Marie Quigley:
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, listeners-wherever you are in the world. My name is Marie Quigley, and today we have a really exciting guest joining us. I'm delighted to introduce Yannick Jacob to the Empower World Coaching and Leadership podcast. Hello, Yannick!

Yannick Jacob:
Hello! Really nice to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Marie Quigley:
Thank you for coming. Yannick, you're an existential life and leadership coach, a coaching supervisor, a faculty member at Cambridge, and a positive psychologist. I read that you help people think, learn, and grow, and that you hold space for people to ponder, understand, and make courageous choices-in the hope of inspiring the world to embrace life, work, and the human condition. I thought that was such a beautiful description. It truly reflects how I’ve come to know your work-through your book and the way you show up in interviews and podcasts. I’m very delighted to be speaking with you today.

Yannick Jacob:
Thank you so much. It’s always a bit weird when you hear things you’ve written in a bio reflected back to you. But you did it in a wonderfully conversational style. It actually sounds like something I would say about myself. Often, when someone reads a bio out loud, it feels a bit detached, but this feels really right. It’s nice that it aligns with how you've experienced me. We’ve been in touch, but we haven't talked like this before.

Marie Quigley:
Exactly. I think it's beautiful when we recognize ourselves in how others perceive us. There’s a certain truth when we see ourselves in someone else's words or comments. It’s like, “Oh yes, I feel that in my body, I know it in my heart.” It’s a great acknowledgment, so thank you for naming that.

Yannick Jacob:
And here we are-already in the heart of existential practice. Writing a bio or creating a website where you try to describe yourself in a limited amount of space is incredibly difficult. The question “Who are you?” is always evolving. It's an impossible task to sum yourself up in 100 or 200 words, or even on a complex website. You have to constantly update it, depending on who you're becoming on a daily basis. It creates a tremendous amount of anxiety for many people to try and capture themselves. That’s why it’s so nice to hear that, at least in essence, it worked.

But of course, there are so many more facets. I love asking clients, “Who are you?” when we first meet-just to see their reaction. Some people have an answer ready because they introduce themselves all the time. Then I observe how authentically it comes across-whether it feels rehearsed or genuine. Others feel overwhelmed by the question. They want more guidance, asking, “What do you want to know?” because they want to get it right. But existentially, there is no “getting it right.” There’s always uncertainty and incompleteness. We can never be fully known.

That’s the human condition-and that’s what existentialists have studied through philosophy and psychology. A key part of our condition is that we cannot be fully known. No matter how many poems we write, how many hours we talk, or how many decades we're married, no one can truly know what it’s like to be me. That realization brings a certain kind of anxiety-not fear in the typical sense, but a deep internal tension. And that’s what existential philosophy often explores-these tensions that are part of being human, tensions we can’t remove unless we stop existing or constantly distract ourselves.

That’s why I love existentialism so much. It gave me a rich framework in which to integrate all the exciting elements of coaching, but in a way that truly appreciates life and existence-something we all share, regardless of demographics or client types.

Marie Quigley:
So beautiful, Yannick. I also noticed when you said that others can never really know us, it made me wonder: can we ever fully know ourselves? Is that even possible? In coaching, this question shows up so often. The kind of work you're describing is so much deeper than simply using a model that moves us from point A to point B with a specific outcome. That’s why I love existential work so much. Can you share more about how you apply this in your coaching practice?

Yannick Jacob:
For me, existential philosophy offers a lens-a way of looking at our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world. It’s not a methodology, model, or step-by-step approach. It’s a way of relating, and through that lens, we can often see things others might not.

I love using the lens metaphor. I used to demonstrate this in schools: I’d draw three dark circles on a dark background and hand out differently shaded sunglasses. Some people would see nothing-just a blank page. Others would see one, two, or all three circles depending on the tint. It’s about curiosity. The existential lens opens up questions we might not otherwise ask.

Early in my coaching career, I disliked models and structured approaches. Even the GROW model didn’t sit right with me-it felt too rigid. Conversations are messy, and I felt structure missed the richness on the sidelines, where the real insights often lie. Over time, though, I stopped hating models. I saw their value-if applied well.

When you bring an existential lens to structured work, it allows room for deeper exploration. While guiding someone through a time-management model, for example, you might notice underlying issues about their relationship with time, endings, or even mortality. That’s one of the existential givens.

You can also explore a person’s relationship with uncertainty, authenticity, freedom, choice, meaning or meaninglessness, absurdity, or connection with others. A coach using the existential lens-rather than being an “existential coach” per se-can bring these deeper curiosities into the work, regardless of the structure or process being used.

That means you have access to profound layers of exploration, if they’re appropriate for that client in that moment. Sometimes they’re not. Maybe the client just wants to work on performance goals, and that's okay. But the lens gives you the option to go deeper if it's useful and welcomed.

For me, coaching is about expanding a client’s choices. Some coaching helps you move faster on the same path-get on the motorway and hit the goal. But transformational coaching is different. It’s about expanding awareness and choice. Awareness comes from curiosity, and a coach can offer that through the lens they use. The existential lens just happens to be a very rich one.

Marie Quigley:
Yes, I agree. And I love your passion in describing it. When a client comes to me wanting to work with an existential approach, I make sure to contract clearly around how I work, so they have a choice. Some clients choose not to go there-and that’s fine. But when someone says, “I want to work on time management,” I often respond, “You could Google that. How about we look at what’s really going on underneath that?”

If the client is open, and we’ve established enough trust and rapport, we can access incredibly beautiful spaces together to understand what time management really means for them-using the kind of lens you’ve described so eloquently.

Yannick Jacob:
And I’d invite anyone listening or watching this to just notice your own reaction when you hear the words time management. Especially the phrase, “I want to work on my time management.” I still have a reaction to that. But now, my follow-up is, “Tell me more.”

I’ve learned that time management isn’t just about organizing calendars or using colored labels. It’s fundamentally about your relationship with time. The philosophical concept of time includes endings-questions like, “How much time do I have?” or “What do I still want to do with the time I have left on this planet?”

Regardless of what you believe happens after the body dies, it marks a significant ending in your experience. That’s something we can know with certainty: our time in this body, in this life, is finite. So, how can that not affect the way we manage our time?

Whether we’re talking about procrastination, priorities, or purpose, time management is never just practical-it’s deeply existential. And when a client is willing to explore that with you, it becomes a profoundly rich conversation.

This is an inherently super interesting conversation-if the client allows themselves to open those kinds of doors. I'm naturally curious about those underlying questions. Not everybody is, and an astonishing number of people have never really asked themselves questions beneath the surface. Maybe they didn't have time for it, maybe they're not so inclined, maybe they had an education that never really opened those doors for them. Maybe life just kept battering them around, so they're just surviving. I don't blame anybody who hasn't asked themselves those questions.

But the work that happens when you do take time to pause and create space for yourself to explore what's underneath-that's marvelous, right? And so much stems from that. Because if you explore and come to some of your own conclusions about the bigger questions, they're always underneath the smaller, more mundane-sounding ones-like time management, or how can I get the next promotion, or what’s the next phone I want to buy. The existential questions are always underneath, if we pay attention to them.

Marie Quigley:
I’m so bought into what you're saying because I know I experience it in my own world. When I'm able to reflect on my own existential experiences... But I'm thinking about some clients who might come to coaching-who might be sent to coaching by their organization, or who might even come willingly-but think it’s something different than it is. When you think about somebody working with you, Yannick, how do you address your approach and support them to get into a space where they might be willing to ask those deeper questions?

Yannick Jacob:
Yeah, so a big theme in existentialism is responsibility, which comes with freedom. They're two sides of the same coin. Freedom is often seen as this beautiful, entirely positive thing. But if you give people too much freedom, they often despair because of too many choices-too much agency. Then they're looking for something to guide them. And whenever you look for something outside of yourself to make decisions for you, to latch onto-well, many people love to follow a leader. We flock towards leaders who make decisions we can say yes to, who create opportunities we can get involved in. It's because naturally, we don’t like responsibility. But also, we want responsibility.

This is one of those paradoxes: some people wear responsibility like a badge of honor, while others push it away because they don’t want to be held accountable for bad outcomes. Some people like to take more risks. So a lot of this is about responsibility. When someone comes to coaching-especially when they're sent-it’s not really their own agency at play. That creates a tricky situation, because they might feel like it’s someone else’s responsibility that they’re there. They might not fully own the space. But in coaching, we want them to take responsibility for their own journey, their own success, their own work. Otherwise, it probably won't work.

So many coaches take responsibility for their clients. When I have coaches in supervision, they often work harder than their clients. I reflect that back to them and get very curious. I personally love it when somebody comes to coaching and doesn't really want to engage, because my stance is: I don't need to engage if you're not engaging. I'm very engaged and curious about why you're here and what you want to do with this space, but if you don't want to invest your time, I'm not going to invest mine.

The option is always: you don’t need to do this. If someone doesn’t want to be seen as disengaged but still doesn’t want to engage-that becomes very interesting. I'm trying to catch those signs early so we can talk about it openly and honestly. Then we figure out how best to use our time. Usually, clients come to the realization that there is something in it for them.

Still, I need to negotiate the organization’s agenda. If someone wants to use coaching to leave their job, but the company is paying to help them advance to the next level, it would be unethical for me to just go with whatever the client wants. In supervision, these are fascinating ethical dilemmas. I'm often flabbergasted at what some coaches bring in, like denying responsibility to the sponsor. That’s not okay. There is a responsibility to the sponsor too. The balance might not be equal, but it needs to be clearly negotiated and contracted.

So I enjoy the challenge when someone says, “I don’t need this,” and I can ask, “What could this be if it were up to you?” That’s what every coach needs to explore at the start of the coaching engagement: how do we invite the client to take full responsibility for the journey? Contracting is part of this-defining what your responsibility is and what mine is. My responsibility is not to figure things out for you. As a coach, you need to ask yourself: what is my responsibility in this relationship? Are there things you can guarantee? Are there things you can be confident about? What remains uncertain?

I remember working with a business coach once-more of a mentor, really. He said, “Yannick, you need to speak with more confidence, especially in consultations. It’s the most important session because it sets the tone for a longer-term relationship.” But I'm an existentialist. I believe in the uncertainty of everything. How can I be certain? Yet, as we explored that, I realized there are things I can be certain about. I can be certain I’ll do my best to be present and hold space in a way that helps you figure out what you need to figure out. I’ll do my human best to be as honest as I can.

When you say it like that, it might not sound inspiring-but it’s real and honest. People appreciate that kind of honesty. They know I’m not someone trying to sell them simplicity or certainty. This is going to be real. And a lot of existential work is just that-human to human. It’s a relationship. That’s why it can’t be replaced by AI. It’s not just doing with; it’s being with.

A lot of traditional coaching focuses on doing-like the ICF competencies, which help you do coaching. But there comes a point when adopting a coaching mindset stops being a competence and becomes a way of being. It’s how you relate to people. That conversation-at the beginning and throughout the coaching journey-is about responsibility. It’s such a crucial part of the work.

Marie Quigley:
Yeah. Gosh, there are so many deep dives we could go down, Yannick. I'm actually thinking about my own journey-starting off as a coach and doing the work for my clients instead of just being who I am. When that shift happened-from doing to being-the transformation happened within me. It allowed me to be fully present.

But also, it gave me the courage to name things transparently-especially the things that might not happen, even if others are expecting them to. I love what you said about how we can’t guarantee everything, but we can guarantee some things. For instance, I can guarantee that I’m turning up as connected and present as I can be-even while managing other parts of my life.

I think about times when I wanted more for my clients than they wanted for themselves. In that pushing, something shifted. They realized they didn’t actually want what they said they did. What they wanted was something deeper, more profound. Watching that unfold was powerful. Because whatever is unfolding in the work we're doing-it’s data.

That’s interesting, isn’t it? If we can step outside ourselves and observe what’s happening between me and you-that lens is valuable. It might reflect something about me, or it might reflect something about you.

Yannick Jacob:
Yeah, and I love this relational way of working. I leaned into that quickly because I wanted the coaching to be a relationship. I wanted to use the power of being in relationship as part of the process. But it’s considerably more difficult to work this way.

When I first got into coaching, I was initially interested in therapy and counseling because I craved that depth of relationship. I loved that part of my job would be to stay in a good place myself-that I needed to continue to work on myself so I could show up well for my clients.

You can still do a bunch of good coaching even when you're not in a great place. But the depth you can take someone to-well, that only comes when you're sitting confidently with who you are and with what you’ve explored. That kind of self-awareness is so important.

It’s why we sit for a moment before the session starts-to acknowledge what we’re bringing in. For example, I might notice a sense of impatience or pressure because of something happening in my life. When I tune into the client and feel that same impatience or pressure, I need to know whether it’s mine.

If I know it's mine, I can box it up, put the lid on, and stay with my client. But if I don’t recognize it-if it’s being created in this space-then I need to explore what that’s about. Maybe I’m picking it up from my client, or maybe from their organization or family system. I can name it because I feel it. But I need to know it’s not mine.

That kind of awareness is what really pulled me into psychological work. This being-with and relational way of working means that, when I’m with a client, I represent “the other” in that moment.

If I perceive you as aggressive, most people will not tell you-especially when you're in a leadership position or in a position of power. People often won’t tell you that you’re coming across as aggressive because many get defensive or react aggressively in return. So people don't speak up.

But a coach is in a position where they can tell you from a place of love-being on your side, shoulder to shoulder. I'm not saying you're being aggressive. I'm just saying, "Oh, I notice… my experience right now is this," and I can describe it. We can look at it together. That’s just my experience-you can’t argue with it, because it's mine.

From a place of benevolence, love, and support, I might share something uncomfortable. If I’m feeling intimidated, my natural instinct is to avoid the conversation and distance myself from you. But as a coach, I can name that, acknowledge it, and get curious about it with you. If I’m feeling that way, chances are others are too. And if it’s not my “stuff”-maybe you just remind me of my father, who used to beat me up (which, sadly, many have experienced)-then that’s something we can distinguish and work with. That’s really helpful.

So many coaches get paid to be a mirror for someone, to reflect what’s arriving. But how many of us really like to look at ourselves? I mean, I hardly ever listen back to my own podcasts. I still cringe at the sound of my own recorded voice.

I had a past in music, so I’ve spent a lot of time listening to myself, because no one else was producing my voice. It helped. But people generally don’t want to be faced with themselves. There’s something jarring about realizing, “This is me-this is how I come across.” Having someone else’s eyes on you in a space of benevolent intention and love makes a big difference. That’s why it’s a courageous act to listen to your own recording, or to work with a coach-especially an existential one. Just existing, allowing yourself to fall in love-it’s all a courageous act.

Courage is inherent in the existential way of living. There’s no one to tell you the right way to live. We make decisions and take responsibility for them. We don’t have to-we can drift, and many do. I used to be a bit of a dynamic drifter. I had this sense that coaching and positive psychology were going somewhere, so I stayed in that general direction. I’d just go with opportunities as they came. I didn’t give myself much credit for creating any of it.

Eventually, I chose to become more intentional. That brought a lot of focus, purpose, and meaning-but also anxiety. Now I could fail. It might not work out the way I wanted. I moved from being a drifter to being someone more deliberate about the choices I made. And sometimes, I’m still unsure how I feel about that. Now that I have a family, some choices can’t be undone. They’re commitments I can’t walk back.

A lot of people feel that way-stuck in choices they made long ago. It can lead to resentment. That’s why taking responsibility for your choices and making them courageously matters. You’ll never know if another choice would’ve been better, worse, or just different.

So just living-being-is a courageous act. Everyone deserves a pat on the back just for existing. It does take courage. But some people lean into it more than others. I’ve drifted and been happy doing so, and I’ve seen others still drifting into their 60s, still happy. As long as drifting is a choice and you take responsibility for it, that’s okay.

What I struggle with is when people get to a certain age and say, “I wish I had been more intentional-six months ago, six years ago, sixty years ago. I wish I had taken more responsibility and made bolder choices.” Many take the easier road early on, only to find it’s much harder later.

Existential coaching offers a space to pause and reflect on the choices we’re making and who we’re becoming-so that we can live with fewer regrets. Because at least we can say, “I made the best choice I could with the courage I had at the time.”

Marie Quigley:
I really appreciate that you used the word “love” to describe that coaching space-bringing love into business, into coaching, into relationships. Not in the typical way we think of love, but in the sense that love makes us braver to name what’s happening.

I remember one client-I said to him, “I notice some sense of boredom happening within me.” And he replied, “That’s how people tell me I sound when I do presentations.” It resonated with him. He recognized it. So, by naming it, we were able to explore what was manifesting in that boredom. It became a beautiful opportunity for growth.

I want to stay silent now. I’d love to stay silent on a podcast-but silence is hard here. Still, I’d encourage the listeners: pause this. Let it sink in. Listen again. Bring your clients to mind. Bring yourself to mind. Bring your coaching work into focus and ask:

What does this mean for me? If I live intentionally, what might happen? What do I want to create? Who might I let down? What does that cost me? Who will I become through these conscious decisions?

And when I’m 60, or 80-how will that impact me? What will I think of myself? And how will that little girl or little boy who came into the world feel about the person I’ve become?

There are so many beautiful ways we can reflect on what you’ve just shared, Yannick. It’s incredibly inspiring and profound-delivered in such a short space of time. Please, go back, listen again, pause, and reflect.

Yannick, I’m really interested to know-before, when you were a drifter-what was that space like? The moment you decided to shift from drifting to intentional living?

Yannick Jacob:
Hmm. For me, it was easier than it could’ve been-because, as often happens, I fell in love. I met someone who had a clear idea of how they wanted to live. Maybe not a fully detailed plan, but there was a path.

I looked at that person, looked at that path, and thought, “That’s a fantastic path.” Committing to that person meant also committing to a direction-not fixed, because people and paths change-but it was still a meaningful commitment.

I knew that if I was going to love this person and be loved back-if we were going to be together for life-then that came with certain conditions. I started thinking about having children-not just casually, but actually envisioning it. Really picturing it. And when you bring that vision to life, as we do in coaching-engaging the senses, the emotion, the vivid details-you experience that future more clearly.

When I imagined children vividly, I realized how much more it involved. I thought, “Oh wow, okay. You need a lot more money to give them the opportunities, experiences, and choices I’d want for them.”

So it couldn’t be about just going with the flow anymore-“I’ll spend less, move house, do whatever.” Suddenly, money had to matter. My relationship with money evolved. It went from something that didn’t matter at all to something that had to matter. That was the turning point.

Because it went from something that didn't matter to me at all to something that had to matter. That was very interesting. That transition was one of, "If I want to do this, I'm not just going to do it blindly. I'm going to make an intentional commitment because this is meant to be for life." That cost me some sleepless nights because I wasn't particularly good with commitment previously. I realized that also sucked a lot of the joy out of my life-certainly the depth, the focus, the energy.

I've seen that in lots of clients since. I've noticed that as soon as you commit to something, you choose things to be meaningful. You choose projects, jobs, or relationships to be meaningful. There are plenty of people who will tell you what is meaningful and what is not, but essentially, everybody needs to make their own decisions about what is meaningful to them.

It could be the most meaningless-seeming thing, and someone could attach meaning to it-and then that becomes their reality. If they commit passionately to whatever that is, their life takes on a very different experience. Their existence becomes more meaningful, rich, and intentional.

Who's to say how to live life, right? That’s why I appreciate this existential idea that everything is meaningless, that there's really nothingness at the center of the universe. Because we then get to create meaning. Every single one of us creates their own universe and what’s meaningful in it.

I believe a lot in objective facts, but when it comes to meaning, it really is nothing but subjective. I cannot come to answers that are universally applicable about meaning. There are great frameworks. My colleague, Michael Steger, has done a lot of really good research. The field of meaning is exploding to the point where even the leading researchers like him can’t keep up with all the new findings. But we haven’t really studied it seriously until a few decades ago.

So we cannot say what is meaningful and what is not. We can only go on an inquiry-and that’s what many coaches do naturally, but existential coaches in particular. When someone comes in, we explore the meaning around what something is and what it means to them. We don’t assume that things have fixed meanings.

That opens up so much more choice. We can reposition ourselves toward what we’ve accepted as cultural, familial, or workplace narratives. All these set stories in our heads create meaning. It’s helpful to hold on to that, to be given something that feels secure and safe. We do that in parenthood. My daughter is three at the time of recording this. It’s important that we give children something that feels set and safe-we need to tell kids how the world works to some extent. But we also need to invite them to challenge that and build their own understanding of how the world works.

That’s an intricate balance. I don’t want to rip away all the meaning structures so someone feels unsafe. But sometimes, a simple question can shake the ground they're standing on. You pull the rug out from underneath someone’s feet. You ask, “How do you know that?” Someone tells you a narrative-whatever it may be-and if they trust you enough to really consider the question, they might think, “Oh… I don’t actually know that.” Suddenly, they feel shaky.

That’s an interesting place to be in a coaching relationship. Some people might go into free fall, into a deep hole, when their meaning structures are taken away-something they considered a given is no longer solid. It feels unsafe. But in that space, you’re there to help them recreate something that is ultimately much stronger and more solid-perhaps more flexible, but more solid because of it. And they own it.

I think that’s work worth doing. I think it’s worth feeling uncomfortable and unstable for a little while. Listening to myself, I realize a lot of this sounds like what therapists do, and the line between existential coaching and therapeutic work can become blurry-as it is with much of coaching. The lines are increasingly blurry.

It’s also about who you choose as clients. Some clients are very robust and resourceful enough to go on that kind of exploration. Others may seem resourceful, but when asked the right question, they become insecure and unstable. So I think existential coaches probably refer out to therapy more than others. But that’s another whole conversation-at what point do you cross that line?

Supervision is one of the spaces where you figure that out-at what point are you no longer willing or able to work with a client, and when would they be better served by someone with different training. And I say “different training” intentionally-it may not be a therapist. It could be another coach. It’s hard to tell the difference these days.

Marie Quigley:
I hear you. That’s really good food for thought for coaches who are thinking about how they work-especially those who don’t have supervision. I really want to call you forth and say: go to supervision, be in supervision, be with somebody who helps you challenge your thinking, your practice, who you are being as a coach. It really can change the landscape for you. It can support you to do deeper work and help you know what work you want to do yourself. And yes, having those people to refer out to is essential.

Yannick, I can’t believe how the time has flown. At the same time, there is no time, is there? But we have to conclude our conversation. I know people will find you and your work fascinating. They can learn some profound truths from how you show up in the world. How can people find out more about you and your work?

Yannick Jacob:
The best place for coaches would be my website: rocketsupervision.com. I also have a separate website focused on existential coaching: existential.coach.

I run a community of practice called The Coaching Lab, which you can find at gocoachinglab.com. It’s often tricky to connect theory to practice-especially a lot of the topics we just talked about. I always thought, "I’d love to see how this actually works." So many people talk about coaching, but I’ve never actually seen them coach. That’s why we created the lab.

We run sessions once a month where someone coaches for 45 minutes-covering a broad range of practitioners-and then we have another 45 minutes for reflection, Q&A, and conversation. After that, there’s an experimental space where we try out new things, new ways of being, or new lines of questioning. It’s a passion project, and I’d send anyone curious to that space.

Also, for coaches just starting out, we created a sizable Starter Kit. My content partner asked me to provide a good article, and I ended up sending her everything I’ve written or recorded for new coaches over the past 10 years. She put it all together into a navigable roadmap, and we decided to offer it for free. You can find that under "Starter Kit" on rocketsupervision.com.

And of course, if anyone wants to reach out directly, they can email me at [email protected].

Marie Quigley:
Lovely. Thank you, Yannick. You're very generous in your approach-thank you for providing that for new coaches. Another way to connect with you is through LinkedIn, which is how we connected, and, of course, through your book.

Yannick Jacob:
Yes, An Introduction to Existential Coaching. I always love introducing people to existential ideas, and hopefully soon I’ll take that to a whole new level with more advanced existential practice. There’s still a long way to go in developing the existential coaching approach, and I hope to continue contributing to that.

Marie Quigley:
So watch this space.

Yannick Jacob:
Indeed.

Marie Quigley:
Thank you so much for your time. If you could leave one thought, one sentence for listeners with us today or tuning in later, what would it be?

Yannick Jacob:
The first thing that comes to mind-something I say quite often-is: If any of this resonates, make it swing. We learn through conversations. I’ll leave it at that.

Marie Quigley:
Lovely. Thank you, listeners. If you’ve enjoyed this conversation, we’d love for you to share it with your community-spread it around, comment on it. If you want to hear more or connect with Yannick or other inspiring coaches, let us know and we’ll make it happen. Thank you for giving us your time today.