How Do I Know When I Know?

The Anatomy of the Coaching Field through Salience and Delicate Inquiry

Three Brushtrokes- Designed with Canva

Three short client stories

I had been sitting with my client, listening. He was speaking quickly, his hands moving as if painting the air. Again and again, he made the same gesture—three brushstrokes. Finally, I asked: What are the three? He paused, startled. Then his eyes widened: Yes, there are these three things I’m trying to make sense of…how did you know? He hadn’t realized he was moving her hands that way, but when I named it, something clicked. His face lit up.

Another time, a client was describing how much she wanted to leave her job. As she spoke, an image began forming in me: a body lying on warm sand, tummy pressed to the Earth, basking in sunlight. I asked gently: With your permission, may I mirror what keeps coming? And I shared that image. She laughed, relieved: That’s exactly how I feel. I even told myself this morning: I just want warmth, to be in the sun.

Another time, a client was talking about her busy life—a stream of details and responsibilities. In the middle of it all, she let slip a single word: “home.” She kept going, never returning to it, but the word lingered with me. After a brief pause, I leaned in and said softly: You mentioned the word ‘home.’ What does that word hold for you right now? She fell into silence. Her lips pressed together, a wave moving across her face. Her eyes shimmered, filling with water. Finally, she whispered: That’s it. I don’t feel at home anywhere—not even in myself.

These moments may appear simple from the outside, but they reveal something essential about the practice of coaching: often it is the smallest, most fleeting cues that open the greatest depth. What stands out to our attention in these ways is what I call salience.

Salience: The Invisible Becoming Visible

Salience is often the first spark of awareness — information that arrives quickly, almost like a whisper or a flash. It comes unfiltered, before the mind has had a chance to analyze or explain. It may be as subtle as a hand rising in the air the same way three times, a word that echoes through a client’s story, a phrase that suddenly quickens the pace of speech, a shift in breath, or an image that surfaces in the coach’s own sensing. Sometimes it is so small, so fleeting, that it would be easy to overlook. And yet, this glimpse is what draws the coach’s attention. This matters.

The art of coaching is to hold that moment with delicacy. Salience is not a conclusion, not a judgment, but a signal. The coach’s task is to notice it, sense into it, and then discern: is this the moment to bring it in? Timing, tone, and presence matter. Offered too soon, salience may feel intrusive; withheld too long, it may dissolve. To work with salience is to develop the capacity for acute noticing, paired with patience and restraint.

This discernment rests on the coach’s own development. To recognize salience in the client, the coach needs to have a good grasp of their own knowing — cultivating a strong baseline of their own embodied awareness, a felt sense of when they are resonating as a clear channel and when they are leaning into their filters. Every coach has filters: histories, assumptions, even well-intentioned interpretations. Filters are not the enemy; they are part of being human. But if left unchecked, they can distort what is mirrored back to the client.

Here, the practice is not to banish interpretation altogether, but to work with it skillfully. In phenomenological research, Dahlberg & Dahlberg (2003, 2008) speak of bridling: the practice of “holding back” one’s pre-understandings, assumptions, or premature interpretations in order to remain open to the phenomenon as it presents itself. To bridle is to remain open, curious, and responsive — to “reign in” premature judgment without suppressing the flow of meaning. It is less about silencing the filter and more about softening it, allowing space for the phenomenon to reveal itself in its own way and time.

Bridling is a delicate dance. It requires humility, patience, and trust in the process — the willingness to let the client’s lived world speak before the coach names what they think they see. Through bridling, filters become less disruptive and more transparent, allowing the coach to discern: Am I offering a clean mirror, or am I projecting my own story?

Salience, then, is both quick and subtle — a glimpse that must be handled with precision and gentleness. Through bridling, the coach learns to stay with the moment long enough for it to take shape, and when mirrored with care, salience becomes the doorway into the foundational question.

The Foundational Question

From here, the next step is to ask the question that bridges the client’s conscious story with this deeper perception. Not a surface question, but what we might call the foundational question—one that opens the door and helps the client reframe the issue, inviting them to see themselves in a new light.

Using the three examples above, it may sound like:

• What are these three brushstrokes pointing you toward?

• What part of you is longing for the sun?

• When you said the word ‘home,’ what does that word hold for you right now?

These questions are not asked to 'extract' answers but to open space, to shift the quality of reflection. They deepen the inquiry until the client is no longer just narrating but perceiving anew—seeing their own story from a fresh perspective, with new possibilities opening in the space between.

SPIIIC: A Flow of Delicate Inquiry for the Coach

Working with salience requires the coach not only to notice the client’s signals but also to cultivate their own inner field of discernment. This is the ground from which presence, timing, and inquiry emerge. SPIIIC—Spaciousness, Perception, Imagination, Intuition, Inspiration, Creativity—can serve as a reflective practice for the coach, a way of slowing down, softening filters, and attending so faithfully to one’s own experience that insight reveals itself in its own language. Here, discernment is inseparable from bridling. As Dahlberg & Dahlberg (2003, 2008) describe, bridling is the discipline of holding back premature interpretations, reigning in the impulse to conclude, and instead cultivating a posture of openness. Through bridling, the coach learns to stay with salience long enough for it to disclose its meaning, and SPIIIC offers a practical flow to embody this stance in the moment—shaping how we listen, sense, and respond.

• Spaciousness — By pausing and creating inner room, the coach practices bridling: holding back assumptions, allowing the unfiltered glimpse of salience to appear. In silence and patience, the invisible has a chance to become visible. Coach’s Question: Am I leaving enough room for what I do not yet know?

• Perception — The coach notices what is said, unsaid, and felt—words, gestures, breath, mood—without rushing to interpret. Bridling here means describing before explaining, staying close to the lived moment. Coach’s Question: What am I perceiving right now—in me, in the client, in the space between us?

• Imagination — Images, textures, and metaphors arise, giving form to what is sensed. Rather than claiming these as “truth,” the coach bridles by holding them lightly, offering them back as possibilities for exploration. Coach’s Question: If this moment had a shape, color, or image, what would it be?

• Intuition — The subtle resonance that precedes analysis stirs. Bridling asks the coach to trust this felt sense while resisting the urge to collapse it too quickly into certainty. Coach’s Question: What feels alive here before I try to explain it?

• Inspiration — A spark of orientation becomes possible. Through bridling, the coach allows the insight to emerge as an invitation, not as a directive, keeping the space open to the client’s lived meaning. Coach’s Question: What new possibility is quietly opening in this moment?

• Creativity — Awareness takes form in action: a mirrored gesture, a carefully phrased question, a shift in presence. Even here, bridling remains active—ensuring that what is offered is spacious and invitational, not imposed. Coach’s Question: How can I offer this awareness in a way that invites, rather than directs?

SPIIIC is not a checklist but a spiral of bridling. With each turn, the coach slows down, softens their filters, and holds space with greater openness. In this way, reflective lifeworld practice and coaching converge: both rest on the trust that if we attend delicately, the phenomenon—the client’s lived world—will reveal itself in its own language and time.

Coaching as a Discipline of Knowing How We Know

A hand repeating three brushstrokes in the air, a longing for sunlight surfacing as an image of lying on warm sand, a single unreturned word—home. These small moments of salience become openings, shifting how the client relates to their story, their body, and their world. Salience is the compass, the foundational question the doorway, and SPIIIC the path. Together they generate micro-shifts—subtle reorientations that ripple into practice: not rigid checklists, but embodied repetitions that seed new patterns until change takes root and becomes sustainable. These are the kinds of tools and approaches I teach in the One Humanity Lab Leadership Coaching Program, which I founded eight years ago at GW Center for Excellence in Public Leadership —an offering designed to support coaches in their becoming through the cultivation of wholeness, intuition, and field-based awareness in their practice.

My research on ecocentrism in coach education extends this understanding beyond the individual, into the weaving of multiple ways of knowing—sensory, emotional, cognitive, relational, intuitive, and more-than-human. Coaching, in this light, is not only a set of techniques but a discipline of knowing how we know. This reflexivity sharpens awareness of our own filters, channels, and resonances, allowing us to discern when we are acting as a clear mirror and when interpretation is creeping in. Intuition—often treated as vague or incidental—becomes a cultivated capacity: the ability to sense salience before explanation, to trust subtle resonance without collapsing it too quickly into certainty.

In this way, the development of the coach’s mindset is inseparable from the development of the coach’s inner life. It is a practice of widening perception, refining discernment, and deepening presence—an ongoing cultivation of inner spaciousness that allows the living moment to reveal itself. We do not impose; we participate. We do not force answers; we open the conditions where knowing can show itself. And so the practice begins again with the inquiry: How do I know when I know? By sensing what calls our attention, asking the question that truly matters, and walking the spiral of SPIIIC—one micro-shift, one lived step at a time.

Leadership Apothecary Practice: The Salient Glimpse

Purpose: To support coaches (and leaders) cultivate the art of noticing what stands out—gesture, word, image, or tone—and to bridle your own interpretations long enough for new knowing to reveal itself.

Steps

1. Spaciousness — Begin with a pause. In a conversation, notice the moment when silence or stillness is possible. Ask yourself: What arises in me when I give this moment more space?

2. Attend to Salience — Listen for the spark: a repeated gesture, a fleeting word, a sudden shift in breath, or even an image that surfaces in your awareness. Mark it gently inside yourself: This matters.

3. Bridle — Resist the urge to explain it or use it too quickly. Instead, hold it lightly, giving the phenomenon room to disclose its meaning in its own time.

4. Offer Back — When the timing feels right, mirror it with care. (Example: I notice your hand keeps moving in three strokes—what are the three?)

5. Foundational Question — Let the salience open into a deeper question, one that shifts the quality of reflection. Ask not to extract answers but to create conditions where the client (or yourself) can perceive anew.

6. Walk the Spiral (SPIIIC) — Spaciousness → Perception → Imagination → Intuition → Inspiration → Creativity. Let each turn guide you toward micro-shifts—subtle reorientations that reshape how the story is held and lived.

7. Reflection After the conversation, journal:

• What caught my attention most strongly?

• How did I discern between my filters and a clear channel?

• Where did a micro-shift occur?