ISLC · Live Q&A Webinar
From good coaching to master-level practice
A one-hour live Q&A with ISLC, streamed from London and relayed to WeChat Channels for coaches across China and Asia.
Date
Thursday 29 October 2026
Time
11:00–12:00, London
Format
Live streamed Q&A
Role
Main speaker
Summary
On 29 October 2026 I was the main speaker in a live ISLC Q&A on what separates good coaching from master-level practice. My first answer framed the hour: subtraction. At PCC, coaches are rewarded for what they add; at MCC, the markers penalise the coach who holds a view of their own, and what is assessed is whether the client is operating as a full equal partner and whether the coach follows the direction that emerges rather than the one they planned. The hour covered the pull towards being the expert, the patterns master coaches notice, leadership teams that bring a problem, why the leader is usually the obstacle, and what coaches must unlearn when they move from individuals to teams.
- Organisation
- ISLC — Institute of Strategic Leadership & Coaching
- Host
- Sherry Zhang, with production by ISLC
- Delivery
- Online and live streamed; the video feed was relayed to WeChat Channels
- Audience
- Coaches and coach practitioners, largely ICF credential holders and credential candidates in China and Asia, with an international contingent
The session
Six questions, one hour.
ISLC invited me to take six prepared questions in a live, streamed hour for their coaching audience — largely ICF credential holders and credential candidates in China and Asia, with an international contingent joining. Sherry Zhang hosted and ISLC produced the session, including the relay of the video feed to WeChat Channels.
The thread behind the six questions was the difference between good coaching and master-level coaching practice. What follows is the substance of those answers.
In one word, what changes from PCC to MCC?
Subtraction. At PCC, coaches are rewarded for what they add. At MCC the markers turn against the coach who holds a view of their own: what is assessed is whether the client is operating as a full equal partner, and whether the coach follows the direction that emerges rather than the one they planned. Practically, that means less footprint, fewer interventions, longer silences, and more of the client’s own thinking in the room.
“Just tell me what to do.”
That lands as an instruction, and the first job is not to obey it straight away. Inside the thirty seconds that follow, I am attending to five things: my own pull towards being the expert; the request itself as data; whether it is a request for relief or a test of the frame; the risk in both directions — of answering and of not answering; and whose stakes these are.
What do master coaches notice that less experienced coaches miss?
Not more detail — pattern and process. The word the client keeps not using. The two seconds before they answer. Which topic is circled and never entered. Who is missing from the room. And my own reaction in the moment, used as data rather than obeyed.
When a leadership team brings a problem, what is the work?
Three things: agreeing what the problem actually is, surfacing the thing everyone knows and nobody has said, and how they talk to each other while they work it.
The leader or the team — which is the bigger obstacle?
Usually the leader, because they hold the permission, and the team’s silence is a sensible response to that. The obstacle is rarely a person. It is the arrangement everyone has quietly agreed not to disturb.
What must a coach unlearn when moving from individuals to teams?
Four things. The privacy instinct — negotiated transparency replaces confidentiality. The assumption that the individual is the client, when the system is. The insight reflex, when the unit of insight is the pattern between people. And comfort as a goal.
The four Chinese concepts carried the “doing more by doing less” idea better than any English phrasing I have found; they landed well with this audience, and I expect to keep using them when I teach this material. My thanks to Sherry Zhang and the ISLC team for the invitation, the preparation behind the six questions, and the production that carried the session to a live audience across China and Asia.
Language & cultural framing
Doing more by doing less.
I used four Chinese concepts to carry the central idea. Each describes what a master practitioner removes rather than what they add.
无为
wu wei
Acting without forcing.
留白
liubai
Leaving blank space — the term borrowed from painting.
庖丁
Pao Ding
The butcher in the Zhuangzi who finds the gaps rather than cutting against the grain.
四两拨千斤
si liang bo qian jin
Four ounces deflecting a thousand catties.
About the speaker
Kaveh Mir
Executive Coach (MBA, MSc, MAPPCP).
ICF Master Certified Coach (MCC), ICF Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC), Mentor Coach Specialisation, Coaching Supervisor Specialisation.
Former Director, ICF Professional Coaches Global Board of Directors, and Former Director, ICF Global Thought Leadership Institute.
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