How to Coach Uncertainty

The Coaching Crowd® Podcast with Jo Wheatley & Zoe Hawkins

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15d ago 23:11

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What if embracing uncertainty was the key to unlocking your client’s greatest growth

In today’s episode, we explore a topic that touches all of us, uncertainty. It’s a word we hear often in coaching sessions, whether it’s said outright or disguised in phrases like “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure”, or “I feel stuck.”

We recorded this episode because uncertainty seems to be everywhere; globally, personally, professionally. As coaches, it’s our job to help clients sit with it, understand it, and grow through it. We began with the idea that uncertainty is not a single emotion but a cluster of emotions; fear, anxiety, sadness, even frustration.

As coaches, we’ve learnt that uncertainty often shows up when clients face a decision they don’t feel equipped to make not because the options are unclear, but because the emotional load of making a choice is too heavy.

Clients don’t just want a solution, they want clarity, safety, and a way to process the messiness of what’s going on. And we unpacked how coaching conversations can become a safe space where the client reconnects with what they do know; values, beliefs, and what they’re sure they don’t want so they can start building from there.

Sometimes that clarity starts with the simplest of things: “I know I don’t want this job anymore.” That statement alone can become a foundation, a piece of scaffolding that helps the client begin to navigate what’s next.

We also reflected on our own uncertainty as coaches, not knowing where a session will lead, how to hold silence, and how to support clients without providing answers. It’s in these moments that coaching maturity is revealed through our ability to sit with the unknown and stay grounded in presence.

Ultimately, this episode is a deep dive into what it means to be human in uncertain times, and how coaches can support clients through those spaces; not by solving uncertainty, but by helping them develop the emotional capacity to be in it.

If today’s conversation has sparked reflection about how you hold uncertainty for yourself or your clients, come and explore our Emotions Coaching Practitioner Programme. It’s where we go deeper into the emotional foundations of coaching and support you to grow your confidence in even the most uncertain coaching conversations www.igcompany.co.uk/emotionscoaching

Key Lessons Learnt:

Uncertainty is a layered emotional experience, often masking feelings like fear, sadness, frustration, or self-doubt.
Coaching uncertainty means working with both emotion and decision-making; helping clients find clarity, even if just about what they don’t want.
Creating scaffolding from what clients do know gives them something to stand on in the fog.
Self-trust is central exploring the client’s relationship to trust, doubt, and belief unlocks agency.
Uncertainty often reveals underlying identity shifts or life transitions, and coaching provides a powerful space for processing them.
Coaches must also embrace uncertainty, sitting in silence, letting go of “having a plan,” and allowing the unknown to unfold naturally.
Client language reveals discomfort with uncertainty, especially when they seek excessive reassurance or avoid decision-making.

5 Coaching Questions for Coaching Uncertainty:

What does uncertainty feel like for you in this moment?
What do you know for sure right now, no matter how small?
Where in your life do you most crave certainty, and why?
What strengths or past experiences remind you that you’ve handled uncertainty before?
What would trusting yourself look like in this situation?

Timestamps:

00:00 – 02:00 – Why we’re talking about uncertainty
02:01 – 05:30 – What is uncertainty and how do clients express it?
05:31 – 08:45 – Emotional foundations: Fear, sadness, anxiety, and powerlessness
08:46 – 12:20 – Exploring decision-making when everything feels unclear
12:21 – 15:35 – Creating “scaffolding” from what clients do know
15:36 – 19:00 – Holding uncertainty in the coaching relationship itself
19:01 – 22:40 – Signs of discomfort with uncertainty in everyday client language
22:41 – 26:00 – Self-trust, strengths and belief work to support navigation
26:01 – 29:45 – Identity, values and uncertainty through life transitions
29:46 – 33:00 – Capacity, wellbeing and when uncertainty signals burnout
33:01 – 36:10 – Coach maturity and your relationship with uncertainty
36:11 – End – Final reflections and next steps

Keywords:

Coaching through uncertainty, How to coach clients facing uncertainty, Coaching emotional decision-making, Helping clients trust themselves, Coaching tools for uncertain times, Self-trust in coaching, Coaching transitions and change, Working with client doubt, Coaching when outcomes are unclear, Coaching for clarity and confidence,

Links:

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