How to coach a client who won’t take action

CLIENT: I know how it looks. I actually feel pretty bad about it.

That’s Alex, my client, at the start of session three. Two sessions, two sets of agreed actions, and nothing done. Both times.

Alex is a ChatGPT AI simulated client. I briefed her to act like a natural client, so I can show you coaching mistakes and how to fix them. The situation is real, though. My team and I have been guiding natural coaches to become Master Coaches for over 30 years, and to achieve ACC, PCC and MCC since our ICF accreditation in 2012. We see this one all the time.

In this demonstration I make three mistakes on purpose. I laid it on thicker than real life, for effect, and I still felt uncomfortable doing it.

Then I show you what I do instead. The third fix is my favourite.

What was the client bringing to the session?

Alex arrives for the third time with nothing done, and a lot of guilt about it. I ask what she’d like from today. This is what comes out:

CLIENT: I’d like to understand why I keep doing this. It’s not just coaching. It’s my health goals, my finances, things at work. I keep telling myself I’m going to change something and then I don’t.

Why does pushing a client to take action backfire?

Here’s my first run. I lean on Alex.

COACH: What do you have to say about the fact that you don’t seem to be taking the coaching very seriously?
CLIENT: I don’t think it’s that I’m not taking it seriously. I know how it looks though. I actually feel pretty bad about it.
COACH: I get that. It’s disappointing for me as the coach. I feel like I’m putting in so much effort and you’re not.
CLIENT: I know. That’s why I was dreading the session. I knew I’d have to come back and say I hadn’t done any of it again.

MISTAKE: I made a guilty client feel judged as well. Alex was already dreading me.

Guilt doesn’t make clients act. It makes them leave. Our graduate coaches tell us the same story, year after year. The client stops replying to emails. Then they drop out, because facing you is worse than staying stuck.

So say this in your first session instead:

COACH: I’d like to invite you into a guilt-free zone. This is your time. This is your space. Bring anything you need to bring to your coaching.
CLIENT: Thank you. I actually feel a bit emotional hearing that. I’ve been carrying quite a lot of guilt about coming back and saying I didn’t do what I said I would do.

MASTER COACH TIP: Name it before it happens. The first session is the honeymoon. Your client is excited. They’ve put money and time on the table. But they don’t trust you yet with the parts of themselves they judge: the self-doubt, the procrastination, the laziness. Those show up in session two or three. So tell your client, “Not if, but when you don’t follow through, that’s when you need coaching most. There’ll be no judgement here.”

The inner obstacles are the rewarding part of the work. Skip them and the coaching stays on the surface.

What does “don’t miss, dismiss or minimise” mean in coaching?

Second run. Alex opens up, and I brush past it.

CLIENT: I didn’t do any of the things we talked about again. I know that’s becoming a pattern, and I’m feeling pretty embarrassed about it.
COACH: Look, it’s not a problem for me. Let’s focus on today’s session and make sure it’s productive and valuable.
CLIENT: Part of me is relieved to hear that, but another part of me is wondering if we’re just going to do the same thing again.

MISTAKE: I missed, dismissed and minimised. Alex handed me something vulnerable, and I put it aside.

It’s an easy mistake to make when you’re trained to always spiral up, keep moving forward, make progress. Many coaches on the ICF path go quiet around inner obstacles. They’re afraid of crossing into therapy. But the ICF’s own PCC markers ask us to listen for more than the words: tone, body language, hesitation. When a client resists, or shares something vulnerable, stay there. Moving on is the worst thing you can do.

Even our simulated client can tell something else is going on.

MASTER COACH TIP: Acknowledging isn’t “I hear you” followed by a chunk of what they said. Put it on the table. Make it okay for the client to feel what they feel. I call it taking out the picnic basket. You don’t skip to the next mechanical question. You stay, and you partner with your client. You’re not fixing, and you’re not cheerleading.

Why isn’t to-do-list coaching enough?

Third run, and the mistake most of us make without noticing.

COACH: What is your long term goal?
CLIENT: To feel like I’m actually moving forward in my life. More than anything, I want to trust myself when I say I’m going to do something.
COACH: And what are three possible actions you can take to make that a reality?
CLIENT: I could start exercising consistently. I could make a proper budget. I could apply for some of the roles I’ve been talking about for months. I know what the actions are. That’s the frustrating part.

MISTAKE: I stayed on the surface. Goals, actions, plans, next steps. Alex already had every one of them.

None of it is wrong. But if it’s all we do, coaching becomes planning to plan. Nothing gets done in the session itself. Most of us got into coaching for the real inner work, the kind that changes a life. Stay with to-do-list coaching and it’s flat for your client, and flat for you.

How do you find what the client actually wants from the session?

Now the fix. I start by naming the safe space, then I ask what matters.

COACH: Tell me what is important to you today to work on.
CLIENT: Understanding what’s really going on. I keep telling myself the problem is that I’m lazy or undisciplined. But when I say that out loud, it doesn’t feel true. It feels like there’s something I’m not seeing.
COACH: So there’s a sense of something you’re not seeing.
CLIENT: Yes. Every time I commit to something, a part of me pulls away from it afterwards.

We agree on what the session is for. Alex wants to find what’s really in the way, and a different relationship with it. Then she adds a third piece: the pattern.

COACH: Have I got that right?
CLIENT: Yes, that’s exactly it.

MASTER COACH TIP: The ICF calls this the session objective. Let your client choose it. If you choose it, you’re leading, you haven’t partnered, and you can guess wrong. When the client puts it on the table and you honour it, you have something real to work with.

Why do a client’s exact words matter so much?

Alex said “curious”. I didn’t swap in my own word. I asked.

COACH: I’m going to invite you to feel into that word, curious. What do you mean by curious?
CLIENT: Curious feels very different from judging. When I’m judging myself, I’m trying to force an answer. I’m telling myself I should know better. But curiosity feels more like, what’s happening here?

Weave in some of your client’s words. Not all of them. Two things happen. Your client hears their own language, so they trust you’re listening. And they can check, “is that what I meant?”, without you asking.

Drop the preamble, the “if I heard you” and the “please check my understanding”. Once or twice it can help. Weaving in the words does the same job.

Alex also put the word “pattern” on the table. At PCC and MCC level, listening for patterns and repeating themes is part of our job.

How do you go deep without going into the past?

Alex says that in sessions she feels excited about change. Alone, something shifts. The word that comes up is “pressure”.

COACH: If we look at that word pressure, what happens in your body? Take your time.
CLIENT: My chest gets tight and my stomach kind of drops. It’s like this heavy feeling of, oh no, now I have to prove I can do it, and then I want to avoid it.

I didn’t ask why the pressure is there. I didn’t ask what happened in the past. That’s somatic awareness. We check what the body feels, and we stay out of the story. Depth, without therapy.

From there Alex finds it:

CLIENT: If something really matters to me, I turn it into a test of whether I’m good enough. I avoid the action because if I don’t fully try, I never have to find out.

What changed for the client?

I invite Alex to send a bucket deeper into the well. What part of her brings clarity?

CLIENT: The observer. Not the part that’s trying to fix me, not the part that’s scared. The part that can see what’s happening. And the pressure feels very old. It isn’t about the action at all. It’s about a belief that if I try and don’t succeed, it says something about who I am.

I ask how her body responds to the observer.

CLIENT: It softens. The tightness is still there a little, but it isn’t running the show.

Tight and heavy softened. That’s the body moving from closed toward open, and it’s what I listen for.

Then the moment I most want you to see. Alex says:

CLIENT: When it’s personal, I’m the problem. When it’s a pattern, it’s something I can be curious about. There’s a lot less shame, because a pattern is something you can understand.
COACH: I’m going to repeat those words back to you. There’s nothing wrong with you. What happens in that softness when you hear that?
CLIENT: I feel emotional, actually. There’s a kind of relief.

Alex leaves with something small and real: before taking an action, ask who’s driving. The performer, who’s trying to earn approval and gets exhausted? Or the observer, who’s paying attention and stays calm?

CLIENT: I don’t need more discipline. I need more awareness. That’s a very different insight than the one I thought I was going to leave with.

In a real session I’d have run longer. I’d have checked back against her first objective, and closed with more acknowledgement. This is a taste, not the whole meal.

MASTER COACH TIP: Notice I said “possible” all the way through. “How could you possibly support yourself?” Ask a hard question like “what’s the solution?” and clients shut down. Make it okay to explore and the whole dynamic changes.

Which ICF competencies does this demo show?

If you’re on the ICF path, here’s where this session sits against the ICF Core Competencies:

• Cultivates Trust and Safety. Naming the guilt-free zone out loud. Staying with Alex’s emotion instead of brightening past it.
• Maintains Presence. Staying comfortable in the discomfort, and in not knowing which tool the session needs next.
• Listens Actively. Catching “curious” and “pattern”. Carrying Alex’s exact words back through the session.
• Evokes Awareness. The body check-in, the performer and the observer. Asking what’s “possible” instead of firing hard questions.
• Facilitates Client Growth. Alex leaves with her own practice, in her own words: check who’s driving before you act.

Where do you notice yourself pushing, or brushing past, when a client hasn’t done what they said they would?

We practise these moments live, with feedback, inside our ICF certification classes. If you’d like to coach this way, start with Level 1, Global Coach ACC, or check if there’s a seat and we’re a fit.