voyage
— the ocean. Open space, currents, encounters with different worlds.
vibe coaching
the approach
vibe coaching builds on the established global body of coaching knowledge. It offers fresh approaches, giving prime attention to energy.
Purpose, values, and relationships form the human energy core. From here, we lean into the raw and sometimes destructive cultural and systemic energy around us. We hold shapes that absorb and harness this energy.
We surface, not avoid, creative tension. We encourage connection. Then, radical success becomes possible that extends beyond individual objectives.
vibe questions aspects of coaching as it has emerged, while supporting its deep foundations and celebrating what makes coaching the amazing and powerful practice it is today.
the energy core
cultures and systemsimmerse
— the soaring eagle and the slithering snake. Forensic exploration with a holistic mindset.
bravely create
— the sandbox. The limits of what is possible are temporarily abandoned.
experiment and execute
— riding the waves. Testing, refining, learning while doing.
These are not phases. A phase implies progression, completion, a box to tick before the next. Phases end. An energy state is something you sense in your body right now, something that can shift, layer, or surprise you.
You are in all of them all the time. Usually one is dominant.
energy
Energy is often discussed in coaching, though rarely with any frame or foundation.
A working definition: energy is our capacity for action, sensed in the body and shaped by meaning.
It influences our judgement on how much we can do, and how alive we are to what we’re doing. It is shaped by somatic presence, our emotional state, our motivation, and gut intuition to move away or towards.
Energy is felt, not seen — though its impact is visible.
the energy core
Coaching anchors on an energy core of purpose, values, relationships, and creative tension.
It is where we go when the complexity of organisational life destabilises, paralyses, or disorients.
Energy sourced this way is renewable.
- purpose
- values
- relationships
- creative tension
the body is not a vehicle for the brain
Science demonstrates that the body is not just a vehicle for the brain — it is part of the brain. The body has its own intelligence that influences every decision we make.
A coach engaging only the mind is working with half a client. And a leader living only from cognitive intelligence — backed up with a course on emotional intelligence — will struggle as the pressure increases.
Most of the world’s wisdom traditions knew this without MRI machines. In Māori hauora, physical being is inseparable from the mental, spiritual and relational; you cannot be well in parts. In Andean philosophy, sumak kawsay — buen vivir — seeks communal harmony with the land, and the spiritual with the material. Ubuntu is a somatic experience: the sense of becoming more real in the presence of others.
languishing
Energy is impacted by context. No individual is free from the relentless systemic pressures that surround us.
Climate volatility. Polarisation. Rapid AI deployment. Social media impact. Armed conflict. And at organisational level, numerous stories of leadership failure, toxic cultures, change processes that don’t deliver.
This environment floods our biology. For some, for a while, it’s a rush. For many, it means chronic stress triggers.
Languishing happens when the individual gives up fighting. It is not necessarily clinical depression or a diagnosable disorder. It operates as lethargy: sitting back, ruminating, disengaging, merely going through the motions.
In China, tang ping — lying flat — emerged as a direct rejection of overwork. In the West, the Great Resignation.
vibe coaching is explicitly energy-focused. It is designed as a structural counterweight, not a superficial quick fix of hype or toxic positivity.
from superhuman to human
Leaders at all levels are being set up to fail, even when they are having some corporate success.
- Be bold, and not reckless.
- Be vulnerable, and don’t be weak.
- Take risks and deliver certainty.
- Give directions and listen to everyone.
- Show confidence and humility.
This creates a kind of psychic overload — a superhuman script that no one can live up to, but everyone is trying to act out.
Superman didn’t have to worry about his energy levels.
Chronic pressure flattens breathing, hardens the jaw, narrows peripheral vision, and trains the nervous system to live in a persistent state of low-grade threat. The body stops feeding our aliveness and becomes an energy drain.
the coaching position: ruthless compassion
Energy is the core of vibe coaching, and that comes from many sources. However, the nature of the energy we want to use is only available if there is compassion.
You can be brilliant, determined, have purpose, be charismatic, and meet several pages of competencies at ten out of ten. But if you don’t care, it’s hard to see how you can call yourself a coach.
Paul Gilbert’s treatment explains why. Compassion is sensitivity to suffering plus commitment to act. That second half is what stops this going soft.
what coaching is
The late George Renwick, a wise and experienced global coach, was asked his definition of coaching. He replied: coaching is what coaches do.
In vibe, I take it further.
Coaching is who coaches are and what they do, in service of the client and society, in the context to which they are invited.
The who is where compassion lives in the definition.
We are invited in. We are, then we do — together.
the double helix
cultures
systems
Running through everything is what I think of as a double helix of cultures and systems.
These are not two separate lenses to be applied in turn.
Culture is the meaning-making dimension of the system — the accumulated pattern of what gets said, heard, silenced. System is the structural dimension of culture — the recurring shapes of how people organise their exchanges.
You cannot work deeply with one without encountering the other. A coaching-oriented person who ignores this is working with half the picture.
The team forms. Immediately it begins generating a cultural system: who speaks first, whose questions land, where the energy moves, what cannot yet be said. That pattern will determine everything — what the team can create, how it handles difficulty, whether people bring their full aliveness or quietly withhold it.
Reading that pattern, and working with it from inside your own conversational presence, is the practice.
shaking the assumptions
Coaching itself is a cultural system. Some claimed and unclaimed assumptions exist around the industry:
- Individual agency as the primary lever of change
- Comfort with structured conversation and psychological language
- Implicit valuing of articulateness, self-awareness and emotional vocabulary
- The one-to-one relationship as the default unit
- The coach as an objective outsider
- Reflection as valuable and accessible to everyoneTrauma is not for coachingPeople are ready or not ready for coachingAccreditation level predicts coaching impact360 degree feedback instruments are gold standard
Some of these are captured in industry competencies. Others move underground. For many, they feel natural and obvious inside the coaching field.
From other perspectives, it looks like a very particular and rather strange way of engaging with people.
Most management and coaching frameworks are presented as universal. They are not. They emerge from one WEIRD slice of human experience — western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic — and then travel the world as if that origin were invisible.
vibe draws deliberately on frames from beyond the western management tradition. Not to appropriate them. To encounter, engage, and enrich — always in context and with respect.
paradox
A paradox is a situation or statement that reveals a tension between different truths that are interdependent. They cannot exist without each other.
I’ve been harping on about it in coaching for twenty-five years. If you want to have an impact in coaching and leading in the messiness of our reality, comfort with the discomfort of paradoxical thinking is essential.
- Stability ↔ Change
- Control ↔ Autonomy
- Innovation ↔ Reliability
- Speed ↔ Trust
- Individual ↔ Collective
- Structure ↔ Flexibility
These are just some of the obvious ones. vibe coaching encourages you to surface the creative tensions from unique paradoxes in your context.
Consider: gaining real control requires letting go; flexibility requires structure; challenge requires high care.
The temptation when presented with a paradox is to shut down one element. We are seeing this as the preferred option in society, in politics, in organisations, on social media. We pick sides. Or we dumb down both elements with a mushy compromise. Immediately, there is a loss of energy and growth in toxicity.
The vibe approach is to hold the tension, then look for possibilities beyond the alternatives.
Creative tension is the source of renewable energy, not a problem to be solved.
It’s uncomfortable work. Lean towards the spikes without drawing blood.
leave your guns at the door
A sign in a restaurant in El Salvador read: deje sus armas en la puerta.
Real conversations ask something similar. Not that people arrive without positions — that would be a room with no energy in it. That they arrive willing to be changed by what they find.
You can’t engage in dialogue unless you are prepared to change. And that includes those who are mainly doing the coaching and leading.
the vibe question
The vibe is an energy state. You can feel it in the rhythm and tone of a conversation. When the vibe is right, insights land, shifts occur, energy flows. When it’s off, everything can be a grind.
At any point, you can ask:
What’s the vibe here… and now?
Inherent in the check is the presence or not of compassion.
radical success
Everyone is seeking success in some form.
radical success is achieving what matters most, aligned with your energy, values and purpose — creating systemic and cultural impact, while embracing the paradox that it is at once personal, relational, and beyond what we yet fully know.
It is:
- anchored in purpose beyond the individual
- shaped by values
- sustained by relationships
- living and breathing
Everyone will have their unique version. The coach’s role is to be open to the possibility of the radical.
For radical success, the bigger the mess, the deeper the need for the human anchor.
the shadow
The vibe cultural system and all its parts has a shadow.
As individuals, we have our less visible side. Teams have shadows. Organisations have shadows. Societies have shadows.
vibe coaching shines a light into the shadow side. Shadows disappear as you light them up — at least for a while.
In harsh sunlight, shadows are very important. They show you where the light is coming from.
questions that change the room
Coaching uses questioning because questions promote curiosity. vibe coaching has a bank of suggested questions designed to go beyond curiosity towards wonder and awe. They are for adaptation by coaches and leaders.
Why these questions work
They are “edgy” because they are not designed to find one answer. They are questions that cut through performance and politeness, revealing the cultural system at work, and giving leaders something real to respond to. They nudge around paradoxes and play with energy.
- What does this organisation quietly punish, while claiming to want more of it?
- If someone observed this team over time and studied how decisions get made, what would they conclude?
- What feels undiscussable here, and what risk does that create?
- Which tension are we smoothing over that’s costing judgement, speed, or trust?
- What does success mean here today, and what else could it mean in this context?
- Where does energy lift here? Where does it drain and what do we pretend not to notice?
- Where are we asking for bravery while quietly making bravery expensive?
Here are some samples
vibe coaching is evidence-based, rooted in over twenty-five years of learning, experimenting, teaching and practising coaching and leadership across industries, countries and cultures.
Early foundations were shaped under the mentorship of coaching research pioneer Dr Tony Grant at the University of Sydney. Systems thinking roots grew from working with Professor Michael Jackson. In 2017, I designed the eFIRE coaching methodology with Queensland University of Technology — an evidence-based evolution of the GROW model with an added focus on energy.
If you are curious, I can trace the ideas in vibe coaching back to their sources.
The goal is to move out of the deep, worthy ocean of academia and enjoy purposeful play on the surface, riding the waves and currents as best we can.
Fellow of the Association for Coaching (AC) · Member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) · Doctorate · QUT · Editor, Routledge Companion to International Business Coaching
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