Written by Dr Ben Koh, Founder of Coach Masters Academy
Master Certified Coach I Global Top 50 Coaches

Abstract

Much of coaching is built for improvement: clearer goals, stronger habits, better conversations, more consistent execution. Yet some client moments do not yield to more tools or more effort. They feel like a plateau, a relapse, or a crisis of confidence—but they may actually mark the threshold at which an older way of making sense of life stops working. This article explores what happens at the edge of change: why the most consequential shifts often occur as a single tipping-point event rather than a smooth progression across sessions, what distinguishes a reorganisation of meaning-making from ordinary growth, and where this work sits on the spectrum of remedial, adaptive, transformative, and generative change. It offers practical ways for coaches to design for threshold moments, hold them ethically, and translate insight into embodied capacity—without becoming a therapist or retreating into technique when depth is required.

Introduction

A client says, “I’ve done the reflection. I know what I should do. But something in me won’t move.”

It is tempting to treat it as a motivation gap. Add accountability. Tighten the plan. Find the missing habit. Sometimes that works. Often, it doesn’t. Not because the client is resistant, but because the problem is not behavioural. The client has reached a point where the strategy that once kept them safe, competent, admired, or in control is no longer enough for the complexity of their current life.

At that point, coaching stops being linear. The person is not just learning; they are being asked—by life, work, relationships, leadership—to become larger than the self-structure they have relied on.

That is the edge of change. It can look like procrastination, burnout, conflict avoidance, perfectionism, or people-pleasing. But beneath the surface, something more consequential is happening: the client’s old way of making meaning is failing to account for the present. And that failure is not a defect. It is often the doorway.

When the Old Map Cracks—and the Coach Refuses to Hand Out a New One Too Soon

The most provocative thing a coach can learn is this: some of the deepest shifts are not the result of adding more sessions, strategies, or insight. They arrive as a threshold moment—a phase transition—after a period that appears to be a repetition.

It helps to name the difference between two kinds of change:

• Growth is additive. The client becomes more skilled, more confident, more articulate. They improve within a familiar worldview.

• A threshold shift is a reorganisation of the frame of reference. The client’s lens changes: what they notice, tolerate, value, and choose expands. It is less “I can do this better” and more “I see this differently—and now I cannot unsee it.”

This is why clients sometimes feel “stuck” right before something changes. They keep returning to the same conflict, the same resentment, the same fear of disappointing others. Coaches can misread this as a lack of progress. In reality, the client may be circling the boundary of an identity strategy—testing whether it can loosen without collapse.

Consider a simple example. A high-performing manager says, “I can’t delegate. I end up redoing everything.” You can coach delegation techniques (useful). But the edge might be this: “If I’m not the one who holds the standard, I become irrelevant.” Delegation is not the real issue; worth is. Not in a clinical sense, but in a human sense: the logic that organises their identity.

At the edge of change, a coach is not merely helping the client solve a problem. The coach is helping the client encounter the hidden bargain their identity has been making:

• “If I stay agreeable, I’ll belong.”

• “If I control outcomes, I won’t be exposed.”

• “If I’m indispensable, I’ll be safe.”

• “If I avoid conflict, I won’t lose love or status.”

These bargains are rarely conscious. They are protective intelligence—often learned early and refined over time. They also become cages when life demands more complexity than the bargain can carry.

Here’s the crucial coaching move: do not rush to replace the bargain with a new technique. Techniques can become a sophisticated form of avoidance. At the edge, what the client needs first is the capacity to stay present to the tension: “This strategy used to work. It now costs too much. I don’t yet know who I am without it.”

This is where coaching maturity becomes visible. Many coaches can support adaptive change—learning new skills and strategies. Fewer can stand with a client when the old self-strategy starts to fail, because the coach feels pressure to fix, reassure, or demonstrate competence. Yet the edge requires a different kind of competence: emotional steadiness, ethical boundaries, and patience with ambiguity.

In adult development theory, this threshold shift has a name: developmental change—a qualitative reorganisation of meaning-making rather than incremental growth. The client is not merely acquiring better behaviours; they are evolving the structure that generates behaviour.

A provocative implication follows: many coaching engagements stall because they default to adaptive solutions for transformative problems. The client keeps collecting tools for a worldview that has reached its limit.

Practical application

If the edge of change is real, coaching must be designed to meet it. A useful way to do this—without making coaching mystical or overly clinical—is to structure work around a three-part arc: Prepare → Tip → Integrate.

1) Prepare: Listen for the client’s hidden bargain

• “Are we fixing a problem, upgrading skills, shifting how you see yourself and the situation, or creating something new beyond you?”

This avoids the common trap of unconsciously “going deep” without consent—or staying shallow out of caution when depth is needed.

Track the client’s “musts” and identity claims:

• “I have to…”

• “I’m not the kind of person who…”

• “If I don’t, then…”
  These are often the rails of the old operating system.

Then ask questions that surface structure, not just content:

• “What does this strategy protect you from?”

• “What would become true about you if you didn’t do it?”

• “When did this way of operating first become useful?”
  

3) Tip: Recognise the threshold moment—and slow down

The “tipping point” can be subtle. Signs include:

• language shifts from blame to ownership (“I notice I…”),

• increased capacity to hold ambiguity without panic,

• a new self-description that feels spacious rather than brittle,

• quiet clarity after tension (“I don’t have to earn my place by overfunctioning”).

When you sense this, do less.

• Fewer frameworks.

• Less advice.

• More silence, reflection, and precision.

Your role is to help the client stabilise the new lens, not chase the next insight. Coaches often miss the moment by filling it with competence.

4) Integrate: Turn the insight into embodiment

After a threshold shift, the old pattern may return under stress. Integration is how the shift becomes durable capacity rather than a peak experience.

Try three integration practices:

• Experiment: “What is one situation where you will live from the new stance?”

• Relapse Management: “How will you recognise the old bargain returning sooner?”

• Accountability Structure: “What structures (meetings, boundaries, relationships) must change so this new stance is supported?”

5) The coach’s maturity: manage heat, not just process

At the edge, the coach’s instrument is the coach’s self. Ask after sessions:

• “Where did I rescue the client from discomfort?”

• “Where did I push too quickly because I feared stagnation?”

• “Where did I intellectualise to avoid emotion?”

• “What did I avoid naming because it felt risky?”

Supervision and peer review are not extras here—they are safety systems. Developmental work increases interpretive risk. Mature coaches build containers for their own reflection so they do not unconsciously use the client to regulate their need to be helpful, right, or admired.

Concluding thought

The edge of change is not the place where clients need more willpower. It is often the place where willpower is finally revealed as insufficient. Something deeper is being asked: a more complex relationship with control, belonging, conflict, failure, and self-worth.

A coach who can stand there—steady, ethical, unhurried—offers more than solutions. They offer a rare human experience: a space where the old story can loosen without shame, and the new story can begin without performance.

Key takeaway

The edge of change is where improvement stops working—and becoming begins. Coaching maturity is the capacity to discern what kind of change is needed (remedial, adaptive, transformative, generative) and to hold the threshold moment when a client’s meaning-making reorganises. Sessions are the scaffolding; the deepest shift is often a phase transition. When coaches learn to work at that edge, they stop merely helping clients do more—and start helping them become more able to meet life as it is, and create what isn’t yet here.