I stepped away from LinkedIn for 3 months. Not burnout. Not a rebrand. I hit a wall I could not coach my way through, and as someone who helps others navigate change, that felt like a surgeon afraid of blood.

So I did the most honest thing available to me: I stepped back, created space, and went deeper.

𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁. 𝗜𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

A concept called Boundary Crossing, developed within sociocultural learning theory, gave me the language for what I was seeing: what happens when people move between different activity systems, disciplines, cultures, and worldviews, and must negotiate meaning across genuine difference.

It quietly dismantled something I believed about coaching.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴.

Coaching education has long placed its faith in a powerful premise: the client holds the answers within. It is a principle worth defending.

And yet, in practice, sessions can quietly slide into assuming the client already knows which boundary needs crossing. The work then becomes about courage, or commitment, or accountability.

Boundary Crossing theory invites a more uncomfortable question: what if the block is not motivational at all? What if the client cannot yet perceive that a boundary exists, because the logic they are operating inside has become so familiar it functions like air?

That is a different problem entirely. And it asks something different of the coach.

I am back. With a sharper framework and a few questions worth sitting with.

What boundary are you currently working around, that you should be working through?

And if you coach or lead others: are you certain you are both standing at the same boundary, looking at the same wall?