What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from The Body Is Not an Apology
Liesel is mentoring a promising young professional who keeps apologizing before every meeting for showing up "looking a mess," even though she always looks perfectly put together. At first Liesel reassures her that she looks fine, the way she has a hundred times before with other mentees, but this time it doesn't land, and her mentee simply nods and changes the subject. Liesel sits with that afterward, realizing that reassurance has become a script both of them perform without it actually addressing anything underneath. She wonders how many times she has offered the same comfortable line to mentees over the years without ever asking what specifically is driving the apology in the first place, or whether her own habitual reassurance was actually helping at all.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The reassurance script that isn't working
Liesel's automatic "you look fine" treats her mentee's apology as a factual error to correct, when it's actually a symptom of a deeper, inherited belief that her body needs defending before she's taken seriously. This book's claim, that such shame is manufactured by outside systems rather than an individual failing, suggests Liesel's real job is to help her mentee notice the pattern itself, not just to contradict its content in the moment.
Naming the pattern out loud can feel like it dismisses the mentee's genuine, present discomfort.
Next time a mentee apologizes for their appearance, ask what specifically triggered the apology instead of reassuring them.
Confidence-building has a ceiling
Complimenting a mentee's appearance offers a quick boost, but it leaves intact the belief that their body's appearance is a legitimate measure of their readiness or worth. Radical self-love, as the book frames it, points toward something sturdier: a mentee's sense of their own value that doesn't depend on how they look on a given day. That's a different, deeper goal than the confidence-boosting a coach might default to.
This deeper goal takes much longer to build than a reassuring comment, and mentees often want quick relief.
In your next session, ask a mentee what their body allows them to do well, rather than how it looks.
One conversation won't undo the pattern
A single good conversation about body confidence will not undo years of messages a mentee absorbed before ever meeting their coach. Treating this as an ongoing practice means returning to the theme across multiple sessions, watching for the pattern to resurface, rather than considering it resolved after one talk. Consistency across a mentoring relationship matters more than any single well-chosen response.
Coaching sessions are often short and goal-focused, leaving little natural space to revisit this theme repeatedly.
Build one recurring check-in question into your regular sessions about how a mentee is relating to their own body under pressure.
What your mentee will carry forward
A mentee who learns to question body shame in themselves is also better equipped to notice bias against other people's bodies, whether related to size, race, gender presentation, or ability, in their own future teams or mentees. A coach modeling this work passes forward something larger than one person's individual confidence.
Liesel's hardest tension is between her instinct to reassure a struggling mentee quickly and the slower, more honest work of helping them notice the pattern underneath the apology. Quick reassurance feels kind and often is genuinely needed in the moment, but relying on it exclusively can prevent the deeper conversation from ever happening. Holding both means letting reassurance serve as a bridge to the harder question, not a replacement for asking it.
Name one thing, honestly
- What do you typically say when a mentee apologizes for their appearance? - Have you ever asked what's actually driving that kind of comment? - What would change if you tracked this pattern across several sessions instead of one?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Build one recurring check-in question into your regular sessions about how a mentee is relating to their own body under pressure.