Why Empowerment Coaching Starts Before the Breakthrough

“This is the foundation of all true empowerment.” You can’t change what you can’t see.

What Too Many Coaches Get Wrong

In the early days of coaching, many new practitioners feel an urgency to help the moment a client opens up.

• You want to offer strategies.

• You want to spark transformation.

• You want your client to walk away with a plan.

But here’s something every impactful coach eventually learns:

Transformation doesn’t begin with action. It begins with awareness.

When we rush past this step, we risk bypassing the very insight that gives a client agency over their own growth.

Introducing the Empowerment Cycle

At Coach Training and Tools, we teach coaches a three-phase framework called the Empowerment Cycle, which underpins all our training:

Awareness – See what is

Ownership – Claim your power

Action – Move forward with intention

Simple to explain. Transformational when applied.

Awareness isn’t passive! It’s the active process of surfacing patterns, beliefs, behaviours, and emotional triggers that have shaped a person’s responses, often for years.

We teach our certified coaches not to jump into solutions too early. First, they learn how to help a client see; fully, honestly, and without judgment.

What Awareness Looks Like in Coaching

Awareness doesn’t mean diagnosing what’s wrong.
It means meeting what is with curiosity, not correction.

Here are a few real-life awareness moments we often hear in coaching sessions:

• “I always say yes, even when I’m exhausted.”

• “I thought I was angry… but underneath, I’m afraid.”

• “Every time I get close to success, I find a way to sabotage it.”

These are gold.
Not because they offer immediate solutions, but because they uncover truth.

Awareness Is Not Soft or Slow Coaching

There’s a misconception that focusing on awareness delays results.

But awareness isn’t fluff. It’s precision.

• It reveals the root of the issue.

• It empowers the client to lead their own change.

• It builds lasting transformation, not quick fixes.

Especially when working with women who’ve been silenced, overlooked, or conditioned to please. Awareness becomes the first act of reclaiming power.

The Awareness Trap: “I Know This Already…”

As a coach, you’ll occasionally hear a client say,
“I’m already aware of that.”

This is your cue to pause.

Are they truly embodying that awareness, or just recognising it intellectually?

Knowing something and being transformed by it are not the same.

Ask:

• “How has this insight changed the way you show up?”

• “What’s different now that you’ve named this?”

• “What choices are becoming clearer from this awareness?”

That’s how you help awareness become agency.

5 Questions to Deepen Awareness in Coaching

If you’re looking for coaching prompts to support awareness, try these:

What do you feel beneath the surface of that reaction?

When have you felt this way before?

What does this pattern reveal about what you believe?

What might this behaviour be protecting you from?

If your emotion could speak, what would it say?

Use these gently. Allow space for silence. Let the client lead the discovery.

A Real Coaching Story: The Shift That Changed Everything

One of our certified Women Empowerment Coaches recently shared this moment (shared with permission):

“My client came to every session angry at her partner, her boss, her parents. I almost jumped into coaching her on boundaries. But I paused and asked, ‘What’s beneath the anger?’ She went quiet… then said, ‘I feel invisible. No one ever sees me.’ She cried. That changed everything.”

Awareness doesn’t just shift the session. It shifts the person.

Want to Support Awareness with a Coaching Tool?

If you’d like a structured resource to help clients deepen their emotional awareness, we’ve created something for you.

Free Gift: Master Your Emotions Coaching Workbook

This practical workbook is designed to help clients:

• Identify their emotional triggers
• Understand their reactive patterns
• Connect emotions to beliefs and stories
• Build emotional awareness as a skill, not a one-time insight

To receive your free copy, Master Your Emotions

Whether you’re actively coaching, journaling for yourself, or starting your coach training journey, this tool is for you.

Final Thought

Awareness isn’t the warm-up before the “real” work of coaching.

• Awareness is the work.
• Awareness is the shift.
• Awareness is where real empowerment begins.

If this message resonates with you, whether as a coach, trainer, or woman on your own growth journey. We invite you to explore more of our certified coaching programs and tools at www.coachtrainingandtools.com.

Together, we rise from the inside out.

With clarity and courage,
Lee-Anne Fenta
Founder | Coach Training and Tools