Things I Learnt From My Latest Coaching Intensive (Pt 1): Coach Gravitas

So What Is Gravitas

To me, gravitas is how much weight a person carries. It's the energy field they bring into a room the moment they walk in, before they've said a single word. In chinese, we call it "强大的气场".

I was watching Badly In Love Season 2 the other day — it's a dating show about Japanese former yankis (delinquents) trying to find love. And because of who these men used to be, whenever they meet each other, tempers flare fast. Holding a stare half a second too long and suddenly everyone's puffing up like roosters about to go at it.

When contestant M walked in, I could tell straight away he was different. He had gravitas. The air in the room changed when he walked in. When he got challenged to a fight, he moved into defence but also looked his opponent in the eye — calm, steady, unbothered. I knew immediately this guy was someone. He'd been to places. 

It's the same for a coach. When a coach with gravitas arrives in the room, you feel it in their grounded, calm presence — the kind that commands deep trust without trying to. Chances are, they've seen some things in life and done real work on themselves, and that's what gives them the emotional maturity that makes you feel safe enough to open up and go deep.

And this — this is the magic sauce that separates a good coach from an exceptional one.

For a coach, gravitas comes down to how much work we've done on our own self-acceptance (the extent to which you can accept your clients as they are is the extent to which you've accepted yourself), our confidence, our credibility, our convictions (do you actually know who you are and what you stand for), and our relational presence — our ability to be fully with a client as a neutral, equal partner, without letting our own needs get in the way. That means not becoming domineering, not shrinking, and not performing to look "perfect."

How Do Coaches Build Gravitas

This is also why coaches charge the way they do. 

A good coach can only become one by building their gravitas to a certain level — and that level comes with an investment in terms of time, effort and money.

Beyond the obvious things — having real conversations, showing up, taking risks — a good coach is constantly honing their skill so they can actually move their clients toward a positive outcome.

But at the base of all of it is inner work. Techniques can teach you how to validate a client or ask a good questions. What techniques can't teach you is how far you're able to invite someone else to walk through their challenges — because that's directly limited by how far you've been willing to walk through your own.

Here's an example. If a coach has a difficult relationship with their mother and hasn't done the work to move through it themselves, and then they sit across from a client with the exact same wound — it's going to be really hard for that coach to help the client zoom out, find their motivation, and find the courage to move forward. Worse, the two of them might get pulled into the same unresolved "trauma" together and end up trauma-bonding, with neither one finding a way out.

These are invisible skills. They take years of life experience, inner work, and training to build. So when you pay your coach, you're not paying for the hour you spend with them. You're paying for the hundreds of hours they spent long before you ever walked in — the work that got them to a place where they can actually sit with you in your mess and help you find your way through it.

Take me, for example. I've been doing inner work for almost 20 years. I hold an IPEC coaching certification, and I also completed a 100-Day Graduate Certification with an organization called Psychology of Vision. The certification says 100 days, but I've been in this work since 2010 — I'd estimate I've clocked another 200 to 300 days of training on top of that since.

I'm not perfect. I don't claim to be. 

But I know I can create real, positive impact in this world. And as I've done the work on myself, I've noticed it show up everywhere — in my relationships with the people around me. The ripple effect is real. That's what gravitas gives you.

Why Choose A Coach With Gravitas?

For major life overhauls like divorce, relocation, or career change, a transitions coach with gravitas serves as an unshakeable, grounding anchor who provides the deep psychological safety and steady clarity needed to navigate these intense emotional and structural upheavals.

Let's take a woman facing potential divorce as an example. If you are a woman standing on the other side of a divorce — rebuilding a life, an identity, maybe even a sense of who you are outside of a marriage — you are not looking for someone to hand you a five-step plan. You've probably already tried that. What you actually need is someone who can sit with you in the mess without flinching, without rushing you to "move on," and without making your pain about their own unresolved stuff.

The difference between a coach who's read the books and a coach who's lived through the fire and come out steadier for it. 

When you're rebuilding trust — in yourself, in love, in your own judgment — you need someone across from you who isn't shaken by your story, because they've faced their own version of it. That steadiness becomes something you can borrow from, until you find your own again.

So when you're choosing a coach for this season of your life, don't just look at the certifications on the page (though those matter too). Pay attention to how you feel in their presence. Do you feel safe enough to be a mess in front of them? Do they feel grounded, or are they performing "having it all together"? That felt sense — that's gravitas talking.

In Conclusion

Gravitas isn't something you can fake, and it isn't something you can shortcut. It's built through years of showing up for your own healing before you ever try to hold space for someone else's. For me, that's exactly the work I've put in — not so I could be perfect, but so I could be present. And presence, more than any framework or technique, is what actually helps a woman find her footing again after divorce.

If you're looking for a coach for this chapter of your life, I hope this gives you a better sense of what to look for — and what real support should actually feel like.

Thinking about getting a coach or a mentor?

If any part of this resonated with you, I'd love to have a conversation. I offer a complimentary discovery call for women who are navigating life after divorce and want a steady, experienced presence in their corner — someone who's done the inner work so you don't have to walk this alone. Book your call and let's see if we're the right fit.

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