ICF Edmonton upcoming events

Ask Better Questions, Get Better Results (23 Sep 2026)

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 17:00:00 GMT

**Please note special registration instructions in your confirmation email**

This Event Awards 1.0 Core Competency CCEUs. Participants must attend live to be eligible for CCEUs.

Date: September 23, 2026

Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm MST | 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EST

Tickets: ICF Members: $20 CAD | ICF Premium Members: Free | Non-Members: $35 CAD

Most coaches ask questions to gather information or show active listening. But the right question can do much more - unlock breakthroughs, spark action, and align clients with their deepest values.

In this masterclass, renowned coach Laura Berman Fortgang reveals how to turn questioning into a powerful art form, blending insights from psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral change. You'll learn how strategic inquiry can create profound shifts in thinking, feeling, and action.

Key Takeaways:

The Neuroscience of Questions: Discover how transformational questions rewire the brain, unlock creativity, and break limiting beliefs.
The Question Hierarchy: Move from surface-level queries to deep, transformational questions that inspire action and alignment.
Advanced Techniques: Master the Challenge Frame, Solution-Finding Method, Values Excavation, and Resistance Dissolution techniques.
Practical Applications: Apply strategic inquiry in coaching, leadership, team building, business development, and personal relationships.

The Experience

Through live exercises and role-play, you'll refine your questioning style, receive real-time feedback, and create a toolkit of powerful questions for coaching breakthroughs.

The Ripple Effect

Masterful questions create lasting change. Your clients will gain deeper insights, take aligned actions, and build confidence - while you’ll transform every interaction, from leadership conversations to personal relationships.

Why book this session?

With Laura's decades of expertise and cutting-edge research, this session equips you with actionable strategies to elevate your coaching and communication. The right question at the right moment doesn’t just gather information - it changes lives.

About the Speaker

Laura Berman Fortgang, MCC

Laura calls herself an OG coach since she has over thirty years of experience, had the first book by a professional coach published in the US and the UK and helped to found the International Coaching Federation. She was also the first coach on the Oprah Winfrey Show!

Her life's work supports other people to find theirs and join the A-List of life. No, she doesn't mean becoming a celebrity, but does mean not settling for anything less than the best you want to reach for.

Her Now What?® Methodology for career seekers and A-List Business Mentoring Program for entrepreneurs helps those who are:

ready to take the back burner dream and put it on the front burner
unclear about what you want to do or have never known
reinventing after a life hiccup
a coach ready for your next level of impact and income

Challenging Coaching, Going Beyond Traditional Coaching to Face the Facts (29 Sep 2026)

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:30:00 GMT

1 RD & 1 CC

Join Linda Maul and your ICF Edmonton Chapter colleagues in person for an evening of engaging conversations and community building

Challenging Coaching is a real-world, timely and provocative book which provides a wake-up call to move beyond the limitations of traditional coaching. Based on the authors' extensive experience working at board and management levels, they suggest that for far too long coaching approaches have shied away from adopting a more challenging stance - a stance that can provoke greater performance and unlock deeper potential in business leaders and their teams.

The authors detail their unique FACTS coaching model, which provides a practical and pragmatic approach focusing on Feedback, Accountability, Courageous goals, Tension and Systems thinking. The authors explore FACTS coaching in theory and in practice using case studies, example dialogues and practical exercises so that the reader will be able to successfully challenge others using respectful yet direct techniques.

This is an original and thought-provoking book that dares the reader to go beyond traditional coaching and face the FACTS.

What Makes This Approach Different

More direct, courageous, and evidence-based.
Less about non-directive neutrality; more about honesty and results.
Integrates psychology, adult development, and leadership thinking.
Helps coaches avoid “collusion” — going along with limiting stories to preserve comfort.

Benefits to the Coach

Coaches who adopt this approach typically:

Become more confident confronting tough issues
Build stronger impact with senior leaders
Reduce polite, surface-level coaching
Grow their own range — moving from safe to bold
Create measurable behavioural shifts in clients

Bottom Line

Challenging Coaching is a powerful resource for coaches ready to stretch their clients, not simply support them.
The FACTS model gives you a practical way to raise accountability, encourage growth, and tackle uncomfortable realities — all while maintaining trust and partnership.

It’s particularly useful when you’re coaching experienced, ambitious clients and you want to push boundaries in a clean, ethical, and productive way.

Recognizing the Air We Breathe: Cultural Safety in Executive and Team Coaching (19 Nov 2026)

Thu, 19 Nov 2026 20:30:00 GMT

**Please note special registration instructions in your confirmation email**

Participants must attend live to be eligible for CCEUs.

Date: November 19, 2026

Time: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm MST

Tickets: ICF Members: $20 CAD | ICF Premium Members: $0 CAD | Non-Members: $35 CAD

How might we consider "normal" and "good" shape how we see, listen, and support our coaching partners?

As coaches, like every other human being, we enter every relationship carrying our own histories, identities, assumptions, privileges, and ways of understanding the world. While coaching is often positioned as a neutral and empowering practice, it is not separate from the influence of culture, power, and social systems. The questions we ask, the perspectives we validate, and the changes we encourage are shaped by the worldviews we bring into the coaching relationship.

In this reflective and interactive workshop, participants will explore the concept of cultural safety and what it asks of us as coaches. Moving beyond cultural awareness and good intentions, this session invites coaches to consider how neutrality may not be neutral when we live and work in an unjust, prejudiced world.

Together, we will explore the assumptions and beliefs we carry into our coaching practice, examine how power dynamics may show up in both individual and team coaching relationships, and identify ways to create conditions where coaching partners from diverse backgrounds can participate fully, safely, and authentically.

Participants will:

Develop a deeper understanding of cultural safety and distinguish it from cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity, including its relevance to coaching practice.
Reflect on their own cultural assumptions, biases, and worldviews, and examine how these may influence their coaching practice.
Identify concrete actions they take to create conditions for cultural safety.

About the Speaker - Huong Bui, MA, PCC

Huong Bui, MA, PCC is the co-founder of KaleidoWork, a coaching and consulting company that helps purpose-driven leaders and teams build more effective and sustainable ways of working. As a coach, Huong's approach is grounded in curiosity, compassion, and the belief that meaningful growth begins with creating spaces where people feel safe to learn, reflect, and take actions. Huong recently completed a Master of Arts in Executive and Organizational Coaching from Royal Roads University.

Her master's research explored cultural safety in executive and team coaching practice through the lens of analytic autoethnography, drawing on her lived experience as an immigrant, coach, and organizational development practitioner. Through this work, she invites coaches to become more aware of the "air we breathe" by examining the assumptions, norms, and experiences that quietly shape our coaching practice.

The Resonant Coach: A Focused Refresh of Listening Foundations and Competency 6 (21 Jan 2027)

Thu, 21 Jan 2027 20:00:00 GMT

**Please note special registration instructions in your confirmation email**

This Event Awards 1.5 Core Competency CCEUs. Participants must attend live to be eligible for CCEUs.

Date: January 21, 2027

Time: 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm MST | 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm EST

Tickets: ICF Members: $35 CAD | ICF Premium Members: Free | Non-Members: $49 CAD

In this interactive session, participants will revisit the essentials of Active Listening and explore how these foundations directly impact the coaching relationship. Drawing upon the presenter’s experience in coaching and education, this session will clarify the common barriers to effective listening and highlight why deep listening is so vital to coaching success.

This session will also include a practical look at how ICF Competency 6 shows up in real-world conversations, identifying the small shifts that turn regular hearing into truly transformational listening. Through quick breakouts and lighthearted exercises, coaches will have the opportunity to align with these markers and sharpen their existing skills in a high-energy environment.

This is an educational, reflective, and experiential session designed to support coaches in refreshing their core skills, regardless of their current level of experience.

3 Leaning Objectives:

Align their coaching practice with ICF Competency 6 markers, specifically focusing on the subtle shifts that move a conversation from simple hearing to transformational listening.

Differentiate between "functional hearing" and "transformational listening," identifying the specific behaviors that move a coach beyond simple information gathering toward deeper resonance.

Cultivate an adaptive coaching mindset by using lighthearted, high-energy interaction to overcome common listening barriers and maintain presence in a virtual environment.

About the Speaker

Shachi Patel, PCC

Shachi Patel, PCC, is the founder of SETU Coaching & Consulting. With SETU meaning "bridge" in Sanskrit, she proudly serves as a bridge between her clients' technical expertise and leadership excellence. Drawing on over three decades of leadership in technology and healthcare, she leverages her engineering, program, and people management background to help STEM professionals and women in tech thrive in complex environments. Her coaching, training, and specialized workshops focus on helping leaders navigate pivotal career changes and transitions through a creative, compassionate, and courageous approach.

With global experience spanning NORAM, EMEA, and APAC, Shachi offers a diverse approach to leadership development, change management, and strategic influence. As a Mentor Coach at UC Davis, she integrates a decade of coaching expertise to develop the next generation of coaches, helping them transform technical proficiency into coaching excellence.