Pilar Cabral Majerović PCC, ECPC

37 years of friendship… and it all started in Nanzan university in Nagoya💛

Reiko, from those early days to today, we’ve stayed connected across time, continents, and life’s many chapters. From you coming to our wedding, to meeting again in Japan, Lyon, and Seoul, each moment feels like no time has passed at all.

Some friendships don’t fade. They evolve, deepen, and quietly stay constant in the background of our lives.
Grateful for you, always.
And already looking forward to the next reunion hopefully in Japan again, very soon with Milan 🇯🇵✨

I was recently a part of a discussion around AI and coaching with and it made me curious to dig deeper into how things are evolving and what the future might hold for our industry. Here's what stood out for me:

"A new Stanford study reveals that AI therapy chatbots may not only lack effectiveness compared to human therapists but could also contribute to harmful stigma and dangerous responses." In the US, a recent study shows that 72% of teens have used AI companions, apps specifically designed to be conversational in a much deeper way than Chat GPT and others. On top of that, 33% of teens use AI for social interactions and relationships.

This data feels alarming, especially knowing that there are multiple pending lawsuits alleging harm from chatbots. Almost 10% of chatbot users report receiving harmful or inappropriate responses."

At the same time, AI is already entering the coaching industry. There are services available where a coach can create their own coaching twin to provide sample sessions, coach clients and act as them online to create content and attract new clients. These platforms are marketed as a way to scale one's coaching business, and I can't help but think about the ethical dangers of this practice.

I'm more and more curious about who will regulate the industry and how we will insure that AI coaching doesn't create more harm than good?

What are your thoughts? How do you think AI is changing and will change the coaching industry?

I saw this beautiful post the other day, and I felt I had to reshare. It's so easy to be in our heads and to forget that we're all out there navigating going through life while feeling something hard, beautiful, stressful, sad, amazing, or anything in between.

I haven’t felt at my best for the last while. Changes in my own body and energy have been challenging to navigate and some days it feels like I’m still figuring out how to deal with myself before even thinking about everything else.

I try to live by empathy and kindness, yet I know that when I’m not at my best, it's easy to trigger controlling and protective behaviours. Our invisible emotional states shape how we interact at work, with colleagues, with loved ones, intentionally or not!

What could be different if we made empathy and kindness our default?

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Today is Vigo's big day 🎊 High-school has come to an end (already 😱). I am so proud of you my .ms . Time flies. What a great way to celebrate my bday 😍. The show goes on ... Nino tu nous a manqué !

One of the most humbling lessons I’ve learned as a leadership development facilitator is this: teaching is an offering.
I don’t get to decide what participants take with them. What lands, what sticks, what gets put into practice, that’s not mine to control. And that can be tough to sit with, especially when you care deeply about the work. But the truth is, people are on their own timelines.

Sometimes something I share resonates right away.
Other times, it lingers quietly in the background until the moment is right.
And occasionally, it just doesn’t resonate at all, and I respect that too.

My role isn’t to ensure 100% buy-in. It’s to hold a space where reflection, growth, and new thinking can emerge and then trust each person to take what they need from it. Letting go of the need to “make it land” has made me a better facilitator. More present. More attuned. More grounded in meeting people where they are, not where I think they should be.

To you my fellow coaches and facilitators: What has this looked like for you?
How do you let go, while staying committed?

Thank you for the photo C.G!

For me, yoga has mostly been about movement, breath, and creating space to be present, body and mind. During a recent yoga session a few weeks ago, something interesting landed with me.

We were spending some time exploring the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, and one principle in particular stuck: “Right View” — the idea of seeing things as they are, without distortion.

It caught my attention because I was then also reading Leadership Self-Deception (which I talked about a few weeks back). Somehow, this idea of distortion of reality keeps popping up as something to pay attention to. Distortion is sneaky. It shows up in the stories we tell ourselves about other people, our assumptions at work, the way we interpret feedback, even how we view our own progress or worth.

I love that simple idea — to try and see what’s actually there, without the added qualifiers my mind can create. In a way, it feels like clarity is it's own practice, just as important as any stretch or pose.

What might open up for you if you could see through the "right view"?

Sometimes your suitcase just decides to take a different flight path than you. 😅

After an amazing but intense week facilitating in Kuala Lumpur, I flew to Lyon to spend a weekend with my parents. I landed safely but my luggage decided to go on its own little adventure. I know I'm not the first to lose luggage during travel, but it was particularly difficult because I had to be in Geneva for another engagement this Monday; and almost everything I needed for the week is in that missing suitcase.

Was I frustrated? Yes. Triggered? For sure. But since this was all out of my hands, I decided I could choose to see what was here for me to experience instead of staying in my frustrated and anxious state.

Could I practice being with this low level of control and get curious about what was available for me to create from?
What if I went on a perfectly justified shopping spree? 🤑
Could I experiment with using different tools to deliver my next workshop?
What's something I can laugh at when I tell the story later?

By the end of the weekend, I had spent some quality time with family, recharged from the jet lag... And I got my suitcase back!

What do you do when something important goes sideways?
Not just your luggage, but maybe your plan, your pace, or your patience?

Discomfort has a texture. Sometimes it feels like a tightness in the chest, a quickening heartbeat, a fog in the brain. Other times, it's a quiet but persistent urge to change the subject, deflect, fix, move on. We feel exposed, uncertain, sort of emotionally stretched.

What I’ve been learning, and continue to practice, is how to stay with the feeling, rather than rush past it. How do I become better I noticing discomfort without needing to escape it with something.

That pause — that willingness to stay — is what builds resilience. It’s how we develop the capacity to have harder conversations, face difficult truths, and lead with more clarity and compassion. The feeling doesn’t always get easier but our relationship to it can change! We start to recognize discomfort not as a threat, but as an passing cloud.

How do you stay with discomfort in your life?

What does it really mean to bring our full, authentic selves into the spaces we move through, especially when those spaces have different norms, expectations, or cultures? How much do we calibrate who we are depending on who’s in the room? It's a natural human instinct to want to connect and to belong. But how do we find the right balance between being our full authentic self and... Code switching?

As a facilitator, I work with people who are navigating high-stakes environments and this theme comes up again and again. The desire to show up powerfully, to make an impact, without flattening themselves to fit.

Here’s where I land: authenticity doesn’t mean being the same in every room. It means staying rooted in my values, my truth, my voice; even as I shift my expression of those things to meet the moment. It’s not about being performative or palatable. It’s about being intentional.

We don’t need to contort ourselves to be accepted. We can bring the best version of who we are because we’re grounded in who we are, not in spite of it.

And that’s a practice that takes courage, reflection, and sometimes, unlearning.

How are you holding this balance between authenticity and impact?

This weekend, I stepped off the grid, just long enough to remember how grounding it can be. I went on a little yoga-hiking adventure with in beautiful Istria: short & simple. Exactly what I needed: time in nature, movement, stillness, laughter and the company of a group of generous, wise, and curious women.

What stayed with me most was how quickly a sense of belonging emerged. No icebreakers, no agendas. Just people showing up as they were, open to connection. In a world where we often meet through our roles and responsibilities, it was beautiful to be reminded how natural it feels to simply be and be with. It echoed so much of what I believe in and try to create in my work. Creating spaces where we can let go of “doing it right” and instead focus on being real, together.

How do you make time to pause and find your way back to yourself?

I’ve never loved the expression “life gets in the way”—but maybe there’s some truth to it.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my friendships. I’m lucky to have a circle of long-standing friends, the kind where connection feels like riding a bike. But even the most solid relationships need care and presence, and I haven’t always been able to offer that.

The rhythm of the past couple of years, busy, traveling, always transitioning has made it harder to show up consistently. Time zones, recovery time, shifting priorities… It all adds up; and when you’re less available, people reach out less. I get it.

It’s easy to stop tending to what matters. Sometimes we don’t even notice it slipping away.

So this summer, I’m making a conscious choice: to bring my friendships back into focus. To reach out more. To reconnect, not just when it’s convenient, but because it matters. And it really does matter!

What about you? What is something important you might notice slipping away?