What True to You Taught Me About Staying Steady, Letting Go, and Showing Up as a Coach
When I first picked up True to You by Kathleen Smith, I expected a helpful read about emotional maturity and relationships.
What I didn’t expect was how deeply it would speak to my identity—not just as a coach, but as a human being navigating connection, leadership, and self-trust.
This isn’t just a book about holding onto yourself in anxious moments. It’s a steady invitation to stay rooted in your own clarity… especially when coaching invites you to lean in, give more, or smooth things over.
In our latest episode of The Coaching Book Club Podcast, Ken McKellar and I unpacked some of the biggest takeaways. It left me feeling affirmed, challenged, and ultimately, changed.
Here’s what’s still echoing for me.
When Anxiety Shows Up, We Often Accommodate, Act Out, or Avoid
Kathleen Smith outlines three default responses to anxiety: accommodate, act out, or avoid. It was uncomfortably accurate.
In my coaching relationships, I’ve caught myself:
Accommodating: becoming over-responsible or slipping into advice-giving
Acting out: getting rigid with contracting instead of letting the client lead
Avoiding: staying surface-level when something deeper is clearly available
All three are subtle ways of managing discomfort—mine, not the client’s.
What shifted for me was this question:
What is my responsibility here?
That question is my reset. It invites me back to presence (ICF Core Competency 5: Maintains Presence). It’s the “heartbeat of space” Smith talks about—the moment of pause that allows me to stay grounded instead of reacting.
Mind Reading Feels Helpful—But Mind Knowing Builds Clarity
This idea stopped me in my tracks.
As coaches, we’re trained to listen deeply. But that listening can morph into mind reading—guessing what a client wants, wondering if we’ve disappointed them, or preemptively adjusting our behavior to maintain harmony.
Kathleen Smith invites us to shift from mind reading to mind knowing.
That means asking:
What do I believe about advice-giving?
How do I want it to show up in my practice?
What’s true for me, even when a client expects something different?
This is where coaching becomes not just a skill, but a stance.
Rooting into our own values supports ICF Core Competency 2: Embodies a Coaching Mindset—because presence isn’t about guessing right. It’s about staying anchored, even when waves roll in.
Being Responsible To Clients, Not For Them
This is a distinction I keep coming back to.
As coaches, it’s easy to slide into feeling responsible for a client’s growth, clarity, or emotional state. Especially when we care deeply (and we do), we can start managing their experience instead of partnering with it.
But true partnership—the kind defined in the ICF’s core competencies—means being responsible to our clients. That looks like:
Trusting their capacity, not rescuing them
Staying curious instead of solution-focused
Naming our stance with clarity and confidence
There’s a line in the book that struck me deeply:
“Hanging in when you want to run away, or asking questions when you’d rather interrupt.”
That’s what it looks like to stay differentiated. That’s what it looks like to stay true.
A Real-World Example (That Almost Pulled Me Out of Presence)
Early in the pandemic, I was coaching a client whose perspective on the COVID vaccine was completely opposite to mine.
My internal anxiety flared. I had opinions. Emotions. Instincts.
But I chose to stay curious. I didn’t agree with her—and she didn’t agree with me. But we stayed connected. I learned something about how she thinks and why. And she felt heard, not fixed.
That’s what emotional courage looks like in coaching.
And it only happened because I didn’t try to manage her. I simply met her.
How I’m Using This in My Coaching Practice
Reading True to You (and reflecting on it with Ken on the podcast) gave me new language for things I’ve felt for a long time.
It’s helped me:
Notice when anxiety wants to drive my coaching responses
Pause before I accommodate, act out, or avoid
Stay grounded in my coaching principles—even when a client wants something different
Be clearer in my onboarding process, so clients know exactly what to expect
Hold steady instead of hustling for approval
Because coaching isn’t about performance. It’s about presence.
A Final Word
True to You isn’t just a book about emotional boundaries. It’s a reminder that self-trust is the foundation of great coaching.
It’s also a mirror—a gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) reflection of where we still over-function, under-trust, or twist ourselves into pretzels trying to be “the good coach.”
If you’ve ever wrestled with being “too much,” “not enough,” or wondered how to hold your center when the room feels wobbly… this book might be your next read.
You can listen to our full conversation on the Coaching Book Club Podcast, available wherever you love to listen.
And I’d love to hear what you took from the book.
When do you find yourself accommodating, acting out, or avoiding in your coaching relationships?
Let’s keep growing—one conversation, one pause, one breath at a time.
