The approach
If you like to know what's going on under the bonnet, this page is for you. Let's take a proper look at the four frameworks behind the training, how they fit together, and what they actually look like in session.
If you’re an experienced coach, you probably don’t need more tools. What tends to be trickier is knowing what you’re actually noticing in your client, and why you’d reach for one approach rather than another in that particular moment.
Executive coaching doesn’t need fewer cognitive tools. It needs greater range.
The whole approach comes down to four questions you can ask yourself in session, with a framework sitting behind each one.
The frameworks are practical, but they sit on top of the science of regulation, arousal, attention and embodied experience that we teach throughout the programme.
01
Where is my client?
Performance Spectrum
02
What am I noticing?
State · Story · Gap
03
Where should I enter?
Three Entry Pathways
04
What do I do next?
CORE
As we go, I’ll keep coming back to two clients, Katie and Simon. Their details have been changed, but the coaching situations are real. They responded to pressure in very different ways, which makes them really useful for showing how the frameworks work in practice.
01 · Where is my client?
Let’s start with pressure, because pressure isn’t actually the enemy. At first, increasing pressure can support performance. But at some point, it tips over, and our client’s capacity for reflection, perspective, and choice starts to narrow.
Inside the Window of Regulation, your client has enough capacity to reflect, stay flexible and take effective action. Beyond the window, that capacity narrows, and perspective gets a lot harder to reach.
Katie was the first client I ever worked with using somatic tools. Within a few minutes of our first session she was in tears, hyperventilating, and her thinking was all over the place. On the Spectrum she was well beyond the window, somewhere around −3 or −4.
Seeing that changed the question I was asking myself. It wasn’t “What should I ask her?” any more. It was “What might help create enough capacity for coaching?”
The Spectrum isn’t a diagnostic or a label. It’s a way of orienting to the person in front of you right now, and it can shift from moment to moment in your sessions.
02 · What am I noticing?
Our clients are giving us two sources of information at the same time. Their story is what they tell us and how they explain it. Their state is what we notice in their behaviour, energy, affect and physiology.
Most of us have been trained to listen really closely to the story. State · Story · Gap simply asks you to notice both, and to notice where they don’t quite match up.
Simon told me he was doing okay, just a bit overwhelmed and frustrated at work. What I was noticing in his state seemed less consistent with that story. He was flat and low, and there appeared to be more going on than his words suggested
Katie was the other way round. Her state was so loud that her story couldn’t really get through.
The gap between story and state is a great place to start getting curious.
03 · Where should I enter?
Once you’ve got a sense of where your client is, the next question is where to go in. We work with three broad pathways.
- Survival works directly with the body and the nervous system, through things like breath, grounding and interoception.
- Feeling works with emotion, helping your client locate it, name it and connect it with what actually matters to them.
- Thinking is psychological flexibility, alongside all the executive coaching approaches you already know really well.
With Katie, it quickly became clear that talking wasn’t getting us anywhere. Even working directly with emotion didn’t feel possible yet. She was highly activated, so the most useful way in seemed to be through the body.
These aren’t three types of clients. They’re different ways in, and a client can move between them within a single conversation.
Not at all. Breathwork and grounding can be just as useful for someone sitting at +2 or +3, helping a high performer feel more connected to their body and building capacity and renewal.
Somatic work isn’t only for dysregulation. It can support performance too.
04 · What do I do next?
This is where it all comes together. CORE stands for Centre, Orient, Regulate and Engage, and it’s really a way of organising your attention in session.
What is happening in me?
Where is my client, and what am I noticing?
Does anything need to shift before useful work can happen?
What becomes possible now?
Regulation can move in opposite directions. Katie needed to settle enough for her story to come out straight. Simon had gone flat, so he needed to become more present and engaged. Sometimes finding enough capacity means bringing someone up rather than down.
CORE isn’t a sequence. You keep orienting, regulate when needed, and move back and forth as the client and conversation change.
Let’s be really clear about this bit. This is coaching, not therapy. Embodied Performance is about performance, and it’s designed to help you expand your range while staying well within coaching boundaries.
Part of working well with somatic and emotional material is recognising when what’s in front of you needs something other than coaching, and knowing when referral is the right move.
Range includes knowing where your range ends.
The frameworks give you the map. What the programme develops is the ability to use them in session: noticing what’s happening, choosing where to enter, selecting an appropriate intervention and adapting as your client changes.
That’s a practical skill, and you don’t develop it just by reading or watching. You develop it by practising.
Because executive coaching doesn’t need fewer cognitive tools. It needs greater range.
The next cohort starts in February 2027. Join the waitlist and I’ll let you know when enrolment opens.