The Three Conversations: An ICF-Accredited Intensive for Coaches & Helping Professionals

Why this program

You already help people. This is about the depth few ever reach.

You might recognise two scenarios at opposite extremes. In one, the person feels deeply heard: the conversation is alive, free-flowing, absorbing, yet it never arrives anywhere. In the other, the coaching runs cleanly: the client leaves with exactly what they came for, yet the session barely scratched the surface. Either way, a month later the person is back with the same issue.

These look like opposite failures, but they share a common root. And they are precisely the kinds of conversation AI is becoming remarkably good at imitating.

You have probably known a third situation as well: a single conversation that changed someone's life. Something opened that neither of you saw coming, as if it had been waiting for the right moment to come alive. Those moments are often explained away as chemistry, intuition, or "just experience".

But what if transformative dialogue were a skill that could be learned?

This is the threshold where helping begins: the moment you sense that ordinary talk can no longer hold what someone is carrying. Jim Gavin

The three conversations

Three steps, one dance.

Powerful helping conversations usually emerge from skilfully weaving together not one, but three conversations.

I
Deep listening
The front door. You reflect someone's meaning so precisely, including what they feel and haven't yet said, that they hear it land.
II
Structured coaching
Gives the conversation direction: inquiry toward an outcome the person names and owns.
III
Transformative dialogue
Helps people inhabit their questions long enough to discover what those questions are trying to reveal.

None of them is the whole job, and transformative dialogue only becomes a sharp, expansive tool when it rests on the other two. Deepen each form, learn to meet the person with the conversation they truly need, and the conversations that used to arrive by luck start arriving by design.

The third conversation

What is transformative dialogue?

You already know dialogue at its best: people exploring something they care about, building on each other's ideas, and discovering something new together.

Transformative dialogue has the same relational, authentic quality as everyday dialogue, but differs in one essential way: its focus is the person seeking help. You don't bring your own agenda, dilemmas or worldview. You attend to their meanings, values, patterns, tensions and identity, and temporarily inhabit their perspective while remaining grounded in yourself.

From within that landscape, you offer reflections and co-create something neither of you could reach alone. The person comes to understand themselves differently, and when change happens at that level, the ripple effects are the most profound.

What it asks of you

A risky endeavour, even for the best of us.

It isn't

Teaching something you know by heart
Offering a tried-and-true piece of advice
Mechanically working through a set of questions
Telling your life story, hoping it helps

It asks for

A disciplined awareness of your own worldview, and a continual clearing of assumptions
The willingness to be open, exposed, vulnerable
Exploring emotional history without diagnosing, interpreting or treating
Coaching that goes beyond performance and goals

The curriculum

Three conversations, one deepening arc.

You won't learn listening, then coaching, then dialogue as three separate boxes. Each weekend has its own focus, and each ends by stepping into dialogue at greater depth, in a spiral movement.

I

Weekend One · 23–24 January 2027

Deep Listening

Reflection: the front door of every dialogue.

You'll rebuild person-centred listening to genuine mastery: accurate empathic reflection without a trace of parroting, the felt meaning beneath the words, presence made visible. You'll recover the discipline Carl Rogers proved and most of us have let erode, and move someone without a single question, opinion, or piece of advice.

The four myths that pull a speaker out of their own flow
Reflecting essence, not transcript: precise yet succinct
Reading "what's the ask?" (relief, action, or meaning) and matching the conversation to the moment

Grounded in: The person-centred approach (Carl Rogers) · the core conditions · accurate empathic reflection

II

Weekend Two · 27–28 February 2027

Structured Coaching

Structured inquiry, toward an outcome the client names and owns.

This weekend goes straight at the places where even experienced coaches lose the thread: the great conversation that arrives nowhere, the reflection that says too much. You'll separate the topic from the outcome, co-create an explicit measure of success, move a person beyond their current thinking, then learn the masterful move of saying less and trusting the client to do the work.

ICF Competency 3: a clear session outcome and the structure to reach it
ICF Competency 7: evoking awareness about self, situation, and the desired outcome
The ACC → PCC → MCC deepening, from a wordy intervention to a clean, embodied one

Grounded in: ICF Core Competencies 3 & 7 · the GROW model · the ACC → PCC → MCC arc

III

Weekend Three · 24–25 April 2027

Transformative Dialogue

Co-creation: thinking together at the edge of what's known.

Here you learn the third conversation directly: a relational, unhurried inquiry in which the helper offers their own inner material (an image, a memory, a metaphor) lightly and without attachment, in service of the other's unfolding. You'll work the full five-phase arc, add the developmental lens that explains why some struggles are thresholds rather than problems, and attend to the ethics, boundaries, and self-care this depth of work requires.

The I–Thou stance and the practice of "not-knowing"
Co-imagination: sparks thrown gently onto the woodpile
Recovering presence when dialogue goes sideways

Grounded in: Buber's I–Thou · dialogue (Bohm & Isaacs) · Kegan's adult development · third-generation coaching

What changes

What you'll master by April.

The human art of helping people feel truly heard, and find their way through what's hard, broken into moves you can name, practise, and repeat.

The result: the people you help move forward instead of circling back to the same issues again and again. And for you, helping becomes a life-giving craft rather than something improvised, exhausting or endlessly repeated.

Tell, in the first minutes, whether someone needs to be heard, helped toward a goal, or joined in deeper meaning-making, and how that shifts in real time
Reflect precisely enough that a person hears their own meaning land, without a question, an opinion, or a word of advice
Hold a session outcome the client owns, in their own words, and know how they'll measure it
Replace a wordy intervention with a distilled reflection and silence, and trust the silence
Enter transformative dialogue deliberately and stay in it, rather than hoping it arrives
Notice the moment you lose presence, and recover inside the conversation instead of afterward

How you'll learn

Learning by doing.

Demonstrate→ Deconstruct→ Practise→ Debrief

Work on real material

You work on your own live questions and anonymized client cases. Authenticity is the whole point: it's what protects this work from becoming performance.

Triads and marker-based feedback

Speaker, helper, observer: roles rotate so you sit in each seat. Feedback is tied to specific ICF markers, so growth is concrete rather than impressionistic.

Practice pods between weekends

Standing peer groups of three or four meet for structured rounds. You'll record and self-assess one session each interval and keep an "edge journal" of what pulls you out of presence.

A held container, each day

Every day opens with a brief grounding (open mind, open heart, open will) and closes with a harvest circle. The form models the work it teaches.

Who it's for

You have done the training. This is the part that came after it.

Built for ICF-credentialed coaches, and equally for therapists, counsellors, social workers, clergy, health and wellness practitioners, and the leaders and HR professionals who hold real helping conversations every week.

ICF coaches Therapists & counsellors Social workers Clergy Health & wellness Leaders & HR

You'll get the most from it if you

Have foundational training or real experience in a helping role. This is a deepening intensive, not an introduction to coaching.
Are comfortable practising live and receiving direct, specific feedback.
Can commit to all three weekends and the between-weekend practice pods. The conversations build on one another.

A day in the room.

9:00: Grounding open. A short presence practice and a check-in.
9:15: Teaching block. The day's core material.
10:30: Coffee break
10:45: First practice. A structured exercise in pairs or triads, with debrief.
12:00: Lunch
13:00: Teaching and demonstration. Faculty work in front of the room, then take the session apart.
14:45: Afternoon break
15:00: Extended triad practice. The longest block of the day, on your own real material.
16:45: Harvest circle. A facilitated close.

ICF accreditation

Approved Continuing Coach Education.

The Three Conversations has been approved by the International Coaching Federation for 39 Continuing Coach Education (CCE) units.

39Total CCE units
30Core Competencies
9Resource Development

You do not need an ICF credential to attend. The CCE units matter if you hold one; the practice is built for every experienced helping professional in the room.

Centre for Human Flourishing, Faculty of Arts and Science, Concordia University

Hosted by

Concordia's Centre for Human Flourishing.

The Three Conversations is hosted by the Centre for Human Flourishing at Concordia University, a hub working at the intersection of research and practice to help people move beyond coping toward flourishing.

The curriculum is built on Jim Gavin's three-conversations framework: the models and decades of practice that shape every weekend.

Visit the Centre for Human Flourishing →

The teaching team

Taught by the people who built the work.

Led by Jim Gavin and Nicolò Bernardi, supported by a teaching team of experienced professional coaches.

James (Jim) Gavin, PhD

Professor of Applied Human Sciences, Concordia · Director, Centre for Human Flourishing

Master Certified Coach (ICF) · Licensed Psychologist (Québec) · Author, Foundations of Professional Coaching

Jim Gavin built the framework this program teaches, and much of the ground beneath it. Across more than four decades at Concordia he helped architect the Human Systems Intervention graduate program and co-built one of North America's most respected coach-certification programs. His textbook Foundations of Professional Coaching (Human Kinetics, 2022) maps the ICF Core Competencies in depth and is widely treated as a standard reference in the field.

An ICF Master Certified Coach and licensed psychologist, he joins rigorous process with a long attention to presence, the body, and the human capacity to change, informed by decades of practice in aikido, iaido, and yoga.

Full profile →

Nicolò F. Bernardi, PhD

Coordinator, Centre for Human Flourishing, Concordia · Researcher & Coach

Professional Certified Coach (ICF · PCC) · PhD, Cognitive Neuroscience · MA, Human Systems Intervention

Nicolò Bernardi brings the evidence of what actually happens in a helping conversation. A cognitive neuroscientist and ICF-certified coach who has worked with more than a thousand clients, he co-authored some of the most detailed empirical studies to date of coaches' real verbal behaviour: the very moves this program drills, from precise reflection to saying less.

His practice draws on mindfulness and DBT-informed work in emotion regulation, communication, and decision-making under pressure, and he leads public programming at the Centre at the intersection of research and practice.

Website →

Location

Loyola Jesuit Hall and Conference Centre.

All six days are held on Concordia's Loyola campus, in Montreal's west end.

7141 Sherbrooke St. W.
Montreal, Quebec H4B 1E1

Find it on the campus map →

Tuition

$2,500CAD

For all three weekends, and 39 approved ICF CCE units.

Six full days of in-person instruction across three weekends: 23–24 January, 27–28 February and 24–25 April 2027
Your standing between-weekend practice pod
A full course workbook and practice materials
Marker-based feedback and coaching throughout
An ICF certificate for 39 CCE units on completion

Apply now →

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an ICF credential to attend?

No. The program is built for ICF-credentialed coaches and welcomes other experienced helping professionals: therapists, counsellors, social workers, clergy, health and wellness practitioners, and leaders or HR professionals. What matters is that you already hold real helping conversations.

Will I earn ICF Continuing Coach Education units?

Yes. The program has been approved by the International Coaching Federation for 39 Continuing Coach Education (CCE) units: 30 in Core Competencies and 9 in Resource Development. Your certificate names the total awarded and the split between the two categories.

Is this an introduction to coaching?

No. It's a deepening intensive for people already doing the work. We deliberately re-open listening and coaching, not as review, but to close the gaps that often persist even in seasoned practitioners, and we use them as the launch pad for transformative dialogue.

Is transformative dialogue a form of therapy?

No. It may touch emotional history, but it doesn't diagnose, interpret or treat. Therapists and other clinicians bring their own scope of practice with them; what the program teaches is a way of exploring the person's meanings, values and understanding of themselves through dialogue, not a clinical method.

How do I apply?

Admission is by application, through a short online form about your helping work and what draws you to the program. We read every application and let you know whether we can offer you a place. The cohort is limited to 30 participants.

What is the time commitment between weekends?

Between each weekend you'll meet in a standing practice pod of three or four for structured rounds, record and self-assess one session, and keep a short reflective "edge journal." Plan for a little reading and reflection between sessions as well.

What if I have to miss a weekend?

The three weekends build directly on one another, so full attendance is expected and is part of what makes the cohort work. It is also what the certificate rests on: to receive the 39 CCE units you attend all six days in full. Limited unavoidable absence of up to four hours in total may be accommodated at faculty discretion, with you responsible for any material you miss.

The January 2027 cohort

Take one of the thirty seats.

Admissions are open, and everyone starts together in January.

23–24 January, 27–28 February and 24–25 April 2027, in Montreal. Acceptance is by application.