Coaching Through Crisis

Post-Event Reflection

Childhood trauma does not end in childhood. It follows us into our relationships, our workplaces and the way we see ourselves.

But as we explored in the “Coaching Through Crisis: When Healing Meets Leadership” webinar organised by Ian Jefferis, Founder Young Minds Coaching and Noble Manhattan Coaching’s (NMC) lead programme developer, pain does not just leave scars. It leaves signs. Quiet markers that point toward growth, resilience and purpose.

This session looked beyond theory and into the human complexity of trauma-informed coaching. Led by guest expert Suzanne Simmons Lewis, the webinar unpacked how growth emerges not in spite of crisis, but often because of it and how coaches can hold space for transformation while maintaining their own emotional safety.

1. The Hidden Impact

When a client’s struggle triggers something familiar in you, an echo of your own story, how do coaches recognise the boundary between their healing and your own?

These are subtle moments when empathy becomes identification, when a client’s story awakens their own unhealed fragments. As research from the International Coaching Federation (ICF, 2024) notes, coaches working in emotionally charged contexts face a high risk of counter transference.

Our collective insight? Boundaries are not walls, they are mirrors with edges. They reflect our shared humanity, but also remind us to return to self-awareness and supervision. True leadership in coaching begins with knowing the line between compassion and collapse.

2. Redefining Growth

What if growth was not about helping clients “move on” but helping them “move through?”

Traditional coaching models often focus on performance, progress and measurable outcomes. But trauma does not follow a linear path and neither does growth. Recent studies on post-traumatic growth (PLOS One, 2025) suggest that resilience is a mediating process, not a final destination.

The session highlighted that helping clients “move through” invites a slower, deeper kind of transformation, one rooted in self-compassion, reflection and presence. Growth, in this frame, is not the absence of pain but the integration of it. “Moving on is forgetting. Moving through is becoming.”

3. The Courage to Hold Space

In moments when silence feels heavy and pain is palpable, what gives the coach the courage to stay present rather than rush to fix?

Coaches know that silence, when held with intention, becomes a sacred container for healing. Neuroscience research (Siegel, 2023) supports this approach, showing that co-regulation, the process of one nervous system calming another, happens not through words, but presence.

To “stay present” is not passive, it is leadership at its most grounded form. It is the moment when empathy, professionalism and humanity converge.

From Crisis to Growth

Trauma-informed coaching is not a specialism, it is a mindset. It asks us to reimagine what it means to lead, listen and live with awareness.

“Coaching through crisis is not about rescuing others, it is about revealing what’s possible when pain meets purpose.”

That, perhaps, is the truest form of growth, not the end of struggle, but the integration of strength.

Access the replay here: https://youtu.be/zWK3MQLRvP8