The Coaching Edge Podcast

Confidence grows from self-trust. Neelu Kaur explains how to build both.Neelu is an organizational psychologist, executive coach, and author of Be Your Own Cheerleader. She coached technologists at Morgan Stanley and now writes her second book, The Self-Trust Recession.Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave talk with Neelu about why people outsource their authority to others and to AI. She shares the I and we dial, a tool for staying authentic while adjusting how much you speak for yourself versus your team.You will hear why self-censoring kills good ideas in meetings. You will hear how leaders and employees meet each other at their bus stop across cultures. And you will leave with a simple practice: small, low-stakes reps to strengthen your inner compass.

Your team is not overloaded with work. Your team is overloaded with thoughtload.Dr. Liane Davey, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author, has spent her career working only with teams. She joins Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave to explain why activity and output keep rising while outcomes stall.Liane breaks thoughtload into three parts: rising cognitive demands, growing emotional burdens, and shrinking energy reserves. She shows why leaders shape team dynamics more than anyone in the room. She explains the difference between emotions and feelings. And she shares a simple weekly practice: three one-hour blocks with zero input.For coaches who work with leaders and teams, this conversation gives you a clear way to separate busy work from work toward outcomes.

Successful on paper. Anxious at 3 a.m. Dr. Liz DuBois Erskine coaches the leaders who live with both.Dr. Liz holds a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution and spent seven years in nonprofit executive leadership. She joins Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave to explain why imposter syndrome persists in high achievers.Her core point: you grow outside your comfort zone, but never outside your safety zone. When a career move threatens your marriage, your income, or your reputation, no mindset shift will move you. You need to name the fear and find the one change in the system worth making first.The conversation covers the loneliness of leadership, the limits of mindset coaching, and how she pinpoints where a client is stuck in under 15 minutes.

People don't trust what they read online anymore, and Ali Meehan has a name for it: the trust recession. Founder of Costa Women, a network for women living in or moving to Spain, Ali joins hosts Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave to unpack why AI-polished content erodes the very trust coaches depend on. She shares why she believes AI cannot replace the human intuition coaches bring to a room, what it actually takes to build a community people stay in, and why she thinks introverts make some of the best networkers around. A conversation about authenticity, community, and what still can't be automated.

AI will not raise your children. Parenting coach and LagosMums founder Yetty Williams joins The Coaching Edge Podcast to explain why. Williams built one of Nigeria's first parenting platforms in 2011, and she now works with parents and business leaders on three continents. In this episode, she tells hosts Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave why AI works only once you know your destination, how to spot the difference between a pivot and a distraction, and why children need context from the adults around them, not more content from a screen. Williams also shares her three E framework for intentional parenting: education, empowerment, and empathy. A grounded, practical conversation for parents, coaches, and leaders trying to raise humans in an AI-driven world.

Anna Sumara built a coaching career around one idea: the body knows before the mind does. A coach, facilitator, and Coactive Training Institute faculty member, Anna joins hosts Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave to explain embodied presence and why tension in the body weakens a leader's message.Anna walks through a practice for noticing physical sensation during moments of stress, describes why she sees boundaries as physical before they are verbal, and explains the difference between a regulated and a reactive nervous system. She closes with her honest view on why coaching for deep, lasting change still needs a human being in the room, even with AI now present in the coaching field.

Ex-army officer and former corporate GM Jimmy Burroughes burned out in 2017 after 16 to 18 hour days for two and a half years straight. Nine years later, he runs a leadership consulting business teaching other leaders to avoid his mistakes.In this conversation with hosts Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave, Burroughes breaks down his 80% list, a daily habit for catching burnout before burnout takes hold, and the AEIOU framework for spotting burnout signs in a team. He explains why burnout peaks in the mid-30s to early 50s, and introduces three tiers of leadership: the village fisherman, the icebreaker, and the amplifier.If you lead people, manage a team, or coach leaders through burnout, this episode gives you language and tools to use right away.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus built a career around a question most workplaces still avoid: what happens when we stop designing everything around one type of brain? Taylor-Klaus, co-founder of Impact ADHD and the new NeuroInformed Institute, talks with hosts Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave about neurodivergence, parenting, and leadership.She shares her own late diagnosis story, explains why SMART goals fail a large share of people, and gives a simple workplace fix that changes how neurodivergent employees perform. A candid, practical conversation about meeting people where they are.

Fran Fisher walked on stage in 1997 without her notes and defined coaching as a sacred space of unconditional love. The definition stuck.Fran, MCC, helped build the ICF credentialing system. She chaired the Credentialing Development Committee and has assessed coaches since 1997.In this conversation with Dr. Steve Jeffs and Erwin de Grave, she shares the history most coaches never hear. Two rival coaching associations merged in an Atlanta hotel room and drew straws for the name.She also names an uncomfortable finding. When MCC candidates kept failing assessment, the assessors looked past the coaches and found the gap sat with their mentors.

AI will not run your coaching practice while you sip a drink on a beach. Colin Scotland, who heads the AI for Coaches mentorship at coaching.com, explains why the coaches getting real value from AI start somewhere unexpected: writing down who they are. He walks through context engineering, operational AI that completes tasks on its own, and why the first step toward using the technology well is knowing yourself. A grounded, human-first take on a tool most people still misunderstand.