Welcome to ICF International Coaching Week!

Every year in May, the coaching profession pauses to mark International Coaching Week. It is a moment of recognition, a chance for coaches, clients, and organizations to reflect on what professional coaching actually is and what it makes possible.

This year, ICW runs May 11 to 17. FromWithin Coaching is marking it the way we mark every week: by paying attention to the people in the room and what they are working through.

But this week feels worth saying out loud...coaching is not advice

There is a persistent misconception that coaching is a sophisticated form of advice-giving.

It is not.

A professional coach does not tell clients what to do.

A professional coach creates the conditions for clients to hear themselves clearly, often for the first time in a long time.

That distinction matters.

Advice gives someone an answer that fits someone else's life.

Coaching surfaces the answer that fits theirs.

ICF-certified coaches are trained specifically for this. The credential is not a formality. It represents a rigorous standard of practice, a commitment to ethics, and a body of skills that takes real time to build what coaching actually produces.

The outcomes of professional coaching are not always dramatic in the way that people expect.

Sometimes it is a professional who has been carrying a career question for two years and finally has language for it. Sometimes it is a coach who realizes the business they are building does not match who they are. Sometimes it is a leader who steps back into a room differently after a single conversation.

The shift is not always visible from the outside.

Inside the client, it is unmistakable.

At FromWithin, we work with coaches at every stage of their practice, from newly credentialed to decades in. The common thread is not where they are in their career. It is that they take their work seriously and want to keep growing inside it.

International Coaching Week exists because the work deserves recognition. Not just from clients, but from coaches themselves.

It is easy, in a busy practice, to forget that what you do is unusual. Most people go through their professional lives without anyone who is genuinely trained to listen. You offer something that is rare and that people do not always know they need until they are in it.

This week is a good moment to remember that.

If you are a coach wondering whether your work is making a difference, it is. If you are someone who has been thinking about working with a coach and have not taken the step, this is a reasonable week to take it.

We are here either way.

Check our FromWithin Coaching Events during International Coaching Week HERE

We hope to see you at one of our events next week or sometime during the year ahead.

You can also book a call anytime or reach out: welcome@fromwithincoaching.com

Megan Flanagan

FromWithin Coaching