EP 65 - Why Coaching Is a Meta Skill You Can’t Afford to Miss in 2026

Today we are going to talk about why coaching is a meta-skill that you cannot miss. If you're ready, let's begin. Are you ready to shine? Come on, it's the shiny one. You got this. My dear shiny mind, you who's watching, may I invite you to hit that subscribe button? This way, you and I are going to become partners in shine and elevate the consciousness in the world. Thank you so much in advance, and I'll see you inside. Welcome to the Shiny Minds Show with Dr Shiny. I am Dr Shiny Unsal, the producer of the Shiny Minds Show, the founder of the Academy of Neuroshine Technology, ICF Master Certified Coach, licensed NLP trainer, neurolinguistic programming trainer, ICF coach educator, leadership instructor at UCLA, and your one-of-a-kind instructor of personal, professional, leadership, spiritual, and financial development. All of the above. Today, I want to talk to you about why coaching is a meta skill that you cannot miss, especially in today's world. I am going to break down what coaching is in terms of the skills that you need to have as a coach with your coaching mindset, because I have been teaching coaching and certifying coaches for for the past 15 years and what it means for you to represent the coaching mindset in your everyday life and why you need it. I'm going to start with the personal development part of everything. So number 1, coaching is a meta skill because it is the best thing you can ever do to improve your personal development, your personal skill set. Let's talk about self-regulation. Self-regulation is a skill as part of emotional intelligence. What do we mean by self-regulation? If you are experiencing a struggle, some sort of a blockage that is stopping you from moving forward, taking action, getting that goal, taking that action step, and getting the task done. And so you are wondering why you are not able to let yourself do some certain things because there are emotions getting in the way. Most of the time, that emotion is fear, and that fear shows up as anxiety, as worry, as not good enough. I am not perfect yet. I don't have all it takes. I don't have the courage. I don't have the resources that background, the evidence, everything that is— I see out there, I don't have it. That is a lack of self-regulation. And why is it a personal development skill? Well, think about it. If you are your own self-coach, what would you coach yourself about? I'm really asking you to think about it. You can pause this video, perhaps write down some answers. That come to your mind and literally face that. What would you coach yourself about? I know I would coach myself about scaling my business because I do have my non-negotiables, my values, and my operational standards. And it is about perfectionism. It comes with my conditioning, my programming. I know that I have so high standards. In order for me to get one thing done, it needs to check a million boxes that needs to be correct. This has to be accurate. This cannot be anything less than the highest standard. We are not going to move forward unless we receive an award for that and we represent excellence and then we get 100% happiness score. Those are my non-negotiables and I have extremely high standards. I, I get that that comes with being me. And I would coach myself about that. So when somebody is talking about perfectionism and, and how if they are not perfect, if they are not feeling good enough, they are unable to move forward, I am the first person who is going to empathize with them. What would be your case? What would you coach yourself for? What would be the biggest topic that you would bring to your own coaching session with yourself? And then how would you regulate those emotions? Perfectionism, not good enough. I am afraid of failing. I'm afraid of losing the money if I want to invest in my business. So all that kind of worry and anxiety are falling under the category of self-regulation. If you're able to regulate those emotions, then you are able to move forward, right? So When you are able to do this, it means that you are self-aware, you have self-discipline and self-regulation, and you do have the motivation to be able to do that. So all these personal development skills, which is one part of emotional intelligence, is also one of your coaching skills. In the world of ICF, International Coaching Federation, we teach 8 coaching skills. The first one is the category of foundation, ethical practice and coaching mindset. Ethical practice is all about integrity, honesty, and doing what you are going to say you are going to do. As simple as that. Not giving promises that you are not going to keep. Not telling somebody that you are gonna call them and then you don't call them and then come, you come up with excuses. Not giving yourself some goals and then not achieving your goals and then coming up with excuses why you are not achieving those goals. That is so simple, yet it is the hardest thing for the majority of us as human beings. So ethical practice is starting with you being your best self, being ethical with your words. Are you impeccable with your words? Are you really 100% integrated person that everybody can rely on? Would you rely on yourself? Would you hire yourself as your coach? Would you take yourself as your accountability partner? Would you give yourself money to mentor yourself? These are very, very important questions to answer because if the answer is not a 100% yes, you got some work to do. And that is the personal development part. Still under the category of personal development, under the foundational category of your coaching skills with International Coaching Federation, we also do have your second skill, which is coaching mindset, which is a lot to do with neurolinguistic programming and my Neuroshine technology mindset principles. We cover so many principles that you don't even know what they are yet. And once you learn them, only once you learn them, once you study them, you ask yourself this question, why did I wait so long? What was I doing before? What was I doing if I didn't know chunking, if I had no clue about contextual intelligence? Like, you literally shock yourself. That's why the way that we cover coaching mindset as part of my coaching education program with Neuroshine technology is going to take your operating system, your software, your mental software to the next levels. And then you are going to become more conscious, more self-aware, more self-regulated, and more self-motivated. That is the personal development part. Let's talk about the second pillar of your coaching as a meta skill and how this meta skill also covers some relationship skills. Obviously, the first skill set is all about your personal development and in your relationship with yourself, right? So we take it to the next level and then we'll look at you in the social world, how you show up in your relationships with your social skills and how your emotional intelligence skill set is now going to partner up with the coaching skills of International Coaching Federation and how you combine the 3 skills under the category of co-creating relationships. In the world of coaching with International Coaching Federation, there are 3 distinct skills that we teach as part of co-creating the relationship with clients. These are your social-relational skills. Number 1, establishing and maintaining agreements. Do you clearly articulate your needs? Do you know your needs? Do you know your expectations? Do you know your values? Do you have non-negotiable away-from values? I'll tell you, I have so many away-from values that actually motivate me sometimes even more than my towards values, like what is an away from value? For example, to me, ignorance and becoming a victim is such big, incredibly anti-values. Like I do everything to move away from those. I am going to study. I am going to do my best to understand, to break down everything with my mind, because not knowing and then not researching, not doing my, my part is an anti-value for me. I would totally run away from it. Do you know what they are for you? Do you articulate them? Do you pass it on to others with clear expectations and clear boundaries? That is going to take in order for you to establish and maintain agreements. Another skill set under the category of co-creating relationships with International Coaching Federation. It is cultivating trust and safety. And then we talk a lot about neuroscience and neuroplasticity and why the part of your brain which is called amygdala is actually regulating your emotions. And when you are forming relationships, when you are establishing relationships, when you are making those agreements. Sometimes you sign legal agreements. Are you able to see how they are going to show up in your life? Are you going to be okay with that? What are the terms and conditions that you operate the best? Are you aware and are you able to put them on a legal sheet of paper? I mean, you can get the help of AI in today's world. And are you able to do it in a way that is very open, very flexible and creating trust, creating reliability, creating this relationship, the third entity between you and your clients and other relationships. The next skill under the category of co-creating the relationship with ICF is your presence. We talk a lot about coaching presence because obviously your presence is the number one skill that AI is never going to be able to replace because you are a human and human presence is irreplaceable. Congratulations. And that's why you want to heavily invest in your presence. What do I mean by presence? If you are having a conversation with somebody, it can be a team member, it can be a colleague, a manager, a director, or somebody who is reporting to you in your team, in your organization. Or a friend or a spouse or a boyfriend and girlfriend or wife and husband or kid, doesn't matter who it is. What you need to do if you want to show up with full presence is you have to stop the damn phone. Like, put the damn phone down. Put it down. Stop texting people when you are communicating with the person in front of you. Have some respect and then demand it. From others. If you are not demanding it, if you're not demanding that, nobody is going to do it. Nobody is going to put the phone down. And then we are going to be like robotic things, like automated, like we are on the phone, but we forget about this thing, this human presence. This is what I'm talking about. Stop multitasking. Stop reading something and then showing up to the Zoom call. Stop writing an email and then attending Zoom classes. Stop listening to the podcast and then trying to have a conversation with somebody on the phone at the same time. These are not good ideas. And then I'm telling you, based on the science and neuroscience, it is actually against how your brain functions. It's just not working. You're not here or you're not there. Therefore, you're just creating a ton of clutter and then you're not actually investing or growing. So that's why When you look at the skill that is like a subskill of social skill set, which is your presence, you have to understand that that is a super powerful skill set. And then you need to cover this incredible presence in order to show up as a coach. Hello, Shiny Minds. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to tell you that this Shiny Minds show is sponsored by my academy of Neuroshine Technology. Where myself as a founder and my hand-selected amazing elite ICF accredited coach educators are here to support you, to make you feel safe, seen, heard, appreciated, free to become whoever you want to be, and also transformed forever inside out. We are here to hold your hands and to support your growth. If you feel it in your heart to become more and achieve more, then go to shinyunsal.com, grab that PDF, and we will see you inside. I talked about the personal development part with the category of foundation with the International Coaching Federation, which was the ethical practice and coaching mindset. And then we now also covered the social skill part, which is the relational skills of establishing and maintaining agreements, cultivating trust and safety, and maintaining presence. So now we're going to go to the third pillar. This third pillar is communication skills. If you are a leader, if you are a professional, if you are a manager, if you are somebody who speaks, if you are somebody who talks in your everyday life, if you ever speak to anyone, Guess what you're going to need? Communication skills. Communication skills is not only personal and professional, it is also global because we live in an international global world and everybody has to communicate. In order for you to even travel to a foreign country, you need to communicate your needs. And that's why communication becomes the golden skill. Communication has two sides as a coin. If you look at communication as a coin, like a sphere, and when you flip the coin, you know that you are using words to articulate your message, right? But on the other side of it, there is listening. You are taking the input and then giving the output. There is input in and output out. The input in part is the active listening part. That International Coaching Federation has under the gold standard of coaching skills, active listening. And active listening is, is a cousin of evoking awareness. When you're evoking awareness, that is how you are coaching someone. You are formulating powerful questions to evoke awareness and to lead somebody to their own truth within. When you combine active listening and evoking awareness, communication becomes an art. It becomes a dance, and it becomes so sweet and delicious that you literally become your ultimate self, and you grow into this person, this leader who influences others, who actually makes a difference for a living. And that's why when you look at it as a coaching subskill, listening and communicating actively with your evoking awareness, you wonder why the world is in the situation that it is today. And you go, well, I think majority of humanity is not really good at listening. We are not good at listening to each other. We just are not. Most of the humanity, majority of people, They're not good at listening. They don't even take a second to pause and literally process what others are saying. Everybody lives in their own head. Everybody has their own mental files open. That's why it becomes so hard for anything else to go inside their brain because their amygdala is already taking over so much space in their brain. And then they have literally no room, no bandwidth left. That's why under the meta skill of coaching, you are going to learn how to listen to somebody. More than that, you're going to learn how to make somebody feel heard. I'll give you an example. In my corporate world, I always thought there was something wrong with me because nobody was paying attention to what I was saying. Nobody was listening to me. And then I had great ideas. And when I had a chance to implement those ideas at the advertising agencies that I used work. I remember like 2 of those, I received awards, like Effie Awards. Those are incredible awards for the advertising world. And guess what? I am an account manager. I'm not even a copywriter, but I do write something that is so cool for my brand that I was managing, Kotex. And that was for the International Women's Day. I remember it was just a one sentence. And it was so heartwarming that they ended up giving the award for that campaign. And then I was the one who came up with that idea. And it, it happened once, but I had so many ideas. So it might be you right now, perhaps at the workplace, you have so many ideas, you have so many brilliant strategies that you are not even able to speak up. You are not even able to articulate because you are not given the chance because people are not listening to you. Is that the case? If that is the case, I encourage you to learn the skill of active listening yourself so that you show up with that skill and then you show others how to demonstrate it. You become the role model. You actually inspire others to listen well. You give them a chance. You listen. You hold the space. You are quiet and you pay attention. You are curious. You ask questions, you evoke awareness. Those kinds of skills, presence, trust, ethical practice, coaching mindset, evoking awareness. I'm telling you, those are cultural international skills that the entire world is craving for. And that's why they are not only your multinational international communication skills, but they are also a part of your coaching as a meta skill. The last pillar, the fourth pillar of your skills under the coaching meta skill is the skill to grow anyone. International Coaching Federation calls it facilitating client growth. In the world of coaching, to facilitate a client's growth means that you understand that they do have their own patterns, that they do need the space and the time and a specific process for them to unlearn the old patterns, for them to release what doesn't serve them anymore, and then to gain the new patterns, install the new patterns, and then go to the next levels with their own coaching mindset. That's correct. Just because you are the coach doesn't mean that you are the only one operating with your coaching mindset. When you have your clients, they are also implementing their own coaching mindset, their own coaching skills, and you are co-creating an ideal future, an ideal situation, solution for them. And you are not there to solve their problems. You are there to show them what is creating the problems, the mechanics behind the problems. You ask them the source questions. Therefore, they understand how to solve their own problems. You empower them to take charge of their own life. You coach them. You facilitate their growth so that they become bigger than the problem. They grow bypassing that problem. And now they have all the skills, they have all the perspectives, and they have all the toolbox to take care of this problem that used to be so big for them. And now you are growing them and then they're able to see the solutions and their resourcefulness to tap into this this problem that used to be a problem, but now they see it as an opportunity to grow, as an opportunity to learn from. And that is your skill to facilitate growth for your clients, starting with yourself. So here we go again. We talked about personal development. We talked about professional development, social development. We talked about communication skills. We talked about growth skills as the fourth pillar of your skill set under the meta skill of coaching. So that's why, as you see, there are so many skills that fall under the category of coaching. So coaching, you see it, you hear it, and then you actually experience perhaps a lot in your daily life as you hear people talk about, oh, I have a coach who is helping me to get into shape, or I have a coach who's helping me build my business. Oh, I need to like ask my coach like how to do it. And so you might have this perspective that coach is somebody who is going to give you advice, who is going to solve your problems and who is going to actually lead the way for you, direction for you in your life. That is not the case, at least in our world. In our world, at the Academy of Neuroshine Technology, we guide people to their own truth. We show them the mechanics of what is really going on. We ask them questions. To empower them to grow out of the problem so that they are able to solve their own problem. We believe in empowerment. We believe in autonomy. We believe in sovereign leadership and conscious co-creation of life with its magical infinite possibilities for us to enjoy and experience. We believe that we can become our best self, most delicious self by using coaching skills because coaching is a meta skill that the world needs so much but doesn't even know it yet. So if this episode inspired you, if there is a part of you who knows that you would definitely benefit from any of these skills ranging from ethical practice to coaching mindset to active listening to evoking awareness, formulating powerful questions, showing up with curiosity, maintaining your presence, Establishing agreements so that your relationships are healthy and you can maintain them for lifetimes, perhaps business relationships, or if they are ending, then you can respect the relationship is ending and then you can actually honor the relationship, honor the person, respect the person, and you show up as a person of dignity, a person that you admire, a person that you are super inspired to be. That is the end goal. And that's how we show up at the Academy of Neuroshine Technology. We want you to become your best self. Coaching comes as a cherry on top. Certifications like Neuroshine Technology coaching certification, your neuro-linguistic programming certificate from Dr Chip Bandler, who is the co-founder of NLP from the Society of NLP and your world-class coaching credential from the International Coaching Federation, they are all delicious cherries and chocolate-covered versions of your delicious self. Because the idea is to becoming somebody that you adore, you cannot wait to spend time with. You get to coach yourself. You get to become a person of influence with a legacy behind, with a purpose and impact. If that resonates with you, we would love to work with you. Thank you for watching. And until next time, keep shining your light.