Welcome to this edition of Mentoring Moments. Over the years the mentoring discussions with my mentees have revealed such brilliant insights and methods which continue to hone our coaching skills to deliver a higher quality of coaching excellence for our clients. Mentoring emerging or experienced coaches towards their credential or for ongoing development is my absolute favourite component of my coaching practice. So, I’d love to share with you some of those little gems of gold in upcoming editions. 

Reflective Practice: The Skill That Strengthens Every Competency

The first three Mentoring Moments of 2026 explored the updated 2025 ICF Core Competencies. If you’ve been sitting with those updates, you may have noticed something important: while the structure of the competencies hasn’t changed, the emphasis has.

The language now places greater responsibility on the coach’s internal world: your self-awareness, your ability to self-manage, your commitment to ongoing learning, and the maturity you bring into the coaching relationship. In other words, coaching mastery is being framed less as a performance of technique and more as an embodied practice.

That is why I’m focusing this month on reflective practice.

Reflective practice is one of the clearest ways you can actively live Core Competency 2: Embodies a Coaching Mindset. It’s also one of the most effective ways to deepen your understanding of the 2025 updates, because it moves you from intellectual agreement to real-world integration.

Reflective Practice Isn’t Extra. It’s Part of the Job

In my work with clients, I often meet coaches who care deeply about their craft but feel time-poor, mentally overloaded, or unsure how to structure reflection. Reflective practice becomes something they intend to do, but don’t consistently prioritise.

And yet, if we look honestly, reflective practice is not an optional add-on. It is one of the most practical ways to prevent coaching from becoming automatic. It is also a strong safeguard against stagnation, bias, and unconscious habit.

When the ICF speaks about coaching mindset, it includes ongoing learning, self-awareness, and self-management. Reflective practice supports all three.

Reflection vs Self-Criticism

One of the most common reasons coaches avoid reflective practice is that it can quickly become self-critical. Especially for high achievers, reflection can turn into a mental replay of what should have been said, what wasn’t done well enough, or what a “better coach” would have done.

This is where reflective practice needs a reframe.

Reflective practice is not a post-session performance review. It’s a learning process. It is a way to notice what happened, what influenced your choices, and what you might want to experiment with next time.

The difference between reflection and self-criticism is usually the questions you ask.

A Practical Structure That Works

Reflective practice is most effective when it is structured and regular, rather than random.

I encourage coaches to treat reflective practice as a professional appointment, not something squeezed into spare time. Even one hour a week can be transformational if it’s consistent.

A simple approach is:

• Review your session notes
• Identify one theme, one challenge, and one thing learned
• Choose one small experiment for the week ahead

This keeps reflection focused, practical, and sustainable.

How Reflective Practice Helps You Integrate the Updates

The 2025 updates can’t be integrated through reading alone. They require practice.

Reflective practice is how you bridge the gap between the competency language and what you are doing in real sessions. It helps you notice where you are embodying the update and where you may be defaulting to old habits.

As we move forward into exploring the updated Minimum Skills documents, reflective practice will become even more valuable. The Minimum Skills updates will likely raise practical questions such as:

• What does this look like in a real session?
• How do I know I’m meeting the standard?
• What is the difference between competent and masterful?

Reflection will help you answer those questions honestly.

A Final Invitation

If you want to strengthen your coaching this year, I encourage you to start small and stay consistent.

Choose one weekly reflection slot. Use three questions. Focus on one improvement area at a time.

And if you’d like to share what you’re noticing, or if you have questions about reflective practice, I warmly invite you to reach out. Your reflections often shape what we explore next in Mentoring Moments.

Sharing these mentoring moments with you,

Gaye