Radical Wisdom: How Knowledge Flows in Coaching, Mentoring, and Supervision

Session Description:
Coaching is evolving, and practitioners are increasingly expected to integrate research, expertise, and specialised knowledge while remaining fully client-led and non-directive. This shift is reflected in ICF Core Competency 7.11, which permits coaches to share knowledge only with permission, lightly, and in service of client insight. Yet many coaches struggle to determine what kind of knowledge can be shared, how to avoid crossing into “telling,” and how this differs from mentoring and supervision. This session offers a practical and experiential exploration of these distinctions.

Participants will begin by examining a clear definition of knowledge-sharing in coaching — occasional, consent-based, non-directive, and offered lightly — and how this preserves the coaching identity while still supporting evidence-informed practice. The session then contrasts this with mentoring, where knowledge-sharing is intentional, welcomed, and central to learning, and with supervision, where knowledge-sharing is limited to reflective frameworks, ethical perspectives, systemic insights, and professional standards. Through rotating triads with role cards, consent cues, and observer lenses, attendees will experience the embodied differences between coaching, mentoring, and supervision. A scenario-based simulation will further illustrate how a client issue evolves depending on the modality.

Participants will also be introduced to Radical Wisdom, a developmental framework distinguishing knowledge — which can be shared — from wisdom, which must be co-created through exploration, questioning, reframing, and meaning-making. The session concludes with practical strategies to help coaches share knowledge more intentionally, ethically, and confidently across modalities, strengthening reflective capability and supporting the mature application of Competency 7.11.