Meeting/Event Information

NOTE - Start time is 10:00am & venue is Shaker Hts. Library

Two truths stand before you: Best practice teaches coaches to establish a clear coaching agreement both for the client and the coach. Senior level clients know they’re supposed to “get something” from coaching. 

However, with overstimulated or dysregulated clients, this shared expectation can quietly push both parties toward productivity over presence. The client may expertly suppress what’s messy in order to be coherent; and as coach we help them do it in service of a usable agreement.

This session examines how well-intended outcome-orientation can unintentionally limit depth, keeping coaching at the surface while still feeling successful. Participants will explore how overstimulation affects a client’s capacity for insight, how productivity pressure shows up in both coach and client, and how to recognize when a session goal is functioning more as a completion task than a meaningful engagement. Through reflection and applied practice, coaches will strengthen their ability to listen beyond “what can be achieved” and remain with conversations that are less tidy—but often more impactful.

ICF Core Competencies

1.02. Is sensitive to clients’ identity, environment, experiences, values and beliefs

2.03. Develops an ongoing reflective practice to enhance one’s coaching

3.07. Partners with the client to define what the client believes they need to address or resolve to achieve what they want to accomplish in the session

4.01. Seeks to understand the client within their context which may include their identity, environment, experiences, values and beliefs

5.01. Remains focused, observant, empathetic and responsive to the client

6.04. Notices, acknowledges and explores the client’s emotions, energy shifts, non-verbal cues or other behaviors

7.08. Helps the client identify factors that influence current and future patterns of behavior, thinking or emotion

8.05. Invites the client to consider how to move forward, including resources, support and potential barriers

Participants will be able to:

Recognize when outcome-seeking is limiting depth, distinguishing between a session goal that supports engagement and one that functions as a productivity or completion strategy.

Listen for regulation, energy, and emergence rather than coherence, using emotional charge, repetition, and pacing as legitimate data when clarity is not yet accessible.

Partner with clients around provisional or process-based outcomes, allowing movement and insight without requiring the client to suppress dysregulation to appear “productive.”

Interrupt subtle coach–client collusion around usefulness, naming when surface-level work is serving urgency rather than meaningful exploration and offering alternatives that preserve agency and trust.

NOTE: breakfast snacks and juices will be provided. You are welcome to bring your own coffee - but it must be in a closed, covered container.

“Shaker Heights Public Library provides meeting room space as a community service. The library neither sponsors nor endorses this event, individual, or organization.”

ICF CE Credit GRANTED
1.5 Core Competencies
0.0 Resource Development

FACILITATOR:

Sara Ismail-Beigi Bartlett
(she/her)

Owner of MOD Network LLC, Sara is focused on making change easier. She believes that everyone strives to bring their best to work. Whether looking to make a change personally or to enterprise-wide, Sara partners with individuals and organizations to find possibility in every challenge.

With 20+ years of professional experience in clinical, corporate, and non-profit settings, Sara utilizes her diverse skill set to make change possible. With specific expertise including non-profit management, customer service/call center management, executive education, recruitment, and clinical trial management, she is able to work between frontline, technical, and executive audiences with ease. 

Sara obtained her Bachelors in Management from Case Western Reserve University and her Masters in Organizational Development from Bowling Green State University.