When Coaching Becomes Just a Conversation
Far too much coaching today has been reduced to an intellectual chat. Listen closely and it often sounds no different from an ordinary conversation—interesting, polite, and thoughtful, but ultimately familiar. Yet the more coaching resembles a “normal” conversation, the less it qualifies as true coaching.
And if that’s the kind of coaching you’re offering, it’s no surprise your clients aren’t enthusiastically telling others about the power or magic of working with you. Real coaching should create impact, movement, and transformation. If it doesn’t, there is a clear solution: make your coaching experiential.
Why Experience Changes Everything
Experiential coaching sits at the very heart of Meta-Coaching, an application of Neuro-Semantics. This is why there is such a strong emphasis on the inside-out principle and the mind-to-muscle principle.
If clients are to become more effective, productive, and capable in the outer game of life, they must first win the inner game. And that requires taking them inside—to their World of Meaning. Coaching, then, is not about talking about experiences, but about entering into them.
This is what state induction is all about: guiding clients into their lived, subjective experiences rather than keeping them safely at a conceptual distance.
Starting with Experience, Not Analysis
State induction often begins the moment a coaching conversation starts. A simple question such as,
“What is the most important thing you want to achieve?” immediately points to a desired experience.
If the client is unclear, you can explore further:
“What are you experiencing right now?”
“Is this what you want to be experiencing?”
“Is this experience what’s stopping you from getting what you want?”
From there, you dive deeper. Clarify the client’s language. Explore what their words actually refer to. Discover how intense the experience is, when it occurs, when it doesn’t, who is present, what runs in the background of their mind, and how it unfolds moment by moment.
The Skill of State Induction
In Meta-Coaching, this process is known as the skill of state induction. It involves eliciting and working with experiences such as love, joy, dread, frustration, hope, stress, grief, anger, learning, or remembering.
These experiences are not disembodied abstractions—and they should never be treated as such. Instead of staying at the level of labels, ask deep-diving questions that bring the experience alive:
- How do you experience this?
- Where do you feel it in your body?
- What is the quality of that feeling?
- How connected are you to it right now?
- As you connect with it, what else do you notice—images, sounds, words?
- How long have you been experiencing this?
- When did it begin?
- What would you prefer to be experiencing instead, and what is that like?
These questions invite the client into a felt, embodied experience rather than a detached explanation.
From Talking About Feelings to Feeling Them
When you elicit or induce a state, you invite your client into a live mind-body experience. This is what makes coaching experiential—and what makes it effective.
If a client merely talks about an experience without actually having it, meaningful change is unlikely. They may leave with insights, but little transformation—and often little memory of the session itself.
That’s why experiential coaching asks a different question:
“Are you feeling it?”
And if the answer is yes, the next step is embodiment. Let the body show it—through breathing, facial expression, tone of voice, posture, and movement. This is where you begin to coach the body, helping it to own the meanings being activated.
Coaching the Body to Support Action
By engaging the body, you initiate a mind-to-muscle process. Meaning is no longer just understood; it is integrated. And only when meaning is embodied can it reliably translate into effective action.
This is where change becomes sustainable—because the client doesn’t just know something differently, they are different in how they respond, decide, and act.
Emotions Are Not the Enemy
As a Meta-Coach, you understand there is nothing to fear in accessing emotions. You are not doing therapy. You are working with people who want more from life—more purpose, passion, challenge, and contribution.
When emotions are negative, they signal that something is blocked or stuck. That is precisely why the client needs coaching. By entering the experience, understanding how it is structured, and skillfully using questions, you can help cut through meanings that no longer serve them.
So don’t stay on the surface. Dive into the experience. That’s where coaching becomes transformational—and where real change begins.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Meta-Coaches] 2025 Morpheus #52 MAKING YOUR COACHING EXPERIENTIAL by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
