An integrative framework connecting psychology, technology, and executive coaching practice
Meaning-Based Coaching: A Calibration Framework for Fit, Evidence, and Durable Change offers an integrative model for answering that question. Drawing on psychological science, coaching research, and the realities of leadership practice, Jessica Stone introduces the Calibration and Meaning Integration framework, or CMI.
CMI begins with a central premise: people respond not only to what happens, but to what the event comes to mean. That meaning shapes emotional and physiological state, influences which capacities remain accessible, and affects the behavior that follows. A person may possess insight, judgment, confidence, flexibility, or relational skill and still lose access to those capacities when particular meanings or protective patterns are activated.
Rather than relying on a single coaching method, CMI helps practitioners determine what a client can use in the moment and adjust the work accordingly. Coaches learn to attend to meaning structures, state and access, recurring patterns, identity coherence, autonomy needs, and the conditions under which new learning becomes believable enough to hold.
Readers will find:
- A clear model connecting events, meaning, state, access, and behavior
- Guidance for distinguishing a lack of capacity from a temporary loss of access
- Methods for calibrating coaching stance, pacing, structure, depth, and directiveness
- Practical approaches for recognizing protective patterns without reducing them to resistance or lack of motivation
- Strategies for creating experiences that generate credible evidence and support durable change
- Considerations for coaching neurodivergent clients, exceptional minds, and leaders working within complex organizational systems
- Case examples, reflective questions, and applied tools for use throughout the coaching process
Written for executive coaches, leadership-development professionals, consultants, organizational psychologists, and advanced students, Meaning-Based Coaching provides a flexible framework for working with the person in front of you rather than forcing the person to fit the method.
Jessica Stone, PhD, is a licensed psychologist in private practice with more than 30 years of experience as a practitioner, professor, presenter, mentor, and author. She is co-creator of the Virtual Sandtray App for iPad and the Virtual Sandtray for Virtual Reality, and served as Chief Psychology Officer for AscendantVR. Dr. Stone is an affiliate of the East Carolina University College of Education Neurocognition Science Laboratory.
