Sticky Outcomes: at the Intersection of Coaching, Neuroscience, and Lasting Change

If you've ever left a coaching session thinking, "I asked the right questions, so why didn't anything really change?" this book is for you.

Sticky Outcomes is built on a simple idea: coaching isn't advice-giving, and it isn't a performance of coaching competencies. Coaching is a relationship skill. It's presence. It's deep listening. It's knowing how to hold space so the other person can hear themselves clearly enough to find the insight they need and the actions they'll actually take.

Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, writes for new coaches, aspiring leaders, and experienced practitioners who want their work to go beyond "good sessions" into meaningful, lasting change. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and the ICF Core Competencies, Sticky Outcomes shows what's happening under the surface of a conversation: how we regulate and co-regulate with others, how language shapes meaning, why psychological safety changes what the brain can access, and how agency grows when the client (or "thinker") is the one doing the work.

This book gives you practical frameworks and in-the-moment tools you can use right away. You'll learn what to listen for beneath the words, how to work with silence and emotion without rushing to fix, and how to partner in a way that strengthens the thinker's agency and follow-through. What makes the book especially usable is that it doesn't stay abstract. You'll find:

• • real coaching transcripts and examples, so you can hear the work, not just read about it
  • "Choice Points" that show multiple valid pathways in a moment, and what each choice tends to create
  • reflection prompts and activities designed to build your coaching muscle through practice, not perfection

Ultimately, Sticky Outcomes is about becoming the kind of professional coach who can create the conditions for transformation, not by fixing people, but by partnering better. When the thinker creates the dots, connects the dots, and owns the dots, the learning sticks.

If you want coaching that feels more human, more skillful, and more likely to lead to change that lasts long after the session ends, this book will support you.