The show’s guest in this episode are Leah Kedar, MS, MCC, and Robin Goodbary, MBA, MCC. They are both Master Certified Coaches with extensive expertise and impactful approaches to coaching. Leah is an ICF Advanced Certified Mentor Coach and a two-time recipient of the ICF Prism Award for coaching excellence with the National Institute of Health and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Known for her ontological and integral coaching style, Leah focuses on honoring the full humanity of her clients while supporting them in achieving personal, professional, and organizational goals. Robin specializes in Business and Leadership Coaching as well as Certified Retirement Coaching. Drawing from over 30 years of experience in marketing, product development, and leadership, Robin uses an Outward and Growth Mindset combined with Positive Intelligence to help clients unlock their potential, discover creative solutions, and expand their impact. Together, they exemplify the transformative power of coaching to drive growth and excellence.

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ICF Week 2025: Coaching Experiments with Leah Kedar & Robin Goodbary

Hi, Mel. Well, it’s great to be here with you today. I’m Melanie Parrish, and I’m an author, a coach. I’m a workshop leader, a facilitator, a team coach. And tell us about you.

I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m McMaster University’s first transgender department chair, and I’m the co host of the experimental leader podcast.

It’s great to be here with you today. What have you been thinking about in your leadership?

Well, this week is International Coach week, and I’ve been thinking about how coaching is useful in leadership. And I’m I’m an academic leader, chair of my department, and I’ve been doing coaching training pretty intensely for the last nine months, although the first time I took a coaching course was over 20 years ago, and I brought coaching into my department. We had a faculty and staff retreat, day long retreat a couple of years ago, and we brought in a coach who did Coach Training with all of us so that we all have some tools to better support each other and better engage in leadership in our department.

I’m curious, when you think of investing in training for your leaders to use coaching skills, what do you hope the outcomes will be?

I think that we will be better prepared to support each other, to engage in shared leadership and to facilitate personal and professional development throughout the department.

I think that’s really interesting. I I’ve been thinking about how three or four years ago, I got asked to teach in an advanced coaching program. So in the International Coach Federation, there’s the sort of beginning level coaches, which is ACC, and then there’s sort of a mid level, which is PCC. And at that point, the International Coach Federation decided that there should be programs to infuse learning into the master certified coach program, and I was asked by the advanced coaching practicum to be a teacher. In the beginning, I was just a mentor coach, but I’m I am reflecting on the impact on my coaching, of teaching coaching skills as we’re coming up into this international coach coaching week and and I think that by teaching, I have re infused my coaching with a rigor that had gone missing a bit over a 25 year career. So I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and how when we teach something, we learn a lot from our students.

And learn more about the craft by making the tools more explicit. 

And I feel really privileged to get to think about things in really minute, specific ways, about coaching.

And I am super excited about this episode today. We have, we have a couple of guests. I’m going to let you introduce one of them, but I want to introduce Leah. She teaches with me in the coaching program that we work for, and she’s a master certified coach, and she’s a recipient of the prism Award, which is an award for clients using coaching in their organization. She’s won two of them, and she loves to coach the whole person with care and compassion. She’s a colleague of mine, and I invited her here to talk about coaching with us today.

And we have Robin Goodbary with us, who’s a master certified coach focused on business and leadership and a certified retirement Coach and an MBA. She pulls from over 30 years of experience as a marketer, a product developer, a project leader and a trainer. She’s led project X people and teams to excel.

That’s amazing. 

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Welcome to the show. Leah and Robin.

Hello.

So these are my my colleagues. I can’t say favorite, but you know, partners, partners in time.

So we’re here today, celebrating International coaching week, and I’m just wondering what’s new in coaching.

You know, I think that is a great question from a lot of different perspectives. I think one of the things that’s new in coaching are the through the ICF, they’re creating the skill out test for specific levels. I think AI is new in coaching. The ICF has recently put out an ICF coach educator competency framework so that the coach educators also are working with some core competencies. So those, to me, are some of the new things in coaching.

Leah, how about you? 

I mean, you know, that’s pretty much it as I think about it. When I think of AI in coaching, I have to say I’m a little bit living in trepidation. What will it look like? What’s going to happen to the human spirit showing through whatever AI exists? So that’s why I live in right now.

It’s interesting to think of AI and coaching and what it feels like. I’ve been using an AI program to learn Spanish and and I notice what that feels like like. It’s cool, because I get questions in Spanish demand, and I don’t have to hire somebody, yeah, but then sometimes it asks me three times the same question, and then I feel like, like, I don’t know, I feel like a sucker or something. Like, I feel like I feel frustrated that I can’t get a new question. But I also it makes me doubt myself, like what I am wanting from this and how I’m allowing myself to be disappointed. Perhaps the AI will get better. I know it will over time, but I I feel like it over the years. You know, I’ve had clients who, at their worst times, are like, gosh, I have to pay you to talk to me. And with AI, it’s kind of gosh, I talked to some fake person, like we, we aren’t, we aren’t robots. So when we do these things, it the act of doing it also has an impact.

Well, you know, I go back to maybe 27 years ago, where, where I would not even use a phone to coach. Everything I did was real person I couldn’t imagine ever, of course, when I started to work globally, first phones, then all of the things that we use, now zoom and other such things. So it’s a process of evolution.

Yeah, I didn’t start using Zoom until 2019 I started using zoom in 2019 I for so I’ve been a coach for 25 years, and for the first 20 years I did phone, and I miss it. Sometimes. I loved the freedom of of it. And I think that’s a big change in coaching, is that coaches have become performers like I’ve had clients say, Oh, well, you did something and you didn’t look interested or you didn’t like you know it the demands on coaches visually have expanded hugely in the with technology.

Yeah, I know the three of you have been coaching for a very long time, but coaching as a vocation is relatively recent. I’m wondering, what compared to the beginning of coaching, what has become more clear in terms of sort of best practices or standard processes? What do you teach now? What do you know now that we didn’t know 20 years ago.

I think for me, one of the things that we are are discovering now that we maybe didn’t hadn’t put our fingers on earlier, was that there are actually two sides to this coaching. There is the client, and then there’s the coach, and what role is the coach playing in supporting the client, and what role is the coach playing in actually getting and hindering the client? So I think that’s one of the things that is new, is that coaches are are being trained in in terms of regulation, regulating themselves, understanding what’s happening for themselves. Else, recognizing the need to develop themselves as they are working with their clients as well.

And I think one thing that I noticed that’s changed from when I did my coach training, you know, 25 years ago, is is how I believe coaches should use metaphor in, you know, I remember when I was learning it was like, you know, you would say things like, oh, it’s like, you’re climbing a mountain. And I actually like, firmly teach that you want the client to be coming up with their own metaphor now, like, Coach, I don’t want coaches to be smart now, and I actually think this is a shift in the coaching industry. In 2019 there were new competencies at the International Coach Federation, and the partnership with the client that Robin just mentioned became more central to the competencies. And so that was a huge change. And and you think, Well, that was five years ago, but to change a competency like that, it took three years, I think, before we actually started using those competencies like it’s a very slow process in a profession to change the competencies that it’s founded on, because people in the middle of programs and all sorts of things.

You know, if we think of coaching, is a recent profession, let’s just say 1950s then clearly we have seen a lot, a lot of changes. But honestly, when I think of coaching, I actually go back to Asian ancient philosophers, you know, Socrates and Plato, they use the questioning method, you know, like the Socratic method, to actually and dialog to help individuals clarify their thinking, and, you know, in their goals. And later on, coaching became huge in sports. So coaching in sports, I mean, is still huge, and was always huge. And I’m sure, if we look back, sports, coaches probably behave very differently 6070, years ago, maybe in the way that they’re doing it now, would I the main thing that that I see is that, and it’s my story. Also, when I was introduced to coaching, I said, I’m coaching anyhow, you know, I’ve been working with leaders for two decades, and I’m doing it and realizing that, yes, maybe I was coaching, but maybe I was more advising and doing this kind of things. And everybody that wanted to become a coach could just put there, and they still do, to some extent. You know, the black on and I’m a coach, and, you know, it’s different. I mean, the it’s become a recognized profession. I even remember once hearing Bill Gates say that any leader that does not have a coach is already in trouble. It was years ago when, you know.

Let’s talk about that for a second. I think that’s a really interesting topic. So why? Let’s pretend we think that everybody should have a coach, just for a minute. Let’s just pretend why?

You know, leaders need somebody to talk with leaders. Need somebody to brainstorm their ideas with leaders. It’s very lonely on the top many have said and it’s been documented and to gain perspective, to support them in developing their strategies or agendas. Coaches are perfect for doing this. I believe you know. So I think that these are just a couple of reasons. I don’t mean just to kind of to randomly talk to somebody to is using, using them just as somebody they can throw up, you know, with, but somebody you know. You just need guidance. Without telling them what to do, you just need somebody to listen to, who could ask them questions that can help them become more aware and awake to the things that they’re doing. Should be doing that kind of stuff.

I also think that that leaders also appreciate hearing just a challenge to their perspective. Yes, I mean really challenging them and having them consider whatever that decision is from many different dimensions, from many different facets. Oftentimes, leaders are very strong in one area. They’re very clear and they’re very decisive in that area. And as coaches, we can support them to to you. And to really broaden themselves different perspectives, be more holistic and and really making decisions from a place that makes sense for them and or their organization, and where they want to take their organization to. I think that’s even more important.

No, what do you think? Like you, you’ve been a consumer of coaching, like, what? What do you think?

I agree that often that a leader, if you’re actually the executive in an organization, you might not have anybody else that you can bounce your ideas off of, or reflect with or or dig deeper with and the coaches, not only brings the coaching skills, but also the neutrality and the sort of independence from the organization that you might need to explore those thoughts.

You know, one more, one more thing occurs to me that in all of our work, in my work, specifically with leaders, the thing that is the most helpful, helpful to them is recognizing the distinctions between what am I doing and how am I being. Because sometimes you can have the best leaders in the world by way of content and production and effectiveness and all that stuff, but the ways that they’re being could be really egregious, destructive, not fair, and I can go on and on, and when I’ve worked with leaders for a while, they love their distinction. That makes sense to them, rather than say, Hey, you’re not behaving well, you know, make be nice with that person. But who is showing up, and how are they showing up, and who they who they bring along with them, what values and all that kind of stuff, you know, stories, the impact the way that they are being, rather than the way that they are doing.

Well, I don’t know what I want to ask. I don’t I don’t have the exact right question, so maybe you can help me frame this question. But the thing I want to talk about is what I think is actually a challenge in coaching right now, and I think it shows up everywhere, at every level of coaching, and that’s where the coach has, like starts to give advice, or has an idea for how the coaching session will go. And I just am curious, like, what you guys think of this sort of phenomenon. I find it even when I’m working with high level coaches as my coach, I find that they’d like to tell me their opinion, even if I really I feel like what I really want is to explore my own thinking. I can get opinions out the Yin Yang by Googling them on, you know, ChatGpt, or checking on ChatGpt or just Google. I can get opinions everywhere, but I don’t have very many forums to explore my own thoughts with a caring partner who will ask questions I hadn’t thought of, and I just wonder, if you guys have the same experience, or you know what you see in your world, and why don’t we do what I think I do it as a coach too. I’m going to fess up that I might occasionally have an idea for my clients that I share, what is this like? Why is this part of coaching and what what needs to happen?

Only because this has been a discovery for me, since I mentor people aspiring towards MCC and I had, I had an insight about this, and it goes back to what I said earlier. I think it’s a mindset. It depends on what mindset the coach is having. So, for example, you know, I was trained as an ethnographer, anthropologist. I love to hear the story. I cannot wait to hear all the details. But yet, I know that in that my mindset is an ethnographer, but not a coach, you know? And I think that people that generally, and I’m one of them, tend to figure it out right, or give advice. It’s because the they’re in a mindset more of an advisor, a consultant, and that kind of thing. And until such time that that I feel I can teach, or we can teach that distinction, the mindset distinction, and really drill into it, because we don’t really drill into it. We look at that, you know, the three top competencies and all the two top and the mindset really carries a conversation where it needs to be. And I think that those of. Us who are really quite, you know, experienced and competent when we slip into it, when I slip into it, then I would ask the what happened question and what to whom? Question, because I really want to know, right? It’s like a slippage into that mindset of being an anthropologist?

This is a very interesting question here, Melanie. And when these types of questions come up, I end up going down wonderfully delightful rabbit holes. So I have found myself down a wonderfully delightful around this specific thing and it and for me, I, I believe two things, well, more than two things. But one of the things that’s at play for me is my ego. I think I know something, so therefore I I feel it. I have an opportunity to share. I will ask, but it it is my ego sometimes that’s speaking. So when I saw that, I began to wonder, can you teach curiosity? How do people learn about curiosity? What are the components of cure? So I am down the rabbit hole of curiosity. Now I’m curious about curiosity. To me, curiosity really will support that advice, giving that judgment if we when we find as coaches, when we find ourselves in those places, to me, the the door outward says,

I love that Robin and I was going to add to what you just said is I get incredibly positive feedback from my clients, because they come to me because I wrote a leadership book. They want me to help them with their leadership. Sometimes they show up and say, I’m just looking forward to getting some good advice from you today. And then there I am, you know, pretending to be an MCC coach who doesn’t give advice and and sometimes I actually know some leadership best practices around, you know, early leadership and trying to pull it out of a client may be a ridiculous, you know, acrobatic act, yeah. And so I think this is a complex challenge, even though it just annoys me. On the face of it, as a mentor coach, I think it’s a really complex because of how we deliver value as coaches, how our clients perceive our value, and we need to walk this line really carefully.

I love what you’re saying, both of you. And I think when we go into that rabbit home Robin, or when we get into this advice giving, it’s really crucial that we are let the client know I’m not coaching you right now. You’ve been bugging me now, so I’m not coaching you. So I’m just going to give you three situations from which you can choose from. I’m advising you right now. I think it’s really so the head goes off and something else comes in, because we are human beings. I mean, you know, I mean we, as I said, we bring ourselves into every situation. So to deny that, to say, Oh, I’m holy moly, and it’s never going to happen, is not a reality.

And I would never want one of my mentees to submit one of those recordings. Absolutely, it’s not your coaching. It’s not and I do think I’m going to, I’m going to push back just a little. I do think that sometimes we forget how like we forget, as coaches generally, like across the whole profession, how valuable pure coaching is like if we actually believe in the wisdom of the client, if we believe in the power of that curiosity, if we believe in them being naturally creative, resourceful and whole. Then, then, you know, I do think that sometimes we could fall into that, more and less into that. I don’t think it’s always ego driven. I think it’s sometimes it’s ego driven. Sometimes it’s just helpfulness driven. Like, oh, can I help you? But I do think, I do think this is something that is really relevant in coaching right now. It is across the board at every level.

And then it also can get a little fuzzy, because what does partnering then look like, and and it has, I think it has something to do with what. What the coach is understanding internalization of what partnering is, because they they could be thinking that they’re partnering with their client.

We are partnering with the clients. We’re listening right questions emerge that’s a partnering partnering, you know, but I totally, I’m I what you said earlier. Melanie, so resonates with me, because I think the purity in coaching is beautiful. It really is beautiful to tap into the knowledge, the awareness, to, you know, of the client, of the person, without leading them, you know, without sharing what we think all the time or how we feel about this. Because I think that this is when we truly allow them to reveal themselves to us, and when we do that, then they can grow, then they can do whatever it is they need to do beautifully.

Yeah, and I think it’s it also speaks back to Melanie, when you were talking earlier, going on Zoom, is that performance piece of it, some some of us think that we have to perform in order to that. That’s part of the value that that we think we’re delivering. I happen to believe that it is the coachee who’s deriving the value out of that coaching conversation. It’s not for me to add value to it. The coachee is deriving value through challenging questions, both awareness, so on and so forth, and that’s where they get the value.

Well, do you want to weigh in? Like you, you know, you’ve, you’ve been around coaching for a long time?

Yeah, I think it’s funny, because I think a lot of times the clients come to you with the request they want, you know, get get to the point, answer my question, give me the advice. So it’s hard to toe the line and be it ends up feeling contrived when you you especially if you know you have the answer to try to pull the answer out of the client.

But you know something, well, it’s kind of like, if somebody comes to us to for psychotherapy, we are very clear we don’t do that, or for financial advice, we don’t do that, or marriage or partnership counseling, you know, so but, but yeah. I mean, it’s hard, it’s it’s wonderful to talk about it, but when faced with it, we have to really look. For many years, I actually put sticky notes on my screen for two things, you know, not to not to bundle questions, but also don’t lead. Literally don’t lead, kind of, you know, don’t be not strategic, because you have a strategic mind, and you know how you can navigate it. So maybe that’s one way we’re having to train oneself and to learn that way we have to learn tricks.

Yeah, an interesting challenge in coaching. Melanie, can you tell us where we would find your book?

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Yeah, that was interesting talking about coaching. Yeah. What stood out for you? Well, the whole question about coaching and being a coach and being a consultant, and when I kind of liked Leah’s comment that you know you need to be clear, if you decide to put your consultant hat on, you need to be clear that that’s what you’re doing right now. We’re not coaching. I’m going to answer your questions. 

I have to say, as a mentor coach, when I hear someone say, Oh, can I share an observation my my hackles go up. It’s like, Could you could you just ask them a question? Like, I definitely think, from a rigor perspective, even that is suspect if we’re looking for. A really pure coaching example. And I think everyone does it so it’s, it’s, it’s kind of a weird thing that I think the industry is grappling with. I loved being able to talk about that with them. I respect the two of them so much. So fabulous to be with them. Well, anything else you have to say.

Go experiment.

Go experiment.

Important Links: 

LinkedIn – Leah Kedar, MS, MCC

LinkedIn – Robin Goodbary, MCC

Website – Rightly Successful

Leah Kedar, MS, MCC

Leah is a Master Certified Coach and an ICF Advanced Certified Mentor Coach (ACMC). A recipient of the 2009 and 2010 ICF Prism Award for coaching excellence with the National Institute of Health and with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Leah coaches to the whole person with care and compassion. Her approach to coaching is ontological and integral, honoring the full humanity of each person. She supports clients to explore personal, professional, and organizational goals, as they develop and carry out strategies and plans to achieve those goals.

Robin Goodbary, MCC

Robin Goodbary, MBA, is a Master Certified Coach focused on Business and Leadership and a Certified Retirement Coach. Her steadfast and transformational coaching approach supports leaders and business owners to discover and unleash their untapped potential and expand their impact. She pulls from over 30 years of experience as a marketer, new product developer, project leader and trainer and has led projects, people and teams to excel. By employing an Outward and Growth Mindset and Positive Intelligence, she helps her clients to expand their way of thinking and discover creative solutions to complex situations.

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