Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion, Trust, and a Learning Mindset

What actually helps people change — and what quietly gets in the way?

In this episode of The Coaching Book Club Podcast, Christy Stuber and Ken McKellar explore Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth by Richard Boyatzis, Melvin Smith, and Ellen Van Oosten.

This conversation is especially relevant for coaches, leaders, managers, and anyone working in a helping role who wants to move beyond compliance, urgency, and performance pressure — and toward change that is sustainable, human, and meaningful.

We explore:

• Why real change begins in trust, safety, and relationship
• The difference between coaching for compassion vs. coaching for compliance
• Intentional Change Theory and the role of the ideal self
• How positive emotional attractors create conditions for learning
• Why a learning orientation supports deeper growth than a performance mindset
• What this means for feedback, supervision, and coach development

Whether you’ve read this book before or are encountering it for the first time, this episode invites you to slow down and reconsider what actually creates movement — in coaching, leadership, and learning.

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Transcript

Christy Stuber: 0:11

Welcome to the Coaching Book Club podcast, the show that empowers coaches through books. I'm Christy Stuber here with my friend and co-host Ken McKellar, and today we're talking about Helping People Change, Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth by Richard Boyatzis Melvin Smith and Ellen Van Oosten. It is a powerful guidebook for anyone in a helping profession, from coaches to managers, to educators who want to facilitate real lasting change through meaningful, emotionally resonant relationships. Here's what you can expect in this episode. First, we'll start with an overview of the book and why it matters to us. Next we'll break down three key takeaways that stood out to us and share how you can apply these insights to your coaching practice. And finally, we'll explore how these concepts connect to real world coaching challenges and help you build confidence, tackle imposter syndrome, and grow as a coach. Whether you've read this book before or hearing about it for the first time, you'll leave with actionable tools to strengthen your skills. So let's get started. Hey, Ken.

Ken McKellar: 1:17

Hey, how you doing?

Christy Stuber: 1:18

Good. Good. How you doing today?

Ken McKellar: 1:21

Good. Good. Good to be here. Good to be here.

Christy Stuber: 1:24

Good to be here. I recommended this book for us to talk about, so I'll give you my backstory on it. Mm-hmm. Which is, I think that this might have been. The very first book that I bought about coaching outside of my coaching program. So my coaching program, I had a couple books that I had to buy for the curriculum, but I was introduced to Dr.B oyatzis in that program and this book had just come out, if I'm remembering correctly. And I bought it and I felt very, very professional as a coach to buy this brand new book that was hot off the presses about, um. About coaching and has a lot of, um, neuroscience incorporated in it, which as you know, I find really interesting and I think it really affirmed my belief that our, our conversations that we have in our coaching and the conversations that anybody can have as a helper doesn't have to start with performance metrics or evaluation. It can start with compassion and trust and vision to get more clear outcomes. What were your thoughts about this book when I suggested it?

Ken McKellar: 2:45

Well, I had read this a while ago. One of my first, when I started reading all the time, this was what I started with. One of the books I started with. It really introduced me to, like in the coaching arena, that compassion, you know, I mean. Brown. You know, she talked about the vulnerability and and so forth, but this kind of marries those two together for me and the compassion and then the trust and safety. Then it goes into the high five of a coaching relationship, but it started with, this is with that com. You know what is about that person in front of you? Before anything else, you know? And he goes in and he talks about, you know, coaching for compassion, right? Versus compliance. And even in that dialogue where that, where that's coming from. I'm like, yeah, because it's not about like obligations, kind of what you're saying, fixing things. It's not about, um, urgency or consequences, but it can be about choice and hope. It can be about focusing on the person's vision. It can be about, and for me it is about. Building that high five of a cultural relationship. So he goes on and talks about trust and safety. I go on and share more about connection, rapport, and. Respect

Christy Stuber: 4:31

and the foundation of it is that, to me, the foundation of it is the, the relationship that's built in trust and safety. Mm-hmm. Um, so let's go ahead and dive into the key, key takeaways that stood out to us and how they may enhance our coaching conversations and. I'm just gonna start 'cause I wanted to tie it back to what I just said, that the power of the resident relationship, that's where change happens. It begins in the relationship. Um, clients won't open up or change without trust, emotional safety and presence. And um, I just think about an experience I had recently where I was invited into a conversation and was invited to share. And I'm pretty good about sharing in most environments, but in this environment, I didn't trust the sa, the space that I was in and the emotional safety and decided not to share. And so it reminded it as the person on the other end. Of the coaching conversation, how important that is. If I want them to be able to open up, share their vision, share where they wanna go, so that mm-hmm I can support them in that conversation and help them. Um, and, and they talk in a book about how a resident coaching relationship is rooted in mindfulness, hope, and compassion. And that's on us as the coaches. When we are mindful, we can then be tuned into the person we're working with and we can be careful not to project our own thoughts and feelings onto them. Mm-hmm. So, um, just the importance of us knowing ourselves and cultivating that mindset. Good reminder there. And good reminder of like why things like supervision are so important.

Ken McKellar: 6:29

Mm-hmm.

Christy Stuber: 6:31

So I can get clear about like when maybe am I tempted to turn to, to project my own thoughts and feelings onto my client? What's going on with that? What's that about? Mm-hmm. What do you think?

Ken McKellar: 6:43

Well, I think competency too of the ICF competencies where it talks about. Be taking care of yourself right. In different ways. It also, as far as emotionally and getting and, and how you prepare for a session, but also is, you know, educating and learning and growing and how you walking away from sessions. You know, not holding on to stuff. Right. Um, is some, uh, finding a way to kind of take care of yourself so that you can go throughout your life without holding on to other stuff that don't belong to you. It's not about you. Yeah. You're

Christy Stuber: 7:30

calling back simplifying, coaching that conversation in that book with Claire Pendrick

Ken McKellar: 7:36

Yeah,

Christy Stuber: 7:37

she says that. She says that if she's doing her job well. By creating a container for the client, then she doesn't have to take on the client's stuff.

Ken McKellar: 7:49

And I think, yeah, she should be clear, right?

Christy Stuber: 7:52

Yeah. Right. Yeah. But Claire, Pendrick. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Uh, what's a takeaway you had from this book?

Ken McKellar: 8:00

Well, I mean, the cornerstone of a conversation was the intentional change theory.

Christy Stuber: 8:09

Mm-hmm.

Ken McKellar: 8:12

I mean, I mean for me that was, that was it in a nutshell. That right there, I was like, wow, this right here, when we talk about, you know, the ideal self, the real self, and then learning how to merge and get to that ideal self, and then. Practice. Right. That intentional practice and experimenting with, I mean, a lot of times in coaching sessions I talk about, um, inviting folks to experiment, like out there in them streets when they leave the coaching session. You know, how they gonna experiment with what they've learned here or, or how they gonna use what they learned here. Right? And then also developing that. Those trusting relationships, you know, who are your board of directors in life that you, that you go to, um, and that you can be your measure and stick or your accountability, um, network. So that right there, I could have stayed there throughout the book. Matter of fact, I spent a lot of time there just kind of contemplating that and, and kind of thinking about. What that looks like for me, what that looks like for the people that are a mentor and supervise and what that looks like, perhaps for the people that are my thinking partners.

Christy Stuber: 9:34

And not to be a broken record, but we did read this book, or I read this book right after reading, simplifying coaching, and so I still had Claire Pendrick's voice in my head about the trust and the safety and when I got to the intentional change theory. Which is a great theory, a good model. All I kept seeing throughout that whole thing was trust and safety. Mm-hmm. And that if I'm not, if I'm the client and I'm not trusting my coach, I'm probably not gonna share my true vision mm-hmm. Where I really wanna be and, and then the rest of the theory, forget it. But even if I can do that part, can I trust myself enough to experiment, to try new things, to try to learn things? Okay, that, that's great. And then the next part of, and then who do I surround myself with that I can trust enough to help me continue that progression? You know, when I add a coaching engagement, that's often a question I'll ask is, you know, how will, how will my clients continue what they've learned and developed and the coaching engagement? What supports either internal to them, like within them or external to them, can they rely on to help them? Progress. And when I talk external, I often mean who are the people in your life, or that's often what comes up as answers is who are the people in your life that can help support you

Ken McKellar: 10:57

moving forward. Yeah. And, and with this author, he talks about the positive emotional attract, like, and who's doing that for you? Versus the negative emotional attractors. And how are you doing that for yourself and as a coach, you know, how do you promote one or the other, or either or.

Christy Stuber: 11:19

Mm-hmm. And that's the, that's the big difference between coaching for compliance and coaching for compassion. Coaching for compliance is gonna be more likely to activate the negative emotional at atta attractor, which isn't altogether bad, but it is much more about action. Um. And the positive emotional attractor is gonna be more about compassion, coaching for compassion, hope, um, adaptive behaviors, ways of trying new things. There might be time to do both, but there was some good research they had in there from different points of view about how the positive emotional attractor needs to outweigh the negative emotional attractor in order for change to occur. Which leads me to my last takeaway, um, about a learning orientation versus a performance orientation. And we've talked about this a lot on this podcast, um, how I'm working towards my MCC. And so I'm demonstrating my mastery in coaching and, uh, one of the takeaways I had from the book was. When the goal is skill mastery, like coaching, a learning mindset, supports deeper engagement and growth. Um, and I, we've talked about this, but I remember when I started my MCC journey, it was about achieving. It was about a achievement, about getting the thing. Again, nothing wrong with getting the thing, the thing demonstrates accomplishment for me, it. It felt more like a negative emotional attractor. Like it's, it just got me down. It didn't help me feel a lot of hope or, um, joy even in the process. And when I reframed this whole thing I'm on as a learning journey. It's more fulfilling and I'm more engaged. So when I was still thinking about it as a performance, you know, one piece of feedback that felt negative would knock me out, and now when I view it as learning a piece of feedback feels constructive and I am ready to go and ready to keep trying and doing more. Mm-hmm. What are your thoughts on that?

Ken McKellar: 13:36

That's a powerful, powerful thing when like that feedback is coming from a place that feels like support, that feels like encouragement, that feels like partnership, you know? That this is a collaboration move. It feels a whole lot different. And, and, and I can see how those, you know, what is it P AEs, what, what is the initials? Mm-hmm. PEA. PEA, you know what? I want it to flow with it, I wanna say, and, and it feels like the PDAs don't. And, and don't even, don't even scratch that out. Don't even edit that. Right? I wanted it to flow, but it didn't flow. But sometimes it doesn't flow, sometimes it comes up genuine. I'm not talking about the singer. Right. Sometimes it is like that authentic self. It's, it's bumpy. Not to the thinker, because with that connectivity it, it's that flow is your flow together, how we connected together as a partnering, this is how we flow,

Christy Stuber: 14:49

what an amazing parallel process. You know, here we are having this conversation, having a thinking conversation. I don't know about you, but I am also aware that it is a little bit of a performance 'cause people are gonna be listening to us. And so when does that performance element sneak in Maybe and stop my thinking or stop my expression of my thinking or cause me to judge myself if I make a mistake rather than just going with the flow, like you said, of, of learning and, and growth in our back and forth. No matter what it sounds like. So Ken, what are you gonna take away that you're gonna be applying into your own coaching practice?

Ken McKellar: 15:31

I mean, I think it goes back to the five discoveries of intentional change theories and really looking at how to apply that in conversations because that is pretty powerful conversations when you. When I think about it is like, you know, first exploring your ideal self, like my ideal self. What does that look like? Right? Then, who are you now? What's that real self, right? And then right. What's the learning about how to get from one to the other? So I think that whole concept, I'm gonna spend a, a lot more time with. You know how I get when I get hung onto something, it's like a dog on a, a chew toy. I, I, I just hold onto it and, and, and until I, uh, can really. It becomes automatic in my use. So that first with me, then with my family, then I take it out them, to them streets out there, them coaching streets, and see what we can do with it.

Christy Stuber: 16:38

Those was mean coaching streets. Yeah. I think what I'm walking away with that can be used in my coaching practice. It can be used in my coach development work and can be used in my, my facilitation of trainings with managers is the idea of, um, resonance and. Something I hear a lot from my clients is, well, I never get feedback from my manager maybe once a year during a performance review. Mm-hmm. Maybe twice a year. And that's it. Nice. Feels very track transactional. And so it makes me think about how do we make feedback a more regular, constant, um, process that's based in understanding the other person's why, where they're trying to go. So that we can create space for lasting change. Um, and also to, 'cause I don't know if you hear this from clients, but I, when I talk about feedback, I get pushback from people a lot because I think it's such a negative connotation for a lot of people. And how can we make feedback just be, just be, and not have to be positive or negative, just be something that is being shared. So that wraps up our discussion on Helping People Change from the importance of resident relationships to the role of emotional tractors, to reframing goals through a learning mindset. These ideas have the potential to transform how we coach, how we lead, and how we relate. We hope these takeaways have sparked new ideas for your practice and inspired you to dig deeper into this incredible resource. Thanks for spending your time with us today. Your commitment to learning and growth is what this podcast is all about. And if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe to the Coaching Book Club on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And in the the show notes, you can find a link to the book guide for this book so you can earn CCEs while reading. We'd also love to connect with you on LinkedIn, follow us for even more coaching insights and updates about upcoming episodes, and we're always in the lookout for new books to review. If you've got a favorite that's made an impact on you, send us a message. It might be featured in a future episode. Thanks for being part of our community. And until next time, happy coaching.