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Episode 164: Trust At The Heart Of Coaching with guest, Marlee Carlos

• Garry Schleifer

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Trust isn’t a nice-to-have in coaching; it’s the engine that powers real change. Gary sits down with coach and author Marlee Carlos to unpack why trust in the client, the process, and ourselves transforms conversations from advice-giving to insight-building. Marlee names the three crutches that quietly derail sessions—expertise, experience, and control—and explains how even well-intended guidance can shift focus away from the client’s agenda.

Together we explore what it looks like to coach from trust: asking useful questions instead of perfect ones, noticing the urge to advise, and creating small experiments that build new habits. Marlee shares her five-step path—pay attention, name one opportunity, set the vision, test it out, refine and build—and shows how human-centered design principles like prototyping make behavior change practical. You’ll hear simple tools you can use today, from WAIT (Why Am I Talking) to sticky-note prompts that create a crucial pause before speaking.

We also dig into power dynamics and the consultant-to-coach shift, using the “client drives, coach rides shotgun” metaphor to keep agency where it belongs. If you’ve ever wondered how to prove value without providing answers, this conversation offers a clear road map: let your client’s wisdom lead, and let your presence do the heavy lifting. For coaches and leaders alike, the takeaway is bold and freeing—trust grows when we act before we feel ready and let evidence reshape belief.

Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of coaching craft and real-world practice, share this episode with a colleague who toggles between consulting and coaching, and leave a review to tell us which trust habit you’ll prototype this week.

Watch the full interview by clicking here. 

Find the full article here.

Learn more about Marlee Carlos here.

Marlee has provided listeners/readers with a Free Coaching Resource here.

Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/

Garry Schleifer:

Welcome to Beyond the Page, the official podcast of choice, the magazine of professional coaching, where we bring you amazing insights and in-depth features you just won't find anywhere else. I'm your host, Garry Schleifer, and I'm excited to expand your learning as we dive into this article, have a chat with this brilliant author behind it, and uncover the learnings that are transforming the coaching world.

Garry Schleifer:

When you get a chance, join our vibrant community of coaching professionals as we explore groundbreaking ideas, share expert tips and techniques, and most importantly, what we all love, make a difference in our clients' lives. This is your go-to resource for all things coaching. In the meantime, let's dive into this episode.

Garry Schleifer:

In today's episode, I'm speaking with Coach Marlee Carlos, who's the author of an article in our latest issue, "Trust. Why is it intrinsic to coaching?" Her article is entitled "The Power of Choice". I love that title. "A Coach's Guide to Strengthening Trust."

Garry Schleifer:

A little bit about Marlee. She's an ICF ACC coach, consultant, and facilitator who has spent more than 13 years with government, nonprofits, and educational institutions. She's partnered with leaders in diverse organizations to tackle complex organizational and people challenges, working with her clients to evaluate their performance, develop strategic plans, and increase employee and supervisor capacity to lead effectively through coaching and training. Marlee also has a certificate in leadership coaching for organizational well-being from George Mason University. Marlee, thank you so much for joining me today and for writing for choice.

Marlee Carlos:

I'm really glad to be here with you.

Garry Schleifer:

And I had to give that title, one of my little padum bum taglines is you always have the power of choice, but when you put it in there, I'm like, and no, we didn't just pick it because of that. It was also a great article. So just say ing. So what inspired you to write for us at this time? Or what's your connection to trust?

Marlee Carlos:

You know, when you first put out the request for articles for this most recent edition, the topic of trust really resonated with me. When I think of trust and I think of my coaching training, there's a lot of emphasis on we need to trust the client, we need to trust the coaching process, and we need to trust ourselves to show up as coaches without without having all the answers. But dang, that's pretty hard. And it's been a big part of my journey to work on trusting myself as coach in order to trust the client. And there's a really clear connection there between the two. It's not, oh, I'm just going to do the one. It's actually I need to do both in order to be the best coach that I can be for my clients. And so, in a way, thinking about that topic of trust allowed me to do some self-coaching. What have I learned here? Where am I still struggling? Um, and how can I get a little better and hopefully leave a nugget of some insight that may be useful to others.

Garry Schleifer:

Well, thank you. And you did a great job of reminding us of trusting ourselves as well as trusting the process and the client. You spoke about letting go of three crutches. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Marlee Carlos:

Yeah. Man, and these are crutches I lean on still and have to be very mindful of. So I talk about three crutches of we know it. So the expertise crutch, we've been there. So we have the experience crutch and then we've got it. We have this kind of control crutch. So the we know it is hey, I have a Master's Degree, I have a lot of experience in different organizations. I read a lot of literature, I've got a lot of good insights. So I know the answers, or I know at least a little bit more, hopefully, than my client. And let me see if I can lean on that to serve them. It comes from a good place of I want to do good by my client, I want to help them with their topic and their issue. But it's again leaning on what I know versus trying to help the client tap into their insights and tap into their expertise and tap into their own level of awareness and strength in that awareness in order to address their their issues. So that's the we know it. And I'd say I live in the Washington, DC area. I mean, we got a lot of we know it's here. We are a high-powered group of people in this area. We run fast, we work hard, we rise, we lean on our degrees, we lean on our experience, and we bring that forward quite a bit because that's what we're used to hearing is to validate that I should be in the room. And so it becomes very intrinsically tied in many cases, and I know it's something I've worked through to our value. So I know it, I'm share it, and that's why I should be here, and that's why I'm a valuable coach. And it serves us in some situations. It can be a crutch, it can be a detriment when it comes to our coaching, though, because it says, oh, I don't just trust this client to figure figure out their own situation. I don't just trust this process of learning and self-discovery because I need to show my value here by demonstrating my insight. We've been there is often we've been in different situations that our clients have are facing right now. And it's yeah, it's like I know it and I want to empathize with my client and I sympathize with their with their feelings right now and it's a yes, but actually that's not really very important that I've been there. What's more important is yeah, I hear you're there right now. What's your experience in that situation? Because the way I experienced it is is probably different. And then we've got it so often, and I think of this really as a core piece of where I can stumble is like control allows us to to make sure that we're getting to maybe a good place. It allows us to like not feel uncertain, and it is a hard place to, it's a hard thing to let go of. It's a hard place to say, okay, I'm okay just saying, I don't know if we're gonna get to the best answer right now. I don't know. And that's really unnerving until it becomes more of the norm, saying, I just don't know for sure right now, but I'm okay letting go and saying, yeah, it's a journey. It's not about let me get to the answer and fix the problem. It's about the client growing and becoming more self-aware and more able to address the issues in front of them from the tools and the ways that work best for them.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah, that's well said. Thank you for those. It's interesting because I've in, I think in the last year been working on the room. I know I'm not the expert in the room, the client is, but there seems to always be an inherent power bias. And so this fits in with letting go of that crutch that yes, I may know, but I also have to help the client know that I'm not the one that has answers for them. And so I use the analogy now this lately we're driving in a car and I'm the passenger and you're the driver and you're sending the destination. I'm blindfolded, maybe. So you need to tell me everything that's going on, why you're choosing it, what are your options, you know, thought processes, learning, and all that sort of stuff. So that that's helpful. And oh my gosh, these crutches, yeah, in the beginning, it really you lean on the crutches, let go of the crutches, but you lean on the reminder that the client is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole, which is the way they said it with me and in my training back 24 years ago. And it's still a constant reminder. It's the answer will show up. Don't let go of that crutch, right? So that's right. Oh, thank you.

Marlee Carlos:

I love what you just said there because what you're you're pushing towards is yes, I'm gonna let go of these crutches, but I'm not just going to have nothing to hold on to. What you're now holding on to is something different. And it's this deep belief of my client is creative, resourceful, and whole. And I can ask them questions to build that capability and they and and build their own story and their own journey and their own path. So it's not just, oh, there are the crutches, good luck, right? You have something else that you're holding on to and can guide your journey and be a part of your coaching process.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah, no, thank you. Well said. The whole issue is about trust and why is it intrinsic to coaching? What's your view on it? Why is it critical to coaching?

Marlee Carlos:

You know, I love to read quite a bit and all the literature, everything I learned in coaching training, as I'm sure you did in yours, all points to that a client's growth, a person's growth and development comes from them working out their own solutions. It doesn't come from them being told, and I know that through experience too. You know, my teachers at different points in time have told me these are things you should do, or my mentors maybe said these are things you should do. And I'm like, maybe. But until I decide that that's the thing that will make the most sense, that's the thing that's gonna work in my context and in the ways that I operate and show up in the world. I'm not gonna grow and learn. I have lots of information, but I don't have the change that we look for and that we want our clients to experience. And so a huge piece of that is trusting the client to get there and push themselves into kind of those transformative spaces. And for me as a coach, that means okay, I need to let go of the things I'm holding on to in order to really empower them to trust themselves and to guide them. And I have a coaching colleague, Beth Flanagan, who once coached me that hey, you don't need to 'find the best question or the right question" to help the client shift their thinking. You just need to ask them a useful question. Like, what's a useful question? Because it's not about whether or not I'm showing up and being the most effective coach ever. It is about can I help the client think through a different angle, a different perspective of their problem? Can I help them uncover some nugget that guides them in the next step in their in their journey? And I just feel like it's a mindset shift of trusting that it doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to demonstrate my value, that it's not actually about me. And by trusting that it's not actually about me, it's about the coachee, then I become so much more focused on their journey and their experience. And it is a more beautiful piece of helping them uncover what is perhaps hidden from them at the moment.

Garry Schleifer:

Thank you. Well said. And you said something else, trust the process. So it's trusting yourself, trusting the client, and trusting the process. The answers will come. Will they be right? No, but then letting go of that, trusting that that's the right path as well. So there's so many nuances to the whole conversation of trust. Where do you find that coaches or clients get stuck most frequently when it comes to trust?

Marlee Carlos:

o You know I think partly because, I mentioned I'm in the the DC area, I hear so much of the we have a lot of consultants in our area in case you don't have to lots of tellers. We have lots of tellers. So it's normal and it comes from a good place, really does, right? I want to come to my clients and say, I can help you grow, I can help you become a stronger leader, a more effective leader. It comes from this place of really wanting to serve the client, but it doesn't necessarily the approach of, I know it, I have the expertise to do this, I've been there, I've got it. It actually yield the results that I'm hoping to deliver through through my expertise. So I know I personally and in my area and in this part of the country, I'd say one of the biggest crutches that we lean on and where we get stuck is in this sense of my value as a coach comes from demonstrating my expertise and from demonstrating that I can add value through an answer to this client. And I think that that takes some rewiring to shift out of that mindset.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah, my heart goes out to consultants that are also coaches, and having to switch that hat from you know, and letting go of the crutch when you're coaching the client and then distinguishing, helping the client distinguish when consulting is over and when coaching is starting. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Um, you wrote about five steps to greater trust in your article. What's your favorite step?

Marlee Carlos:

No, the book I read a book recently and heard Michael Bunge Steniers talk at a recent conference, and he talks about this piece of noticing when we're tempted to give advice, noticing when we're trying to give some insights and some tips to to help our clients. And he talks about it as a sort of the prizes. And it that first step of let me notice when I'm doing something, when I'm offering advice, when I am not trusting the client and leaning on my own expertise. And can I start to notice it and say, why is that? What's the thing in me? Because again, it's a lot of self-coaching too. We talk about we're coaching the client, but actually to be an effective coach for our clients, there's a lot of self-coaching that has to take place. And you would know this with your 20 plus years of experiencing coaching, and I can only imagine how many iterations of self-coaching had. Yeah, but it's this place of like, okay, how did that conversation go? But did I trust the client in as they were wrestling through that question, or did I lean on some great article I just read and wanted to share, or some um experience I had that was very similar to what they faced and I wanted to give them some insights from my experience. What did I do right there? So if I can notice it and then reflect on it and say, where'd that come from? Then I can start to shift my own perspective a little bit and say, okay, what would happen if I did something else? What if I trusted the client in that situation, didn't bring out my great experience? Um, what would I have asked? What might have happened? And what if I try that out? So Robert Keegan and Lisa Leahy talk about how we change, you know, adult change and how people change in their book, Immunity to Change. And I love that they talk about setting up little experiments for ourselves because I can't just tell myself, Marlee, you're going to trust now. You're going to not share your experience, you're going to fully trust the process, yourself and the client and go. It just doesn't work. I don't know if there's like some super coach out there who has figured that out. But for me, it starts with this process of let me notice. And that feels like the most critical step because if I can notice it and be curious about it, then to use the name of the magazine, then I have a choice.

Garry Schleifer:

Right.

Marlee Carlos:

And what do I want to do from that position of now being more aware of how I naturally respond? And I can start to make decisions differently.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah. It's called reflective practice after the call. How did I do? Was I contributing too much? Was I holding on to a crutch? I have an acronym that I've had for a little while this year, W A I T. And it kind of encapsulates everything. Why am I talking? And I've shared it with clients too, because they're learning a little bit of coaching at work and things like that. And they're just like, I learned it from a client and I give it back to my clients. But it's it's an all-inclusive to your point. Am I forcing a topic? Am I, you know, we always used to talk about the little A agenda versus the client's big A agenda. And it's a casualty of publishing choice magazine, because what am I all thinking about this quarter? Trust. Well, it comes up a lot in conversations. Trust, you know, so we're human. You know, we bring our context, and it's our job, though, to your point, is to self-coach and say, oh, okay, was that appropriate to bring it in? Did I do that thing again where that I do it as a publisher of choice where, oh, this is the topic, right? But you know, the beautiful thing is the client doesn't know, and the client's gonna do with it whatever they do. So it's not like we're force feeding them trust or choice or whatever the topic is or whatever's going on for us in our lives. Yeah.

Marlee Carlos:

No, that's right. Yeah.

Garry Schleifer:

Wow, so many great, great things. We talked about the steps and I thought I'm remiss in not saying to our listeners who might not have listened, read the article, there are five steps in the article. Step one, pay attention. Step two, name one opportunity, step three, set the vision, step four, test it out, and step five, refine and build. And I'm purposely not going to explain all of those because I want our listeners to go read the article and use it as a tool to further their coaching.

Marlee Carlos:

You know, the one we we didn't talk much in the previous question, but this idea of test it out and then refine and build. So human-centered design is a pretty common term now and fairly well-known term used in consulting as well as other areas of of work. But it's this idea of I don't know exactly what's going to help me shift. There may be different strategies that some work, some don't. And it's not the same for every person. There's not kind of an equal way of how how do we change and how do we grow. So it's sort of this idea of let me just be curious and kind of create my own experiment. The idea, the term that can be correlated with that is prototyping, right? Like I'm creating this a little experiment. I'm gonna try this this time. Maybe I'll set up a little cue for myself, like a sticky note right on my computer screen where I give myself a prompt so that when I'm coaching my next client, I read that prompt first and it tells me don't tell or don't tell a story. Breathe three seconds before you want to respond. Like, you know, and pause. Whatever the prompt is that maybe helps me think for just a moment differently before I default to whatever my normal reaction may be or my normal crutches that I would grab hold of. And maybe that would work for me. That's the one I try most often. I have a whole set of post-it notes all around my computer screen and then see, does that work? If it doesn't, great, that is such a good data point. And let me try something else. But it's kind of this fun way of saying how do I help myself grow? What's a new tool or a tip that may push me in the direction I want to go as a coach. Yeah. I co-lead a coaching book club with our ICF Metro DC chapter. And one of our participants a couple of books ago, she's an executive coach, and I loved what she said. It's really resonated with me. She talked about how behavioral change, so in our case, kind of moving towards this place of deep trust in ourselves and in the process and in the client, it doesn't necessarily begin with first changing your mind. It's not just, oh, I'm gonna suddenly flip this switch in my mind and I will fully embrace trust. That's not often how we change. But first we just sometimes the action, the actual act of stepping forward and saying, yeah, I am not fully sure yet. Um, I don't, I don't know, but I'm gonna take a step because I think this is the best for my clients and it's gonna make me a more effective coach. So let me act first, and my mind and my emotions and my thoughts may catch up, but I'm gonna start by moving forward. And I found that really powerful because so often I want to say, okay, let me reason it all out in my head, let me adjust my feelings, let me kind of orient my mind, and maybe I just need to take this step and then I'll learn from it.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah. I'm noticing how a lot of the work you're putting on yourself, and not in a bad way, just like again, reflective observation, reflect, observe, act, rinse, re-repeat kind of thing, right? So yeah. From what I've been reading it's a common themes throughout the articles, is again, it's trusting yourself. So what does it take to you know allow trust in the room from your side of the of the room? Yeah, that's great. Oh my goodness, I can't wait for people to read the article and try these things and reach out to you. What would you like our audience to do as a result of the article in this conversation, other than what I just said? Read the article.

Marlee Carlos:

That's right. Step one, if we need to add another set of steps for folks, is step one. Read the article there. Once people take that first step, I would love to hear from them. I own a company called Journey Up Solutions. And so we're at journeyupsolutions.com. I would love to just hear what you're learning and what your journey is and how what have you found successful? Because I want to learn from you as well. Test out. I'd love to hear what your tests are. What the things that are working? Test out one of the the steps and see see what happens. I will be attaching a one-page trust journal that will come out with the podcast.

Garry Schleifer:

Very good.

Marlee Carlos:

And just a set of reflective questions to guide it instead of having a blank sheet of paper that says, okay, how did I feel about this last session, this last coaching session? It gives a few questions that are maybe more directly focused on how did you experience trust in that particular coaching session? and what would you want to do differently?

Garry Schleifer:

Very much appreciated. So lots, lots of things to people to do should they choose to do so, because we talked about the choice. And uh for me, you know, one of the things that you do, the tactics is the post-it notes. I mean, I've started doing it, but I have one that a client sent me, you can't see it, about change and dealing with change. And sometimes I just bring it in as a theory, you know, like, oh, I heard this from a client, perhaps this is useful, and then they will or they won't. But I operate from a place of I'm trusting that I'm noticing and trusting that the client knows what to do with it, not Garry told them, but rather Garry offered an opportunity to think of it a different way. Yeah, a lot of trust in that. Wow. So the best reach you again was

Marlee Carlos:

LinkedIn is probably the easiest. Okay. So Marlee Carlos on LinkedIn. And I'd love to hear from folks. And the website again is journeyupsolutions.com.

Garry Schleifer:

JourneyUpsolutions.com. Marlee, thank you so much writing for us and speaking with us today and joining us for this Beyond the Page episode. I really appreciate it.

Marlee Carlos:

Thank you. Really appreciate it as well.

Garry Schleifer:

That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via the podcast app or system that got you here. And we're hoping it's the choice-online.com/podcast, but whatever way, we're on Spotify, Apple, etc. If you're not a subscriber to choice Magazine, you can sign up for your free digital issue by scanning the QR code in the top right hand corner of our screen. If you're listening today and not watching, go to choice- online.com and click the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery.