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Episode 169: Trust Starts Within with guest, Gloria Custodio
What if the strongest lever in your coaching isn’t a better framework, but deeper self-trust? We sit down with social leadership coach Gloria Custodio, PCC, to unpack why grounded presence beats perfect structure, how to navigate “wonky” moments, and what to do when confidence takes a hit. Gloria shares a pivotal training story that reframed her approach: trust your gut, measure impact by client outcomes, and let presence lead. From note-heavy sessions that dull connection to micro-practices that reset your nervous system, this conversation turns abstract ideals into usable tools.
We get candid about the difference between passing ICF recordings and coaching “in the wild.” Assessment rubrics have their place, yet real clients care less about who says the summary and more about whether they feel seen, challenged, and safe. Gloria offers practical ways to honor both worlds without losing your authentic style. We also talk repair after tough sessions, community as the backbone of resilience, and why bartering coaching with peers broadens range and restores trust faster than going it alone.
The heart of our talk is simple and bold: you don’t need certainty to be trustworthy. You need honesty, attention, and the courage to stay present while the unknown unfolds. When coaches model that steadiness, clients learn to trust themselves—and that ripple shifts teams and systems. Expect clear language, real stories, and micro-actions you can use before your very next session.
If you found value here, follow the show, share this episode with a coach who needs a boost, and leave a quick review so others can discover it. Your support helps us keep building brave spaces, one conversation at a time.
Watch the full interview by clicking here.
Find the full article here.
Learn more about Gloria here.
Gloria has provided our listeners with a companion guide that builds on the article which you can find here.
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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 am thrilled and excited to expand your learning as we dive into the latest article, have a chat with this brilliant author, and uncover the learnings that are transforming the coaching world. When you get a chance, join our vibrant community of coaching professionals as we explore together the groundbreaking ideas, share expert tips and techniques, and make a real difference in our clients' lives. Remember, this is your go-to resource for all things coaching. But in the meantime, let's dive in.
Garry Schleifer:I'm excited in today's episode to speak with Social Leadership Coach Gloria Custodio. Again, as she reminded me, we were here together for the DEI issue. She's the author of an article in our latest issue, Trust. Why is it intrinsic to coaching? Her article is entitled Self-Trust: The Overlooked Pillar of Coaching Mastery.
Garry Schleifer:A little bit about Gloria. She's a PCC, a social leadership coach with a multifaceted career spanning law, business, education, and nonprofit leadership. Now that's a realm that's broad and wide. She's been a federal judicial law clerk, a million-dollar retail business owner, a university instructor, a classroom teacher, and a school administrator. Like being a teacher wasn't enough, you had to go into it. As I mentioned, she's a professional certified coach with the International Coach Federation and trained transformational coach. Gloria helps leaders navigate complexity, drive impact, and lead with purpose. Passionate about equity, inclusion, and social change, she empowers individual and organizations to grow and thrive on their own terms. Gloria, thank you so much for joining us again today.
Gloria Custodio:It's so good to be back. Thank you, Garry.
Garry Schleifer:Oh, excuse me. Have a drink of water, Garry.
Gloria Custodio:Yes.
Garry Schleifer:You were telling me earlier about what inspired you. For the listeners who weren't in the green room when you and I were chatting, what drew you to writing this trust article?
Gloria Custodio:Well, I shared with Garry, I'm a huge nerd and I love to learn. Like that's my guiding principle in life. And so I discovered choice actually when I was in my training program. They shared a few articles, and then it's like I found this resource that is like my brain. It's like themes. And so now what I do is because it's every three months that you get it. So I now have discovered that Garry posts the upcoming topics that he's interested in. I always think of it like that. It's like what you're interested in. And then I start thinking about them. And that's how I was like, huh, trust is so important in everything we do as coaches. But it's not just the trust between the coachee and the coach, it's the trust that we have in ourselves as well. And so that's how I went into it.
Garry Schleifer:Well, thank you for doing that because you were one of the few people that touched on self-trust. In fact, you went in depth. And I love how the article was laid out and designed with so much support, so many tips. It was just amazing. So thank you for all the work that you did on this. So you were talking about right in the first, so remembering that some of our listeners haven't read the article yet, you had something happen that really made self-trust come forward to you. Tell us about that.
Gloria Custodio:Yes. Well, so when I was thinking about trust, I had this flashback to an experience in my coaching program. And it was I was receiving feedback from my trainer who's an experienced coach, and she was telling me that my framework in my latest recording was, and she did use the word wonky. So I used it in the article as well.
Garry Schleifer:I know it's very common coaching term, wonky.
Gloria Custodio:Right, yeah, right. Because I was spending too much time on you know the current situation and the desired result, and then I wasn't getting to the coaching agreement and all of that. I was like, okay, but then I brought it up with my mentor coach, because that's one of the beautiful things about going into a training program, is that you also get your time with your mentor coach, and so I was like you're like going over it, and I take things very to heart. So I wanted to figure this out, and my mentor coach said, you know, just trust your gut, you're good, just trust your gut. Is your client getting something important out of your sessions? They said, Yes, then that's what matters, trust your gut. And that's the essence of self-trust in coaching. You know, trust your gut and be authentic and hold that presence for your client so that they can trust their gut and they can be authentic.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah. Wow. You know, you make it sound like it's, as you mentioned, well, here we go, as a pillar, but a pillar of support for yourself and for your client. I want to quote something that you said, and of course, the page flipped when I went to do this. Self-trust is often misunderstood. It's not constant confidence or the absence of doubt, and it's not a sign that you've arrived at a coach. Instead, self-trust is your ability to stay grounded and present even when you're unsure. And I would add to it what you just said. If your client is getting the impact they want, the outcome they want, the desires they want, then you're doing your job.
Gloria Custodio:Exactly.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah.
Gloria Custodio:Because one of the things that I like to do, and this is because, of course, I'm a teacher at heart, right? I like to serve as a client for coaches in training.
Garry Schleifer:Oh, nice.
Gloria Custodio:And I find it hugely rewarding, and I get a lot of it out as client, but one of the things that I found unexpectedly is that it really has driven home that your perfection of the framework is not what makes for a good session. It's you know, when the person is there. So, for example, one of the coaches that was that was practicing with me, I noticed she usually is super present, and I usually get a lot out of our sessions, and I feel that she's tracking me, and it's like a safe space, a courageous space. Yeah, I can be myself. But that session, I felt that something was off, and she wasn't really present. And so at the end, I asked, Were you looking at your notes? And she was like, Yes, because I have my list of questions and my framework.
Garry Schleifer:The good old days.
Gloria Custodio:It's like, yeah, it's like, no, no, no, no, let that go. You know, you can look at it for two minutes before a session, but during the session, no notes, nothing, just focus on the person, and that is so much more impactful, authentic, and and real. And you know, that really drove home to me that for the client, particularly, what your framework is or what you're doing behind the scenes is not important, it's how you're showing up with them in the moment.
Garry Schleifer:Well, and good for you for a noticing and b calling it out in such a wonderful learning moment way, right? Yeah.
Gloria Custodio:Again, that teaching background deeply ingrained.
Garry Schleifer:That's the execution of the of the knowing. But the fact that you were feeling it, so know two coaches about self-trust. Clients may not know, because in this case they were lucky enough to have you as a trained coach, but a client can sense something's off and perhaps not get the full result or the impact that the coach might have wanted.
Gloria Custodio:So yeah, they can sense when something is off in the force.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah. May the force be with you, darling. In a good southern way. Well, you know, that leads us into part of what you also wrote. You don't have to be certain to be trustworthy. How can coaches learn to stay steady when their confidence waivers?
Gloria Custodio:I think part of it is understanding that those wobbles in confidence are normal and they're part of probably what drew us to coaching in the first place, which was the desire to make a difference, to make a connection, to be there holding space for somebody else. And when we are in those spaces, we're not going to be confident all the time, and that's okay. And if you're pushing yourself, you want to master your craft. Mastery is never done.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah.
Gloria Custodio:Yes, and it's a continual journey, and learning is uncomfortable because you're trying things and then you're receiving data and you're processing it, and all of that might shake your confidence, and that's okay. That's a sign that you're growing, and you're being authentic.
Garry Schleifer:I can't help but have in my head a recent, I've been coaching for 24 and a half years, and this doesn't happen very often. That's the good news, listeners. I guess I forgot the shakiness when I first started. So back and forth. So back to when I was being trained, I very much felt that I was trusted by my advisors and I was coaching with coaches. So everybody wanted everyone to do really well. So confidence was built really quickly. But I recently had an incident, and I reading your steps here on moving when you have a confidence waiver or wonky, official coaching term, wonky waiver. These steps that you put in your article really did resonate. In fact, I went so far as to write a note to my sponsors because I worked for an organization to say this is what happened, just want to let you know. It wasn't inside of the expectation of coaching, it was something that I couldn't deliver on, and it upset the clients so much that they canceled all future sessions. Which nothing I can do to get them back, right? Because it's an online thing. But it did, it was a hit, and obviously I still remember it because it was about six months ago. And I've marched forward since, saw it as an anomaly, honored my intuition to say it happened. Could it have been handled differently? Perhaps. That was something I took up with my fellow coaches, but for the most part, you know, it does, it just like makes you wait for a moment, right? And go, oh.
Gloria Custodio:It is like, have I lost it? I have it all the time, have I lost it? And that's another thing that you know coaching is a lot about the relationship, and the relationship is two ways. So even sometimes and it's super important to look at all the factors and own our part, but sometimes it's not all of an us, you know, and sometimes the other the client might not be in the headspace or the position or whatever, you know, and that's part of the grace that we have to give them and ourselves.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, thank you for the reminder because you're right. The client may have been in a space where they they were locked into a way they wanted me to be that I couldn't be, and yeah, so yeah, thank you for that. You just added to that completion.
Gloria Custodio:It's you know, and it's okay. Yeah, and in fact, it might be a gift in a way for you, because it might make you even more aware when other coaches are struggling that you know this is what it feels like, and this is how hard it is to keep going and to ground ourselves and to talk ourselves off the ledge, right?
Garry Schleifer:Well, and that's the beauty of our community. We have enough people out there that will talk us off the ledge, so to speak, listen, because they're great listeners, and if you offer them the opportunity, they'll also give you some coaching and advice, and that's the beauty of what we do. Oh my god, we have that all that supportive structure, mentors, peers, supervisors, just yeah, the community.
Gloria Custodio:Yeah, and I think one very important thing that I do and that I would suggest people do is to barter your coaching and coach other coaches. And because once you're exposed to people using other frameworks, because there's not just one, there's many and coming at coaching from different ways, and it helps to ground and broaden you at the same time. So I think that is that's very useful, and you know it's an amazing gift that you can give and receive.
Garry Schleifer:Right. Yeah, exactly. So thank you for that. To our listeners, I'm gonna put a call out that if anyone would like to have me as their client for their coaching training, you can reach me at Garry@ choice-online.com and I'd be happy to set up a time for me to be your client. And it's a tough thing because then I know you're listening to this podcast. Thank you for listening. And your gift is uh the opportunity to coach me. And don't worry, I come with real situations and you'll have a real client. I'll take my coach hat off for that session and just be me. So thank you. Thanks for that reminder. I haven't done that in years, so it's another way to give back.
Gloria Custodio:And I am also willing to do that. I love doing it, and some people don't do it, but I actually like the debrief at the end. But I do always say to the coaches, don't ask me if you don't want to know.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, hey, and that goes for anyone in life. Don't ask me if you want to know.
Gloria Custodio:And I do, I give feedback with kindness and love, but I tell you what I would like to know as well, you know?
Garry Schleifer:Yeah. Just a quick question about you and your journey.
Gloria Custodio:How long into coach training did you feel you kind of had that self-trust, not necessarily mastered, but it wasn't one of those things that you're like, ugh. I felt like within about three months, I felt that I had the structure down. And that's because I'm me, and I was very deliberate about okay, I want to be credentialed immediately following my graduation, and my program was a year. So okay, so that means I'm gonna go for PCC, I need 10 hour over 50 weeks. I'm gonna get this done. So I started coaching very soon. I had a pool of people also, because I was working at a school, so I had a lot of adults, and you know, I just put out the call and did that. So I was getting a lot of practice deliberately, yeah. And about three months in, I felt that I was good with the structure, then came that conversation and threw everything into disarray. But when my mentor told me, you know, really trust your gut, you've been talking to people forever, you know what you're doing, you bring value to them. And so I think about six months in, I knew what my coaching style was. And that's not to say that and this is something that I tell the people that I work with the coaching that you do for recordings is not the coaching as you would do it in in the wild, basically.
Garry Schleifer:In the wild, yes, we like to say the real world of the wild works.
Gloria Custodio:Yes, but I don't know if you've gone through it, but I have gone through the ICF marker, PCC marker training, so that you can assess other people. And what is super interesting is that it gives you the the ability to tell and discern what you need to do in order to get a recording to pass. And because in real life, the interaction between the coach and the coachee or the client is what is most important. Who says it doesn't matter. In a recording, the coach has to be the one that says it because it's only the coach's words that are marked against the rubric. So even if you're, for example, in the framework I was taught you were supposed to summarize their their current situation and what the desired result was and sort of name the gap, right? If a client does that by themselves, in real life, that's great. You can just move on. You both know move on. If you're doing it for a recording, you have to then also restate it because otherwise you don't get that.
Garry Schleifer:Oh, wow, good pointing. Yes. Yeah.
Gloria Custodio:Yeah. So it's like the difference between um taking a test and being able to do an assignment, a formative assignment. So the test you have to hit all your
Garry Schleifer:Markers.
Gloria Custodio:Yes, exactly. And so that has been a useful thing for people. to understand and for actually for trainees coaches in training to develop more self-trust as well because then they understand there's a sort of an assessment aspect that I need to hit but there's also my own style that works with my clients and that's perfectly fine. They don't have to match and usually they don't yeah very interesting what a great example too with the PCC markers.
Garry Schleifer:Excellent. You close your article by calling self-trust a collective act. How does trusting ourselves shift the culture of coaching and etc like what do you mean by that tell us more?
Gloria Custodio:Well I think we are, as a Western society and this industrialized society, we are very individualistic. So we are, it's the self that is primary and we think of coaching as a solo act in terms of the coach sets up the space and welcomes the client in and you know that's it. But that act of welcoming somebody in and creating what I call a brave space for them is also a collective act. It's a community act. It does help that person feel it and then perhaps pay it forward and create it for somebody else. And the act of embodying self-trust and sharing that knowledge and that presence with other people, other coaches as well, creates sort of a collective power a bigger power that might then start to influence the systems because that's another thing people who have been oppressed by some systems or pushed to the margins then make creating a space for them to trust themselves and helping them do that by you doing it ripples out. And I don't know at this point in our journey as as a people it feels as if we are sort of under attack and that feels distant destabilizing. So part of what we can do as individuals is trust ourselves in our own intuition and help others to do that as well. And that again ripples out. It's one thing that we can do even when the world seems overwhelming and the challenges are many.
Garry Schleifer:So the act of self-trust is a gift to the collective.
Gloria Custodio:Yes exactly ,exactly.
Garry Schleifer:Never thought of it that way. Well yeah and especially if you go back to what you said self-trust is your ability to stay grounded and present even when you're unsure if we as coaches can be grounded and present you know as best as we can that just says something for somebody, you know not just about that brave space, but it's also about your grounded so it's like a structure on top of a safe structure on top of a solid structure.
Gloria Custodio:It's like we don't know how climate change is going to play out for example but we can be here, we can be present, we can be witnesses, we can be kind to each other, and we don't have to give in to the chaos of uncertainty that bigger forces create. We can just be you know it's enough and it's powerful to be ourselves and to trust ourselves and to trust each other as well because if you trust yourself it's easier than I think, in my experience, to trust that other people are coming from a good place too. Yeah well said.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah exactly so that's something to that's something to ponder.
Garry Schleifer:Gloria what would you like our audience to do as a result of the article in this conversation?
Gloria Custodio:Well there are a couple of things. I think one is to just take a little time and reflect and you can do it with the tools that are in the article and I created a little um self-trust reset that you're providing the link to people to as a little gift and that's for people. I'm a firm believer like in notebooks. I have one notebook that I use and so just sit for a while and whether that's list or doodling or you know even a voice note on a phone and just think about how trust shows up for ourselves and to just choose one little practice when you're not feeling that confident and you're feeling sort of wobbly. I give examples because I'm a firm believer also in little actions. It's not the big things like you don't have to change your whole life and your whole practice. You can just say you know two minutes before I go on zoom I'm going to sit down, I'm gonna breathe and I'm gonna remember what my intention is to bring to be this brave space. So and people have to choose for themselves because that's the whole point. It's not our one size fits all and that's why I always like to give many examples and many tools because that's how my brain thinks and I think it's most useful. So those are you know two things that I would like and of course I think people should take you up and take me up on the opportunity to coach us. Yes exactly.
Garry Schleifer:It could not to be a safer space.
Gloria Custodio:Yes.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah well thank you again Gloria. What's the best way for people to reach you?
Gloria Custodio:The best way is for my online home which is our website the social leadershipcoach.com.
Garry Schleifer:The social leadership. com
Gloria Custodio:Yes and we're very excited because we're working on a retooling and rebranding and colorful happy sort of thing so yeah.
Garry Schleifer:Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us again for this Beyond the Page episode.
Gloria Custodio:Thank you Garry. It's always a pleasure.
Garry Schleifer:That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes subscribe via your favorite podcast app most likely the one that got you here. If you're watching and 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 or by if you're listening only go to choice-online.com and click the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Wait for Gloria. Enjoy the journey of mastery. Take care everyone.