Key takeaways
- A coaching mindset is open, curious, flexible and client-centred, and you develop it on purpose, over time.
- It lives mostly outside the session: reflective practice, self-awareness, and managing your own emotions and agenda.
- Assessors hear it in how you hold the client, not in a single sentence you say.
Competency 2 is the inner work of coaching. It’s less about a technique and more about who you are being while you coach. Let’s unpack what “Embodies a Coaching Mindset” means and how it shows up in an assessment.
What this competency asks of you
The ICF describes it as developing and maintaining a mindset that’s open, curious, flexible and client-centred. The key word is “develops”. This isn’t a fixed trait you either have or don’t. It’s grown through ongoing reflective practice, self-awareness, and preparing yourself so you can be fully available to your client. It also means recognising that your client is the expert on their own life, and that your role is to draw out their wisdom, not deliver yours.
What we look for when we assess it
We hear a coaching mindset in the quality of your curiosity, your comfort with not knowing, and your willingness to follow the client rather than your own plan. When a coach relaxes their grip on being right, stays curious, and trusts the client’s capacity, this competency quietly shows up through the whole session.
How to strengthen it
- Build a reflective practice. Review your sessions and notice your own patterns.
- Prepare before each session so you arrive settled and present.
- Catch the moment you want to be clever or lead, and choose curiosity instead.
- Trust that your client has their own answers, and let that trust shape your questions.
I illustrated these memory prompt visuals with my art to help coaches facing their ACC exam and PCC-MCC Credential exam.
Each art connects to a main concept in this ICF Core Competency, from the coach standing on the shore preparing to coach, the client in their life boat with their bag of context, the symbols on the coach like hand on heart for caring, and the pile of books and phone to remind us that the coach needs to seek supervision and continued study.
Our Level 1 and 2 students get all our memory prompts with a complete ICF exam readiness course.
The full guide
A guide with exam tips for the latest ICF Competencies “Coaching Mindset”
In September 2025, the ICF made updates. This is a guide to the updated 2nd ICF competency. It’s part B of the “Foundation” category of competencies.
Let’s unpack this specific competency, “Embodies a Coaching Mindset,” and explore a couple of skills and methods that will help you with this competency and strengthen all 8.
What is the definition of ICF Competency 2 “Embodies a Coaching Mindset”?
Definition: Engages in ongoing personal and professional learning and development as a coach. Works with coaching supervisors or mentor coaches as needed. Develops and maintains a mindset that is open, curious, flexible and client-centered. ICF International Coaching Federation
- 2.01. Acknowledges that clients are responsible for their own choices
- 2.02. Engages in ongoing learning and development as a coach, including remaining aware of current coaching best practices and use of technology
- 2.03. Develops an ongoing reflective practice to enhance one’s coaching
- 2.04. Remains aware of and open to the influence of biases, context and culture on self and others
- 2.05. Uses awareness of self and one’s intuition to benefit clients
- 2.06. Develops and maintains the ability to manage one’s emotions
- 2.07. Maintains emotional, physical, and mental well-being in preparation for, throughout, and following each session.
- 2.08. Seeks help from outside sources when necessary
- 2.09. Nurtures openness and curiosity in oneself, the client, and the coaching process.
- 2.10. Remains aware of the influence of one’s thoughts and behaviors on the client and others
You can see this is part of the Coaching Mindset.
Now, once again, these early competencies are mostly implied. In other words, all these competencies are a part of what it means to be a coach. They’re not easy to prove in a coaching session. So, for example, if somebody is assessing your coaching and you submit a recording for a performance evaluation, the assessor isn’t necessarily going to be able to find evidence in the recording that you are engaged in ongoing learning and development as a coach; it’s implied.
All 8 of these qualifiers are implied.
As we progress to the other coaching competencies from the ICF, you’ll see it will shift into competencies that you need to prove and demonstrate through what, how, and when you are saying something in a coaching session.
Nevertheless, some skills and methods will help you with this competency.
My recommended skills and methods to help you with this ICF competency
To bring a coaching mindset into how you coach throughout the session, we should understand an overlapping competency, Coaching Presence.
You may have heard of Coach Presence or Coach Position. This is about putting your coaching hat on and taking off other hats like a friend, mentor and manager.
We all have many roles to play in life.
I am a mom, a daughter, a wife, a business owner, and a leader. I’m also an author and speaker. I try to be a good friend, but when chatting with a friend, I’ve got my friend hat on. I don’t think my friends would appreciate it if I suddenly took a coaching tone, it would just sound odd, right?
Coach position is when we are intentionally choosing, “I am coaching,”
There’s still warmth, there’s still care, there’s still empathy, but we’re in a professional role now. One way I emphasise guiding our master coaches when we train InnerLifeSkills Master Coaches is to remember to be equal to.
Coach Position for your Coaching Mindset
What does that mean? Think of a bridge.
You’re inviting your client to meet you on the bridge of understanding, to partner with them to co-create a coaching session and coaching journey.
If the bridge were between a high and a low point, it would be a slide.
Slides can create a collision. Whereas bridges create collaboration, connection, communication, and comprehension.
Okay, I’ll stop with the alliteration.
It’s sometimes enough just to set your intention.
We can say: “When I’m coaching, I’m equal to. I’m not positioning myself as the expert to advise because right now, I’m coaching. Neither am I shrinking into a minus, making myself smaller. I’m stepping in with dignity and respect for my skills. As a coach, I’m holding a safe space for my clients and building an equal to bridge.”
That mindset is going to support your work. It’s also going to enhance the way you listen, speak, and ask questions and strengthen all of the other Coaching Competencies.
5 Quick Tips for this Competency
- Commit to your journey of ongoing professional development and reflection
- Ongoing reflective practise: prepare for and maintain general well-being before, during and following session
- Remain aware of biases, context and culture, influence of thoughts and behaviour
- Regulate your emotions
- Seek help when needed
ABCs for your Coaching Mindset
The second method I can’t do without in my life, a favourite among my master coaches, is an InnerLifeSkills Intuition Coaching method that I call your ABCs.
A stands for attention, B body, C centre and stay.
This is a form of somatic coaching. The word soma means of the body.
Our coaching can stay very surface, cerebral and analytical, which can still provide value. But something about including the somatic intuitive felt-sense of what is happening in the coaching session immediately deepens the session.
And it also helps you to remain in Coach Position, which will help you to keep a coaching mindset. ABCs is a way of quickly centering. It’s a way of tuning out of the torture chamber mind that might be thinking, “I hope I’m coaching well. What if my client doesn’t like what I’m saying? What question am I gonna ask next?”
Do you know that noisy sports commentator that’s endlessly chattering?
ABCs is about intentionally opening to intuitive wisdom (not trying to switch off the mind because we know it gets louder). The more you resist it, the more it persists.
Instead, we are dropping attention into the body, which is as simple as taking a few breaths, intentionally noticing the centre of gravity in your body, feeling your feet feel connected with your shoes or the ground, and you do your ABCs.
Then you listen from that, you speak from that.
ABCs can help you remain in coach position, maintain a coaching mindset, remain equal to and invite deep intuitive listening into your coaching.
P=R+C is a Power Formula for a Coaching Mindset
To understand our role as coaches, it’s helpful to remember the InnerLifeSkills Power Formula. To empower someone, you need only increase their awareness of their choices and have the ability to respond to those choices effectively with confidence and capability.
Response + Ability is a reframe of the word responsibility.
Power equals response-ability plus choice.
We empower by increasing someone’s ability to respond with confidence and capability to the choices in front of them. We empower by expanding those choices.
With Coach Position, the InnerLifeSkills ABCs and Power Formula, you can remain in the coaching mindset that changes lives.
Next: Competency 3, Establishes and Maintains Agreements. Or return to the 8 ICF Core Competencies guide.