Presenter: Jean O’Toole, iNLP Center Trainer and Mentor

Recording: October 18, 2026

This transcript has been edited for readability. Repeated words, false starts, and transcription punctuation have been cleaned up; section headings have been added for navigation. The speaker’s views and research figures are presented as stated in the webinar and have not been independently verified.

Welcome and Introduction

Hello, and welcome, coaches, to our Executive Coaching information session. I’m excited that you’re joining us. Many coaches have been asking questions and wanting to learn more about our Executive Coach Certification Training.

My name is Jean O’Toole. I’m the trainer and mentor who oversees executive coach training here at iNLP Center. Today, I want to help you understand not only what makes this training unique, but also how the education and tools in the program can give you an advantage as you support your clients.

We’ll have time for questions at the end. If you’re watching the recording rather than attending live, your questions are welcome as well. This is the beginning of a conversation about how you might deepen your skills as an executive coach. After the webinar, I encourage you to schedule a conversation with Hope Dufau, president of iNLP Center, to discuss what your training pathway might look like.

I’m a full-time coach, and I also own a couple of businesses. Years ago, I came to iNLP Center as a student because I wanted to add NLP to my coaching toolbox. I’ve been working with high-level executive clients around the world, and I’m always looking for ways to help them build momentum during and after coaching sessions. NLP became an important part of that work for me. Later, helping build this executive coach curriculum with NLP as a foundation was an exciting opportunity.

We’re also living through a significant period of change. In particular, artificial intelligence is changing the professional environment for leaders and their teams. Executive coaches can support clients as they navigate those changes. We’ll look at the demand for executive coaching, what the training covers, and the skills you can develop. Then we’ll open things up for questions.

What Is Executive Coaching—and Who Can Benefit?

When people think of executive coaching, they often picture a coach working with a senior executive or manager. That is certainly part of the field. But I want to acknowledge that executive coaching skills can also be valuable for clients who aren’t currently in formal executive roles.

A person may want to lead more effectively in their family, community, or another area of influence. We can bring an executive coaching perspective to those conversations, supporting clients as they sharpen leadership and communication skills, build confidence, improve their effectiveness and productivity, and explore work-life balance.

What matters is translating insight into focused action. One of my favorite aspects of coaching is stretching and challenging clients to take meaningful action as soon as possible. Through an executive coaching lens, the emphasis is on applying and integrating new awareness in ways that can influence a wider circle of people.

The executive, the team, and the organization

Here’s one of the most important differences in our approach. In iNLP Center’s executive coaching training, we consistently explore a three-part relationship: the executive, the team, and the overall organization. We call this ETO.

We aren’t coaching only the individual leader sitting in front of us. We’re inviting that leader to consider their own experience, the people they serve or work with, and the larger organization in which they operate. The client may see a challenge through one lens; our questions can invite a broader perspective.

One of my mentors told me years ago that our job as coaches is to connect, reveal, and empower. It isn’t to tell, teach, or fix. That’s an important distinction between coaching and consulting. Some of you may offer consulting as part of your business, but within a coaching conversation, we’re working from the coaching perspective.

We connect with the client, help reveal new awareness, and empower the client to make their own choices. Looking at the executive, team, and organization creates more opportunities to do that. It stretches a client beyond the immediate problem and invites them to consider the people and systems affected by their leadership.

And again, this lens can be useful outside traditional corporate roles. Someone seeking to become a more effective leader in a family, community, or other group can explore themselves, the people they influence, and the larger context in which they’re operating.

The GAPS Model: Generated Areas for Purposeful Strategy

A central part of the executive coaching curriculum is our GAPS framework, which stands for Generated Areas for Purposeful Strategy. We talk about identifying and bridging gaps between where a client is now and where that client wants to be.

The training takes a deep dive into the executive, team, and organization relationship. We consider where the gaps may exist for the individual, for the team, and for the organization—and sometimes how those issues influence the client’s industry or a larger community.

We also teach coaches to facilitate a GAPS assessment at the beginning of a coaching engagement. It helps establish a baseline and creates a way to understand the client’s aspirations: Where are they now? Where do they want to go? What do they want more of? What do they want to avoid or change?

Remember that the destination is always the client’s, not the coach’s. Our role is to hold a coaching space in which clients can explore where they want to grow. We may challenge assumptions and stretch beliefs about what’s possible, but we aren’t imposing our own goals.

The GAPS approach includes the foundation, the areas of impact, and the integration of learning. Integration is crucial because real change happens outside the coaching session. During a session, we can help awaken awareness and identify internal and external resources. Then we support the client’s ability to act, make decisions, and sustain momentum between sessions. Accountability may be an important part of that partnership if the client wants it.

Because the program follows an ICF coaching approach, the sessions are client-led, not coach-led. The framework provides structure, but the client remains responsible for choosing the areas they want to explore and the direction they want to take.

The ten GAPS impact areas

There are ten impact areas in the training. They’re connected rather than isolated; progress in one area may influence several others.

1. Communication. How effectively do people share messages, listen, and understand one another?
2. Learning culture. How does a team or organization support growth, learning, and development?
3. Productivity. What does it mean to be more effective—not merely busier or doing more?
4. Mission and values. How aligned are leadership choices with the organization’s mission and core values?
5. Goals and vision. What is the client working toward, and how clearly is that direction understood?
6. Problem-solving. How does the client approach obstacles, decisions, and possible solutions?
7. Career satisfaction. What contributes to fulfillment and a meaningful professional experience?
8. Leadership and motivation. How does the client lead, influence, and encourage others?
9. Implementation. How does new awareness turn into actions and sustained follow-through?
10. Strengths optimization. How can the client make better use of existing capabilities and resources?

Take productivity as an example. Higher productivity might improve an organization’s bottom line, but the coaching conversation can go deeper. What does productivity actually mean for this executive, for their team, and for the organization? Is the goal simply to do more, or is it to become more effective? Those are different conversations.

We can also examine how a leader’s values align with an organization’s mission, how communication affects problem-solving, and how implementation relates to strengths. These areas work together. Stronger problem-solving may require changes in communication, implementation, or the way people’s strengths are used.

The framework provides multiple entry points for coaching, depending on what matters most to the client. A session or an engagement might focus on one impact area, or several areas may become relevant over time.

Measuring and recognizing progress

The GAPS assessment is also useful for measuring success. Clients engage coaches because they want something to be different. They may want to start something, stop something, achieve a goal, avoid an outcome, or change a pattern that is slowing their momentum.

The assessment gives coaches a way to explore a baseline and return to that information later. That can help clients—and, when appropriate, an organizational sponsor—understand and celebrate progress. It can also guide what happens in the next phase of an engagement.

Many leaders don’t have another person in their lives with whom they can explore these issues openly. That is one of the valuable roles a coach can play: creating a confidential space to examine assumptions, resources, challenges, and opportunities that might otherwise remain unexplored.

Turning the GAPS Areas Into Coaching Services

As an entrepreneur as well as a coach, I also want you to see the business-building possibilities in the training. We designed the curriculum not only to develop your coaching competence, but also to support those who want to build or expand an executive coaching practice.

The impact areas give you a flexible foundation for designing coaching packages. You might work with one individual, several leaders in an organization, or an organizational sponsor. You might offer a short retreat or a month-long engagement, or build a longer partnership lasting three months, six months, a year, or more.

Executive coaching may involve a sponsoring organization that pays for the coaching of one or more leaders. That introduces a different purchasing relationship from an individual client paying personally for coaching. You may be speaking with people in the organization who are considering an ongoing engagement with you and their leaders.

The course includes talking points and messaging to help you think about those business conversations, create packages, and develop your professional practice. You might already offer life coaching, life purpose coaching, relationship coaching, health coaching, or another specialty, and want to add executive coaching as another part of your business.

We have also had organizations contact iNLP Center looking for executive coaches who could work with their leaders. It’s exciting to see trained coaches not only develop their skills, but also explore ways to grow their own practices and expand the number of people they serve.

This is another reason the ten GAPS areas are helpful. One area may become the focus of a coaching package, or several may form the structure of a broader engagement. We intentionally built flexibility into the curriculum so you can consider how to use it in your own business.

How NLP Can Deepen Executive Coaching

I was already coaching full-time when I came to iNLP Center as a student. I’d completed other coaching training, but I wanted NLP in my toolbox because many of my clients were seeking significant results. I often work with people who want to make a broader impact—people who don’t just want to write a book, but want to start a movement or a conversation, or make a difference in their company, family, community, or industry.

These clients want to lead at a higher level and often want to remove the bottlenecks slowing their progress. NLP offers several tools we can bring into coaching to explore how clients think, what they believe, how they use language, and how they can put new awareness into action.

Perceptual positions

One of my favorite NLP tools is perceptual positions. Think about how naturally it connects with the executive, team, and organization relationship.

A client can explore a situation from their own perspective, consider the perspective of a team member or another stakeholder, and then look at the situation from a more detached position. They might explore how a competitor or board member could see an issue. The point isn’t to assume they know what another person is thinking; it’s to widen the range of possibilities they’re considering.

That shift in perspective can help a leader notice something they hadn’t considered before. A client who arrived with one interpretation of a challenge may leave with more options and a clearer idea of what to do next. We can use that awareness to help the client move toward action after the session.

Anchoring

Another NLP tool is anchoring. Leaders may know what they want to do but find it difficult to access their best resources when they’re under pressure.

Anchoring is a way of exploring access to a more resourceful state. A client might want to connect with confidence, composure, or another quality before an important meeting, a difficult conversation, a high-stakes decision, a presentation, or a negotiation.

The coaching conversation helps the client identify the state they want to access and how they might intentionally reconnect with it when it matters.

Language and the Milton Model

We also explore the Milton Model and the influence of language. As coaches, we listen closely to what clients say and how they describe their experiences. Language can open possibilities, support reflection, and help clients look at a challenge differently.

A skilled coach isn’t simply asking a series of questions. We’re paying attention to the client’s language and using our own language intentionally to support insight. The session remains client-led; we’re inviting exploration rather than telling clients what to think.

I often picture a coaching challenge as a knot. A client brings something they’ve been unable to resolve satisfactorily—perhaps a situation, a belief, a concern, or an area where they feel stuck. Our job is to help loosen that knot, not to pull it apart for the client.

Tools such as perceptual positions, anchoring, language patterns, and Logical Levels can help clients look more clearly at what may be creating the stuck state. They can notice fears, doubts, worries, assumptions, and possible resources, then decide what would be useful to do.

Logical Levels

I’m a big fan of Logical Levels, particularly in executive coaching. The framework discussed in this training uses five areas for exploration: environment, behavior, capabilities, beliefs, and identity.

It provides a structure for exploring both external circumstances and internal experience. Environment and behavior are often the places where a client begins. A client may come into a session saying, “I want to manage my time better,” “I want to get a promotion,” or “I want to write a book.” Those are expressed in terms of what the client wants to do.

But we can invite clients to consider other levels as well. What do they believe about the challenge? What capabilities do they already have? How do they see themselves as a leader? What might it mean for them to embody the identity of the leader they aspire to become?

Exploring the executive, team, and organization alongside Logical Levels can open a deeper conversation. Rather than staying only with external behaviors, we can help the client examine the beliefs and identity that may influence those behaviors. The client then decides which insights are relevant and what changes they want to make.

Outcome specification

Outcome specification is another tool we use. It helps clients move from vague goals toward a clear, compelling picture of success.

Executives are often goal-oriented, but there is a difference between an output and a meaningful outcome. A client may be able to list tasks or targets without having a vivid sense of what achieving them will actually mean.

Outcome specification invites clients to describe success more fully. What would they notice? What would be different? How would they know that the outcome had been achieved? What would it mean for the people around them?

With an executive client, we can extend that reflection to the team and organization. How might the leader communicate a compelling vision that others can connect with? How might that vision create motivation instead of leaving the team feeling pushed?

Belief work

Belief work is an important part of the NLP toolbox. Leaders sometimes operate within limits shaped by beliefs formed long ago. A client may have a fixed idea about what is possible, what they deserve, or what someone in their position is supposed to do.

A coach can invite that client to notice and examine those beliefs, and consider whether a different interpretation would be more useful. Importantly, we aren’t deciding what the client should believe. The client chooses what they want to examine and what they want to take forward.

VAK and communication

We also discuss VAK: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experiences. In NLP, these categories offer a way to explore how a client represents and communicates experience.

For an executive, recognizing their own communication preferences can lead to curiosity about how colleagues or team members may interpret messages differently. What helps the executive understand information? How might their team members prefer to receive or explore a message? What would make a presentation to the organization, the board, or another stakeholder clearer?

The practical goal is to expand communication choices and perspective, not to assume that every person has a single fixed communication style.

Future pacing and integration

Finally, we use future pacing to help clients imagine taking new awareness into future situations. The important work doesn’t stop when the coaching call ends. Integration happens in the meetings, conversations, and decisions that follow.

Our questions can help clients anticipate what implementation will look like. What might get in the way? What resources could they use? What would they like to do differently? How will they know they’re making progress?

Across all these tools, the purpose is the same: support clients in creating the awareness and change they themselves want. Our approach isn’t simply to have a good conversation. We want the client to be able to recognize meaningful changes in how they think, speak, lead, and make an impact.

An Interactive Training Experience

If you join the executive coaching program at iNLP Center, you’ll find that the live training is highly interactive.

In our classes, we bring forward real-life types of scenarios involving executive coaching clients at different points in the coaching process. Students are encouraged to participate and discuss where they might take the conversation through their questions.

The objective is to practice coaching—not only to learn the names of different models. You may have many NLP tools available, but part of becoming a stronger coach is developing your judgment about how and when to use them appropriately.

We work together to explore different questioning approaches and possibilities for supporting the client. I care deeply about helping coaches raise their level of competence and confidence. That was why I originally came to iNLP Center as a student, and it’s what I want to support in the coaches who join the program now.

Executive Coaching Training: Program Overview

The training includes 15 modules, with ten modules devoted to the ten GAPS impact areas. Within those modules, you’ll examine how to approach conversations about topics such as productivity, decision-making, communication, leadership, and what it means to embody a leadership role rather than simply perform its tasks.

You’ll also learn how to facilitate the GAPS assessment and how to use it not only at the beginning of an engagement, but also to review progress at the end of a phase of coaching and explore what may come next.

Students receive lifetime access to the learning materials. Our community also includes graduates who return to live sessions to discuss scenarios they’re navigating with clients or to explore the process of working with organizations. The conversations and professional learning can continue beyond the initial training period.

There are different pathways for integrating executive coaching into your education. You might already be pursuing a Level 2/PCC coaching pathway or adding a specialty alongside business coaching, sales coaching, life purpose coaching, or another program. I encourage you to talk with the iNLP Center team about the route that fits your current training and professional goals.

Why Executive Coaching Matters in the Age of AI

I think this is a particularly exciting time to be an executive coach. We’re still in the early stages of a major technological shift, and organizations and their leaders are navigating change in many different industries.

Leaders have to make decisions, support their teams, and respond to changing expectations. They’re often looking for human-to-human support as they work through these responsibilities. Executive coaching can provide a space to consider difficult decisions, examine perspectives, and think about how to navigate change more effectively.

I work with clients in technology, healthcare, finance, business, real estate, entrepreneurship, government, and other areas. One question I hear frequently is whether someone has to have worked in a specific industry to coach an executive in that industry.

My answer is that coaching is a professional competency. I’m hired to coach, not because I’ve personally walked in every client’s shoes. The value of the relationship is that I can ask bold questions, challenge clients to look at situations differently, and support their thinking and choices. We aren’t required to act as experts in the client’s industry when we are working in the role of coach.

Organizations are recognizing the need to support leaders through change. As AI reshapes work, it is important to remember that there is still a human at the helm. Leaders are responsible for decisions and for the people affected by those decisions.

Research and market figures discussed in the webinar

I want to highlight some figures presented in the webinar slides to illustrate the professional opportunity. These were shared as market and research talking points during the session:

• A projection attributed to Grand View Research estimated that the global executive coaching market could reach $20 billion by 2030.
• A figure attributed to the International Coaching Federation (ICF) stated that 86% of companies reported recouping their investment in coaching and that a majority reported a return on investment of 100% or more.
• The webinar described executive coaching fees in a range of $325–$500 per hour, with some top coaches or organizational contracts reaching $1,000 per hour or more.
• A figure attributed to Deloitte stated that 70% of executives identified leading people through change as their biggest challenge.
• The World Economic Forum was referenced regarding the importance of emotional intelligence, leadership, and adaptability in the 2025–2030 workforce.
• A corporate learning and development spending figure of more than $366 billion annually was discussed, along with the role of executive coaching within that broader category.
• A figure attributed to Harvard stated that 56% of leaders felt unprepared for the demands of their current role.
• A figure attributed to the ICF stated that 73% of organizations preferred ICF-credentialed coaches when hiring external coaching support.
• A figure attributed to the Manchester Consulting Group stated that leaders who receive coaching combined with training outperform uncoached peers by 88%.

For anyone creating an article, promotional graphic, or training claim from the recording, these figures should be checked against the original cited reports before publication. They are reproduced here as statements made in the webinar, not as independently verified findings.

The larger point I want to make is that organizations have reasons to invest in leadership development and executive coaching, particularly when they are working through significant change. Coaching can be part of a broader combination of services that might also include consulting, corporate training, or mentoring—depending on how you choose to structure your business.

Within an ICF-aligned coaching session, however, the distinction remains important: the client leads the conversation. If I am telling a client what to do, I’ve moved into a consulting, mentoring, or training role. Those may be valid services when properly agreed, but they aren’t the same as coaching.

Audience Questions

Question from Greg in the chat: What do you mean by “business builder”?

I consider myself a business builder because, in addition to my coaching work, I’ve started businesses and supported people who are starting or scaling their own businesses. I enjoy helping people take a vision to another level.

Follow-up question from Greg: How can a full-time coach own a couple of businesses?

It’s exciting when you have teams and can support businesses in different ways. That makes it possible for my role as a coach and my other business interests to exist together. I appreciate the question.

Final Reflections and Next Steps

As you think about whether to add executive coaching to your toolbox, consider what your clients are really seeking.

When someone comes to coaching, they generally want something to change. They want to achieve something, avoid something, start or stop something, or experience more or less of something. They have a goal or challenge that makes a coaching conversation relevant to them.

In my own coaching practice, I often find that clients aren’t only interested in reaching an outcome—they want to reach it sooner. They want to understand what’s slowing their momentum rather than wait for the next 90-day plan. That’s one reason I value bringing NLP tools into coaching: they create opportunities to explore the thinking and beliefs connected to a challenge, then support the client in putting new awareness into action.

I return to that image of a knot. A client brings something that feels tangled or stuck. We create a space where we can look more closely at the parts of the experience they may not have considered. We can look into the corners of the room, so to speak: Where are the assumptions? What fears, concerns, or doubts have they been avoiding? What might open up if they saw themselves or their situation differently?

The purpose is to help clients become the leaders they aspire to be, whether in an organization, a family, a community, or an industry. By supporting shifts in awareness, beliefs, identity, and action, we help them consider new possibilities.

If you’re interested in executive coach training, I encourage you to schedule a conversation with the iNLP Center team and discuss your current coaching pathway and how executive coaching might fit into it.

I wish all of you the best. I hope to see you in class, and I encourage you to go serve at a really high level.

Thank you, everybody.