Mental Yoga: Practising Flexibility in Coaching

Engaging in a coaching relationship is a bit like practising mental yoga.

A skilled coach doesn’t confront or push.

Instead, they invite clients to explore the range of possibilities already present in their thinking.

When I work with coaches early in their practice, a familiar pattern often shows up: the urge to shift a client’s mindset. Spotting a limiting assumption, they instinctively ask questions aimed at changing how the client thinks.

Yet coaching isn’t about replacing one way of thinking with a better one. It’s more like a careful stretch — creating flexibility without forcing a new position.

At the heart of coaching is the ability to question assumptions, not to substitute them, but to help clients see that their current view is only one part of a wider landscape. Holding on to a single “improved” perspective, while excluding all others, can be just as limiting as the original one.

Good coaching questions don’t point in a direction. They open space.

Questions like:

• What else might be true here?

• What are you not considering yet?

• What changes if you look at this from a different role or timeframe?

These questions don’t demand an answer. They invite exploration.

Exploration, in this sense, isn’t about abandoning one perspective for another. It’s about recognising that multiple viewpoints can exist at the same time — and learning to tolerate the uncertainty that comes with that awareness. Leadership, like life, is rarely black and white. Coaching supports people to stay present with complexity, rather than rushing to premature certainty.

Uncertainty isn’t a flaw in this process. It’s a signal that the system is larger than a single explanation. There may never be one “right” perspective — only perspectives that are more or less useful in a given moment.

From here, flexibility naturally extends beyond thinking into behaviour.

Mental yoga develops the capacity to choose a stance deliberately — knowing it can evolve as new information emerges or priorities shift. As thinking becomes more flexible, leaders become more willing to experiment with action.

This is where resilience grows. Clients learn to adjust their responses, stay grounded under pressure, and navigate complex situations with greater ease and confidence.

That is the quiet power of coaching: not changing minds, but expanding them.