The Open and the Close are the two bookends of a coaching conversation: how you start a session and how you end it.
TIME is the shape of a strong open: Topic, Importance, Measurement, Exploration. It’s how you partner with a client to name what they want to work on and what success looks like.
RIC is the shape of a strong close: Reflect, Integrate, Complete. It’s how you help a client leave with their own insight named and owned.
C3 and C8 are simply two of the ICF Core Competencies, number 3 (the agreement you set at the open) and number 8 (the client’s growth you support at the close). If those numbers don’t mean anything to you yet, no problem, you’ll feel what they are by doing the work.

That’s the whole vocabulary. Everything else is just coaching.

The thought that never gets finished

Take your client from the cover of what they want to the discovery of what they have.

Picture this. You sit down to think something through. What do I want? Where do I want to go? Where do I want to be? Then the phone rings. You come back to it, and someone taps your shoulder. You come back again, and now there is a shower to take, a sandwich to make, a hundred small things waving for your attention. Each time, the thought circles back to where it started, waiting on one side of the street for its chance to cross.

Coaching is where the client crosses. Where a person finally completes their thinking and steps onto the other side of the thought. And on that side, something opens. Their thinking rises to the level of choice, and they get to pick. Once they choose, they can stay and thrive or go and thrive, moving from a place they chose for themselves. What a wonderful place to be.

With thanks to Dr. Towanna Burrous, Ed.D., whose teaching on thinking to the level of choice, and on the freedom to stay and thrive or go and thrive, shaped the heart of this idea.

That is what the bookends protect

A thought gets completed inside a container. Open the session well and you build a container strong enough to hold real thinking. Close it well and you walk the thought all the way across to choice. Those two moves are the bookends, and they are the whole job of this lab. We open with Competency 3, establishing the agreement, through TIME. We close with Competency 8, facilitating client growth, through RIC. Hold those two ends, and everything the client brings has somewhere safe to land and somewhere to arrive.

This is the shift you are here for. A session moves from “I gotta get, I gotta do” to allowing, listening, and hearing. You go from carrying the session to holding it.

The one idea under everything

One principle runs through every lesson: partner with the client. They own the content. You hold the process. You ask the question that lets them name their own focus, find their own reasons, and choose their own next step. Partner with them, and they reach the other side. You will feel it the first time you practice with the AI client. This is the move every comic shows you.

From Cover to Discover

The name is the map. Every session opens like a comic cover: you turn the page and find what this one is really about. That is the Cover, the TIME side: Topic, Importance, Measurement, Exploration. By the end, the client sees something new, something the conversation carried into the light. That is the Discover, the RIC side: Reflect, Integrate, Complete. Open the cover, reach the discovery.

Why comics

Coaching is easier to recognize than to describe, so this lab shows it to you. A recurring cast appears across the lessons: Sabrina, Big John, Kev, Grace, and the others, each carrying something real into the room with Coach Kendall. You watch the move land in a panel, try it on a live AI client, then check what you know.

By the end, you will be able to

Open a session by partnering with the client to find the focus, the weight, and a clear measure of success.
Notice when the focus shifts, and partner with the client to re-clarify the direction.
Close a session so the client completes their thinking, names their own action, and reaches choice.
Recognize partnering as it happens, and choose it on purpose.

One promise before we start

The framework is scaffolding. You learn the bones until they live in you, and then you follow the human in front of you. A real session moves the way the client moves: it loops, the topic deepens, the measure sharpens partway through. That movement is the coaching. You learn the structure here until it melts into your own coaching DNA, and your full attention rests on the person across from you.

Turn the page, and let’s get them to the other side.

0% Complete