🔄 Core Conflict Collapse

Transforming Internal Struggles into Empowered Identity

Summary of Robbins-Madanes Power Session with Keith Leonard

🎯 Overview

In this power session, executive coach Keith Leonard introduced the Core Conflict Collapse, an advanced-level coaching technique designed to resolve internal identity conflicts that hold clients back from meaningful change.

This intervention reframes resistance—not as laziness or lack of motivation—but as a conflict between two parts of the self, each trying to meet a positive need.

🧠 The Core Concept

Many clients experience a deep “tug of war” within themselves. They say they want a change—new career, health habits, better relationships—but repeatedly sabotage progress.

Leonard explains this isn’t a discipline issue. Instead, it's a clash between two internal voices:

• One that wants growth, freedom, contribution.
• Another that seeks safety, comfort, or predictability.

These aren’t enemies—they’re allies with competing strategies for the same ultimate goal: well-being.

⚡️ When Energy is Divided, Power is Lost

“Where focus goes, energy flows
— but when your identity is split, energy gets stuck.”

When two internal voices clash—one craving growth, the other clinging to safety—your life force is fragmented. It’s not laziness or sabotage; it’s misaligned energy. You're not broken—you’re just blocked.

Think of these parts not as enemies, but as forces fighting for your protection—only in different directions. When you unite them, your spirit and body align, and your full power comes online.

“In your emotions, the spirit and the body come closest to being one.”

That inner tension? It’s a signpost—not a flaw. It shows where you’ve outgrown an old strategy but haven’t yet embodied a new one.

The goal is not to eliminate a part, but to re-pattern the energy so it flows in harmony—so you move from contraction to contribution, from fear to freedom, from scattered to aligned.

“The body and spirit united are able to have a fulness of joy.”

✨ Is This Expansive Energy?

“Is this energy expanding you—or protecting you from something?”

When two parts of you are in conflict, your energy contracts.
You hesitate. You stall.
But when your spirit and body align, your energy becomes expansive—you move, you speak, you create.

Ask yourself:

What energy opens me up? What energy invites more life?

Expansive energy feels like possibility, contribution, joy.
Contracted energy feels like tension, resistance, and control.

Your work isn’t to choose sides. It’s to align the energy—to invite flow, not force.

“Where there is alignment, there is light.
And light is truth, and truth is power.”

🔨 The 5-Step Conflict Collapse Framework

Leonard outlined a five-step process for coaches to help clients reconcile these competing parts:

1. Identify the Internal Conflict

Spot the looping problem: the action a client wants to take but keeps avoiding. Ask:
“What part of you wants this?” and “What part of you is stopping you?”

2. Honor the Positive Intent

Each part, no matter how counterproductive it seems, has a protective or empowering intent (e.g. certainty, peace, love, growth). Understanding this reduces resistance and shame.

3. Elicit Hierarchical Values

Ask deeper questions like:
“What’s more important than that?”
This climbs the emotional ladder until both parts reveal a shared emotional destination (e.g., contribution or freedom).

4. Integrate the Future Self

Imagine a version of the client that integrates both voices. What would this person believe, feel, and do differently? Naming this identity helps embody it.

5. Collapse the Old Pattern

Using metaphor and physical action (e.g., merging hands), clients symbolically unite their conflicting parts into a single, aligned identity—releasing emotional tension and creating behavioral momentum.

🧪 Real Example: The “Achiever” vs. “Worrier”

A volunteer struggled to start a coaching practice despite her passion. Through the intervention:

• Her Achiever voice desired freedom and contribution.
• Her Worrier voice sought security and feared financial instability.
• Both shared a common deeper value: self-reliant security through meaningful work.
• By merging the two, the volunteer stepped into her integrated identity—herself—and experienced emotional release and clarity.

🧘‍♀️ Key Takeaways for Coaches and Clients

• Every inner part is trying to protect you. Instead of fighting internal voices, listen to their motives.
• Don’t fix behavior—transform identity. Identity drives action. When identity changes, habits follow.
• Use neutrality and curiosity, not judgment. Avoid labeling parts as "positive" or "negative."
• Name parts organically. Let clients choose names like “The Achiever,” “The Worrier,” or others. These often contain hidden insight.
• Integration creates freedom. Real power comes from inner harmony, not internal silencing.

🛠 When to Use (and Not Use) This Technique

Ideal for:

• Clients who feel stuck or self-sabotaging despite clear goals.
• Coaches wanting to go beyond surface behavior.
• Self-coaching for internal clarity.

Not ideal for:

• Simple procrastination or short-term tasks.
• Clients with unresolved trauma or PTSD (may retraumatize).

🧭 Final Insight

The Core Conflict Collapse isn’t just about solving a problem—it's about evolving identity. By helping clients stop choosing sides within themselves and instead honor both, coaches can catalyze profound transformation in just one session.

As Keith Leonard says:

“You’re not broken. You’re just split. And when you integrate, you become powerful.”

“You’re not broken. You’re just split.
And when you integrate, you become powerful.”