Emotional Awareness: A Coach's Superpower

Why Emotional Awareness Matters – A Personal Experience

Coaches, have you ever had a client become visibly emotional during a conversation? I have. It happens more often than you’d think. But in one unforgettable moment, the person struggling to hold it together wasn’t a client – it was me. I had volunteered to be on the client end of a fishbowl coaching demonstration with the wonderful Kristin Lowe. Within minutes, my heart was pounding, my face flushed, and it felt like every set of eyes in the room was on me. Tears welled up, my breathing grew shallow, and my posture collapsed as I tried (and failed) to keep my composure. There were even a few involuntary sobs. It was raw, exposing, and deeply uncomfortable.

Why did I cry? Kristin was coaching me around a subject I care deeply about - coaching. I felt frustrated and dejected, struggling with the fact that I had barely any clients at that time. But what felt like a disaster fishbowl experience for everyone else in the room (I imagined) became a profound learning experience for me.

What did Kristin do? She didn’t fawn over me or try to make me feel better. Instead, she held space - staying present, calm, and grounded. She met me with empathy, allowing me to feel seen and heard without judgment. Her ability to remain emotionally attuned without reacting or rushing to comfort was a masterclass in emotional awareness.

‘Soft skills’ are anything but soft

Emotional awareness and empathy are often labelled as ‘soft skills’ – interpersonal and emotional abilities that help people work effectively with others. The term ‘soft skills’ can be misleading - especially for coaches. Emotional awareness and empathy aren’t just nice-to-have; they are core skills that underpin every effective coaching conversation. They are what allow coaches to hold space without rushing to fix, to listen deeply without interrupting, and to respond with empathy rather than advice. Far from being ‘soft’, emotional awareness and empathy are the hardest skills to master – and the most powerful to wield. 

Some people dismiss emotional awareness as a weak and flowery trait and fail to recognise its importance in serious coaching work. But that view completely misses the mark. Emotional awareness is not about coddling or making people feel good. It’s about recognising what’s really happening beneath the surface - what’s driving behaviour, what’s being said, and, in some cases, what’s being left unsaid. It’s about being attuned to those undercurrents without rushing to fix, soothe, or move on.

When we downplay emotional awareness, we’re missing the opportunity to connect more deeply, build trust, and truly understand the person in front of us. As coaches, we don’t just work with action plans and goals – we work with whole, feeling humans. And if we ignore the emotional landscape, we’re only doing half the work. In the world of coaching, these so-called ‘soft skills’ aren’t optional - they’re foundational.

Empathy: The Foundation of Effective Coaching

Diller et al. (2023) claim that coach empathy is a crucial ingredient at every stage of the coaching process, regardless of the teacher’s affective state. They identified a correlation between teacher-perceived coach empathy and teacher-perceived coaching success (high empathy = high success). Aguilar (2019) affirms that strong social-emotional competency is the most important foundation skill set a coach should possess. Similarly, Erickson International emphasizes that emotional intelligence isn’t just a ‘soft skill’ but a vital coaching competency that enables coaches to build deep trust, listen beyond words, and guide clients through discomfort with grace and presence (Erickson International, 2023). Diller et al. (2021) further explain that when a coach prioritises the need to ‘imagine other’, rather than ‘imagine self’, the teacher’s perspective of the coaching relationship, and willingness to self-change, improves. Empathy serves as a bond that unites people and is “a lubricant for change” (Tschannen-Moran et al., 2020, p.76). Of importance to instructional coaches in particular, empathy can be used to “trigger the will to change” (Brockbank and McGill, 2013).

Teachers need access to a coach who cultivates a high-trust relationship, provides a psychologically safe thinking environment, and exhibits a high level of emotional awareness, with empathy as a key skill set. Empathy lays the groundwork for building connection - but what happens when those emotions rise to the surface in a coaching conversation?

Embracing Emotions in Coaching Conversations: It’s OK to Cry

Teachers care about their work. They are deeply invested in providing the best learning experiences for their students. So it stands to reason that when talking about their teaching practice, emotions may surface. Emotions are signals that the work is important. When a teacher cries or feels frustrated, it’s not a sign of failure or weakness – it’s a sign that something deeply matters.

As coaches, we need to pay close attention to these signs. When we do that, we can uncover what truly matters to the teacher - the core values, the underlying concerns, the hopes and fears that are driving their actions. Rather than shying away from these moments, we can lean in with empathy and curiosity. Asking simple, open-ended questions like, “What feels most important to you right now?” or “What is this emotion telling you about what you need?” can transform what might feel like an uncomfortable moment into a powerful opportunity for deeper reflection and growth.

Strategies for Holding Space: Practical Approaches to Emotional Awareness

Emotional awareness isn’t just about recognising emotions - it’s about knowing how to respond in the moment. Here are three simple but powerful strategies for coaches:

• Pause and Breathe: Before responding to a teacher’s emotional moment, take a deep breath. Ground yourself in the present and resist the urge to jump in with advice or solutions. A few seconds of silence can create the space they need to gather their thoughts and for you to stay centered.

• Reflect Without Fixing: Respond to the emotion without trying to resolve it. Simple statements like, ‘I hear how much this matters to you,’ or ‘It sounds like this is weighing heavily on you,’ can validate the teacher’s experience without minimizing or redirecting it. Allow clients to sit in their feelings - to explore them, even - without feeling pressured to move on or find immediate solutions.

• Anchor in Empathy: Remind yourself, ‘This isn’t about me – it’s about what they’re experiencing’. This shift keeps the focus on the teacher’s perspective and prevents your own discomfort from taking over the conversation.

The Real Work of Coaching - Care and Connection

What impacted me most about that emotional fishbowl conversation with Kristin was that she let me be. She was comfortable with letting me sit with my feelings for a while. She acknowledged how important the coaching work was to me. She didn’t try to comfort me, she didn’t tell me not to cry, she didn’t tell me that everything was going to be OK. I felt deeply respected and heard, and because of that I was able to navigate a thinking path through it all.

As coaches, we can never predict what will happen in a coaching conversation. We can’t fully prepare ourselves for every response to every question. But coaching isn’t about having the right answers; it’s about being present and holding space with care and compassion. By developing powerful emotional awareness and empathy skills, we can provide caring and compassionate spaces for real change to emerge. Because at the heart of every transformative coaching conversation is a coach who is willing to stay, to see, and to hold space with empathy and care.

In closing, I invite you to reflect on this quote from Daniel Goleman (2005), a leading authority on emotional intelligence:

"If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far."

*The definition at the top of this post was adapted from Cappfinity’s Strength Profile definition of Emotional Awareness.

References

Aguilar, E. (2019) You can’t have a coaching culture without a structure. Educational Leadership. 77 (3), p.22-28. Available from: <https://ascd.org/el/articles/you-cant-have-a-coaching-culture-without-a-structure> [Accessed 5 November 2023].

Brockbank, A. & McGill, I. (2013) Coaching with Empathy. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: Open University Press.

Diller, S.J., Mühlberger, C., Löhlau, N., and Jonas, E. (2021) How to show empathy as a coach: The effects of coaches’ imagine-self versus imagine-other empathy on the client’s self-change and coaching outcome. Current Psychology. [Online]. 42, pp.11917–11935. Available from: <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-02430-y> [Accessed 2 August 2024].

Diller, S. J., Mühlberger, C., and Jonas, E. (2023). The Empathy Factor: An Important Aspect of Success in Every Coaching Session. Consulting Psychology Journal. Advance online publication. <https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000259> [Accessed 6 November 2023].

Erickson Coaching International. “The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Coaching Success.” Erickson Coaching International, 10 April 2025, https://www.erickson.edu/resources/the-role-of-emotional-intelligence-in-coaching-success-erickson-international. [Accessed 5 May 2025].

Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Random House Publishing Group, 2005.

Tschannen-Moran, M. and Tschannen-Moran, B.  (2020) Evocative Coaching (Second Edition). Singapore: Corwin Press, Inc..