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Core Competencies Fall Summit 2026
with Jennie Antolak, MCC
Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Your Client Wants to Change. Their Behavior Tells Another Story.  Rethinking How We Apply the ICF Core Competencies

Your client wants to establish better boundaries but keeps saying yes.

A leader wants to delegate but continues taking control.

A professional wants to step into greater visibility but repeatedly finds reasons to stay behind the scenes.

You've partnered with your client to clarify what they want, explored possibilities, evoked awareness, and supported them in identifying meaningful actions.

They leave the session with new insights and a commitment to doing something differently.

And yet, the same behaviors keep showing up.

What if the behaviors our clients most want to change are the very behaviors helping them remain true to something they aren't yet willing to lose?

A client can genuinely want to change while remaining equally committed to the story that makes their current behavior feel necessary.

Saying yes may preserve an identity of being dependable. Taking control may reinforce a sense of responsibility. Staying behind the scenes may protect a hard-earned sense of belonging.

These aren't interpretations for coaches to make on behalf of their clients. They're possibilities that clients may discover when given the opportunity to explore the meaning behind their behavior.

And that raises an important question about how we understand and apply the ICF Core Competencies.

Are we using the competency markers we find most familiar and convenient, or are we recognizing the full range of possibilities they offer for supporting client discovery?

The ICF Core Competencies are not simply a series of behaviors to demonstrate or steps to move a client toward action. Their markers offer multiple opportunities to explore how clients understand themselves, interpret their experiences, and make choices that remain consistent with the stories they've come to believe.

In this interactive session, we'll explore how different interpretations and applications of the ICF Core Competencies can open up entirely different coaching conversations.

Using a narrative coaching lens, we'll examine how the competencies work together to support clients in recognizing the beliefs, meanings, identities, and commitments that may be sustaining the very behaviors they want to change.

Because sometimes the most meaningful movement in coaching doesn't begin with identifying what a client could do differently.

It begins with the client discovering what their current behavior has been helping them remain true to.

Learning Objectives tied to Core Competencies
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the tension between a client's desire for change and their commitment to familiar behaviors, exploring how those behaviors may serve or protect important aspects of the client's identity, values, or sense of belonging.
• Expand their interpretation and application of ICF Core Competency markers, identifying opportunities beyond familiar approaches to awareness, action, and accountability.
• Explore how multiple ICF Core Competencies work together to support clients in discovering the stories, beliefs, and meanings influencing their choices.
• Recognize when a coach's commitment to helping a client move forward may unintentionally limit exploration, particularly when the focus shifts to changing behavior before the client understands what sustains it.
• Apply a narrative coaching perspective to a familiar coaching scenario, exploring how different uses of the competency markers can create opportunities for deeper client discovery and more meaningful choices.

Session Format and Participant Experience

• This interactive session will invite participants to examine a familiar coaching challenge through two different approaches.
• We'll begin with a client who clearly wants to change a recurring behavior. Participants will consider how they might typically use the ICF Core Competencies to support that client.
• Then we'll revisit the same scenario through a different lens, exploring how alternative interpretations and applications of the competency markers can open up conversations about the meanings, commitments, and stories sustaining the behavior.

Participants will have opportunities to:

• Examine how their preferred competency markers influence what they listen for and explore.
• Identify competency markers they may be underutilizing or interpreting too narrowly.
• Consider how the competencies complement one another rather than functioning as separate coaching tasks.
• Practice shifting from a focus on changing behavior to supporting clients in discovering what their behavior may be serving or protecting.
• The goal isn't to introduce another coaching model or suggest that coaches need to abandon approaches that already serve their clients.
• It's to expand what coaches recognize as possible within the competencies they already use.

ICF Core Competency Alignment

The session will explore the interconnected application of several ICF Core Competencies, with particular attention to:

• Competency 3 — Establishes and Maintains Agreements
  Exploring what the client wants to accomplish while remaining curious about what matters to them and what they believe needs to change.
• Competency 4 — Cultivates Trust and Safety
  Creating a partnership in which clients can explore their experiences, identities, and beliefs without feeling pressured to abandon or defend them.
• Competency 5 — Maintains Presence
  Remaining responsive to what emerges rather than allowing the coach's preferred direction or expectations about progress to determine the conversation.
• Competency 6 — Listens Actively
  Listening beyond the client's stated desire for change to the language, meanings, emotions, and patterns that may influence how they understand their situation.
• Competency 7 — Evokes Awareness
  Supporting clients in exploring their assumptions, perspectives, and ways of thinking about themselves and their circumstances without supplying interpretations or conclusions.
• Competency 8 — Facilitates Client Growth
  Partnering with clients to determine what their discoveries mean for their choices, learning, and actions, rather than assuming that meaningful growth must immediately appear as a different behavior.

Key Takeaway

• The ICF Core Competencies aren't simply a roadmap for helping clients get from where they are to where they want to be.
• They offer opportunities for clients to discover how they've come to understand where they are, what keeps them there, and what they may need to reconsider before a different direction becomes meaningful.
• When we expand how we interpret and apply the markers, we expand what our clients have the opportunity to discover.
• And sometimes, the story that has been keeping a behavior in place is the very story a client needs to recognize before they can decide what comes next. 

About the Speaker: Jennie Antolak, MCC

Jennie Antolak, MCC, is President and Co-Founder of Learning Journeys, an ICF Level 2 accredited coach education organization. With more than 26 years of coaching experience and a master's degree in Organizational Leadership and Development, she's devoted her career to exploring something the self-improvement world often overlooks: behaviors don't stick around for no reason.

As a narrative coach, educator, and practitioner, Jennie helps coaches discover how to honor the stories people live by, even when those same stories are keeping them committed to behaviors they desperately want to change. After all, a story that has helped someone make sense of their world isn't likely to pack its bags simply because we've suggested a better way to behave.

Her work isn't just about teaching narrative coaching. It's about practicing it, living it, and helping others recognize that meaningful change begins with understanding what has made the familiar so difficult to leave behind.