being able to meet the moment differently are not always the same thing.
So where does the coaching conversation go from there?
Coaching Beyond Behavior explores that question through the lens of Narrative
Coaching. Participants will consider how stories participate in meaning-making, how meaning can become entangled with identity, and how identity can influence what we notice, dismiss, protect, question, or imagine as possible.
Participants will examine transactional and transformational coaching—not as
competing approaches or a hierarchy of depth, but as different ways of meeting what the client and the moment require. Sometimes helping a client solve, decide, plan, or act is exactly the work. At other times, staying with the inquiry a little longer may open possibilities that action alone cannot.
Through examples, reflection, conversation, and practical application, participants will explore how a Narrative Coaching orientation can deepen their use of the ICF Core Competencies—listening for the meaning a client is making, noticing assumptions without turning them into conclusions, evoking awareness without imposing interpretation, and preserving the client’s authority to decide what their experience means.
Participants will experiment with questions and conversational shifts that create room for clients to examine the stories influencing how they understand themselves, their circumstances, and the possibilities available to them—without making those stories wrong or deciding what they mean.
The session begins with a deceptively simple question:
When change doesn’t last, what might we not have stayed curious about long enough?
Participants will be able to:
1. Distinguish between transactional and transformational coaching responses and identify when each may best serve the client’s desired outcome.
2. Recognize how story, identity, assumptions, and meaning-making may influence a client’s perception, choices, and behavior.
3. Practice coaching questions and conversational responses that invite deeper
awareness while preserving client autonomy, partnership, and alignment with the ICF Core Competencies.
Core Competencies Addressed:
Establishes and Maintains Agreements, Cultivates Trust and Safety, Maintains Presence, Listens Actively, Evokes Awareness, Facilitates Client Growth
Participants will earn 1.5 Core Competency CCEs for attending this program.
About our speaker:
Nobody gives us a map for becoming. That’s probably why Jennie Antolak has made a career helping people navigate it.
Jennie Antolak is co-founder and President of Learning Journeys – The International Center of Coaching and an ICF Master Certified Coach (MCC). For more than two decades, she has coached and educated coaches, leaders, and organizations, with a particular focus on Narrative Coaching and the meaning-making processes that influence identity, perception, behavior, and change.
Drawing from narrative practice, neuroscience, human development, and organizational leadership, Jennie helps coaches become curious about what may be happening beneath the presenting challenge—while preserving the client’s authority to determine what their experience means.
Jennie holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership and Development and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications. Known for pairing depth with a bit of wit, she believes transformational coaching doesn’t require coaches to have better answers. It requires us to become more capable of staying curious when the obvious answer isn’t enough.
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