Phase one
Présence
The first sessions. Slowing down enough to hear what is actually there, underneath the version of the situation you have been telling people. Most of the useful material surfaces here.
Coaching
You are not lost. You are between stories.
The old story about who you are and what you are building has stopped holding. The next one has not taken shape yet. That space is uncomfortable, and it is also where the clearest choices get made. My work is to create the conditions in which you can think there.
Who this is for
Values-driven people who have built something real and can feel the narrative shifting underneath it. Leaders, managers, social entrepreneurs, engaged citizens. Often successful on paper, and quietly aware that the map no longer matches the territory.
This tends to fit when
- A role, a career or an identity that used to fit has started to feel borrowed.
- You are carrying a decision with no obviously right answer, and advice has stopped helping.
- You are leading under pressure in a complex or purpose-driven environment.
- You are carrying a lot for other people and have run out of room to think.
- Something in the wider world, climate, technology, politics, has quietly rewritten your plan.
This is probably not it when
- You want someone to tell you what to do. I will not, and that is deliberate.
- You are looking for performance optimisation or productivity gains.
- You arrive certain you already know the answer. Certainty is the only real obstacle here.
- What you need is therapy. That is different work, and worth doing properly.
How it works
The space between sessions
We start with a first session to clarify what you are actually working on and what a good outcome would look like for you. Then a series of sessions, typically seven to nine, over roughly four months. Forty to sixty minutes each, at a rhythm that fits your life rather than a fixed schedule.
The arc has a shape. It is not rigid, but it is real.
Phase two
Direction
The core work. Narrative inquiry, values clarification, and the slow authoring of what comes next. Not a plan handed to you. A story you can stand behind because you wrote it.
Phase three
Ancrage
Closing and autonomy. Integrating what has moved, building practices that survive contact with a normal week, and deliberately reducing your need for me.
Sessions create movement. The space between them is where that movement becomes something. You get a personalised space holding a summary in your own words, a few resources chosen for what actually came up, and the questions worth sitting with. A thinking space, not a task list.
What actually happens in a session
Less than people expect, and more than they are used to. There is no advice and there are no opinions. There are questions most people never get asked, close listening to what you say and to what you carefully avoid, and a reflection of what emerges.
Two gears. Most of the time we work in conversation: powerful questions, reflective listening, narrative inquiry. When the conversation hits a wall, or when you are clearly stuck in your head and the answer is somewhere else, we shift to something experiential. Breathing, grounding, body-based practice, sometimes nature. Not as a wellness add-on. Because thinking is not only done with the head.
You leave with a sharper read on your own situation and a sense of what to do next. Not because I told you. Because you worked it out.
7 to 9
Sessions over roughly four months
40 to 60
Minutes per session
4
Languages: FR · EN · ES · IT
Online
In person possible in northern Italy
On language
I work in French, English, Spanish and Italian. This matters more than it sounds. People think differently in different languages, and most of us have one where the honest sentence arrives faster. You choose that one, and you can switch mid-session if that is how your mind actually works.
What you might be telling yourself
These are the sentences I hear on first calls, often in the first two minutes. Each one is reasonable. Each one is also worth a second look.
You probably can, eventually. You have figured out harder things. The question is what it costs you to do it alone, and how long it takes when the person thinking about the problem is also the person inside it.
I spent years around people who were extremely good at coping alone, in places where there was no alternative. What I learned there is that being heard properly, by someone with no stake in the answer, is not a weakness to outgrow. It is the fastest route I know to your own clarity.
They do. I have worked in places where that was true beyond argument, and I still hold that thought lightly, because it has a way of postponing your own life indefinitely.
Being between stories is not a catastrophe and this is not crisis work. It is the ordinary, uncomfortable, important moment when the old version of you has stopped fitting. That deserves attention on its own terms, not on a scale of who is suffering most.
Nobody does. That is usually the point. The people who most need forty minutes to think are the ones whose calendar is set up to make sure they never get it.
The rhythm here fits your life rather than a fixed schedule: seven to nine sessions over roughly four months, forty to sixty minutes each, online. Most clients tell me the session is the one slot in the fortnight where they are not carrying anything for anyone else. It tends to give time back rather than take it.
Then you already know what it should not feel like: advice dressed up as questions, a framework applied to you, a session that ends when the call ends.
What I do differently is concrete. No advice, no opinions, and a personalised space between sessions holding a summary in your own words, a few resources chosen for what actually came up, and the questions worth sitting with. If after the first call it does not feel different, say so and we stop there.
That fear is real, and it is worth naming, because it is often the actual reason for not starting.
In my experience the opposite is more common. People arrive convinced the only options are to stay stuck or blow it all up, and discover a third thing: a clearer read of where they actually stand, and one next move they can stand behind. Nobody is asked to change everything. You are asked to look honestly. What you do with that is yours.
Good. This is not therapy and it is not a recovery programme, and if what you need is one of those, I will say so and point you to it.
Tired is often what between stories feels like from the inside: the effort of holding up a story that no longer holds you. That is precisely the moment where a bit of honest thinking, before anything breaks, pays off most.
Coaching is a real cost, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. We talk about the price on the first call, once we both know what the engagement actually is. I would rather it be a conversation than a filter, and I have never wanted it to be the reason someone does not start.
One commitment I hold regardless: thirty percent of my coaching time goes to humanitarian workers pro bono, more than 150 sessions so far, with Médecins Sans Frontières and the wider humanitarian network. Paid engagements are what make that possible. And if you work for an organisation with a training line, read on.
Paid for by your organisation?
A good part of the people I work with sit inside NGOs, foundations and institutions that have a training or professional development budget, and coaching is a legitimate use of it. Four things that help, from clients who have done it: check whether a training line exists before assuming it does not, most do. Frame it as leadership development rather than personal support, which is what it is. Show the shape of the work, seven to nine sessions over four months with a clear arc, rather than asking for something open-ended. And if the training budget is spent, the conference or learning budget often is not.
On my side: an invoice in your organisation's name, a one-paragraph description of the engagement for the file, and confidentiality that stays absolute, including from the people paying.
Questions people actually ask
Coaching is a process, not a category. The distinction between the two mostly tells you about marketing rather than methodology.
I work with people navigating real complexity: career transitions, leadership pressure, decisions with no obvious right answer, moments between one version of themselves and the next. The topic changes. The work is the same. My training draws on ICF and EMCC methodologies, narrative practices, forest bathing, functional breathing and emotional intelligence, and I keep refreshing it.
They are genuinely different tools for different situations. Therapy looks at the past to understand the present. Consulting answers a specific question. Training builds a skill. Mentoring shares experience.
Coaching does none of these. It works in the present, oriented toward where you want to go. As your coach I will not tell you what I would do in your situation, and I will not tell you what I think the answer is. That discipline is intentional. Your clarity is more durable than my opinion.
Online, by video call, which works well across time zones. For longer engagements, in-person sessions in northern Italy are possible on request.
A fair question, and the distinction matters. Training gives you content to absorb: here is what to know, here is the skill to build. The articles and materials I send are not a curriculum and they do not tell you what to think. They give you something to think with.
The difference shows up in what happens next. After a training resource you are supposed to learn something. After a coaching resource you might notice something. A sentence lands differently on Tuesday than it did on Friday. Most coaching stops when the session ends. What I am offering is continuity, on your own terms. You do not have to use the space. It is there.
Willingness. That is it. Willingness to look at things honestly, to sit with discomfort, to follow a thread when you are not sure where it leads.
The only thing that really gets in the way is certainty, arriving convinced you already know the answer. Outside this process you might be a rockstar. Here, it is just you, the questions, and the process.
I do not solve issues. You do. I bring a process and powerful questions. I listen closely, fully, without an agenda. What you do with that is yours.
Getting started
A free 30-minute call, no preparation needed
We talk about what is actually going on and whether this is the right work for it. If it is not, I will say so and point you somewhere better. If it is, we agree on the shape and the practical details, price included, before anything starts.
Working in French, English, Spanish and Italian. Based in northern Italy, working worldwide.
Between Stories coaching
Seven to nine sessions over roughly four months. Online, in the language that feels right.
Price discussed on the first call.
Book a free callNot for you, but for your team?
The same frame applies at a larger scale. Facilitation for teams that need to think together in complexity, and organisational development for institutions navigating change from the inside.
See the work with organisations →