When the Plan Changes: How Serving Others in Crisis Is the Greatest Coaching Skill You'll Ever Use
When the Plan Changes: How Serving Others in Crisis Is the Greatest Coaching Skill You'll Ever Use
There is a moment in every leader's life when the plan you made gives way to the need right in front of you.
You had a schedule. A calendar. A set of goals carefully mapped out for the week. And then something happens — a crisis, a call, a moment of undeniable need — and you are faced with a choice: do you protect your plan, or do you pivot toward purpose?
At Global Church (www.GlobalChurch.me) in Miami, Florida, we recently faced exactly that moment. When devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela and left thousands of families displaced, injured, and without basic necessities, the question wasn't whether to respond.
The question was how fast and how well we could serve.
The answer required every gift, every relationship, every logistical skill, and every ounce of servant leadership our community had to offer. And in watching it unfold, I saw something I want every aspiring certified coach, every developing leader, and every purpose-driven professional to understand deeply: your gifts were never just for your career. They were always for moments like this.
Pivoting Plans for Greater Impact
What began as a coordinated effort quickly grew into something far larger than anyone initially anticipated. Global Church has become a warehouse hub for emergency supplies — food, medicine, clothing, hygiene products — collected from donors across South Florida and organized for international distribution to Venezuela.
But warehousing supplies is only half the work. The real challenge — and the real leadership test — was logistics.
Our team took responsibility for managing the process from door to door: coordinating pickup, organizing inventory, navigating challenges with customs and compliance, and maximizing existing distribution networks to ensure supplies actually reached the people who needed them most. In humanitarian work, last-mile delivery is where most efforts collapse. We were determined that wouldn't happen here.
This required what every great coach and great leader must eventually master: the ability to adapt your strategy without abandoning your mission.
The mission was clear — serve the people of Venezuela in their moment of crisis. How we served, through which channels, at what pace, in what quantities — all of that had to flex, iterate, and improve in real time. That is not a failure of planning. That is leadership at its finest.
Your Network Is Not Just a Professional Asset — It's a Lifeline
One of the most powerful things I witnessed in this effort was the activation of people's networks for something beyond their personal advancement.
Pictured here is my friend, my brother in Christ, and a fellow certified professional coach, Brian Jones — standing in front of hundreds of boxes of emergency supplies, packed and ready for distribution. Brian is a 21-year education veteran, a national consultant who works with school districts and superintendents across the country, and one of the most naturally gifted servant leaders I know.
What Brian understands — and what this moment made visible — is that the same skills that make you an effective coach, an effective leader, and an effective communicator are the same skills that make you effective in a crisis.
The ability to ask the right questions under pressure. The discipline to stay focused on the goal when distractions multiply. The emotional intelligence to serve people who are overwhelmed, frightened, and grieving. The capacity to empower others to act rather than waiting for someone else to lead.
These are coaching skills. And they are exactly what the world needs when crisis arrives.
If you are considering becoming a certified coach, I want you to understand something that doesn't get said enough in the marketing of coaching programs: ICF-accredited coach training doesn't just prepare you for paid coaching sessions. It prepares you for life. It prepares you to show up in your community, your church, your family, and your city with a skill set that transforms how you serve at every level.
Three Biblical Principles That Call Us to Serve in Crisis
The impulse to pivot our plans and serve others in urgent need is not just a leadership strategy. For those of us who are people of faith, it is a calling that runs through the entirety of Scripture. Here are three principles from the New Testament that speak directly to what it means to meet urgent needs and serve others well.
1. Urgent Needs Demand Present Action
"So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." — Galatians 6:10 (ESV)
The word "opportunity" in this passage carries a sense of urgency — a kairos moment, a window in time that will not remain open indefinitely. Paul is not suggesting we add generosity to a future to-do list. He is calling us to recognize the moment of need when it is directly in front of us and act while we can.
The families affected by the earthquakes in Venezuela did not need our supplies in October. They needed them now. Effective servant leadership — and effective coaching — requires the same quality of presence. The ability to recognize urgency, to discern the moment, and to act decisively rather than waiting for a more convenient time is one of the most important capacities a leader can develop.
When you invest in becoming a certified executive coach, certified life coch or a certified professional coach, you are building exactly this capacity — the ability to be fully present, to assess what is needed, and to respond with purpose rather than panic.
2. Serving Others Is How We Demonstrate Our Faith
"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." — James 2:14–17 (ESV)
James is strikingly direct here. Warm words without tangible action are meaningless to someone in physical need. Faith that does not express itself in concrete service is not living faith — it is an abstraction.
This is a principle that I believe applies equally to coaching and to leadership development. It is not enough to learn coaching theory, to understand the ICF core competencies, to know the difference between coaching and consulting in the abstract. At some point, you have to show up. You have to do the work. You have to put your skills in service of a real human being who is stuck, struggling, or searching for a breakthrough.
I remember all to well working at UPS and serving a team of account executives. We all arrived is suits, but when planes or trains were behind schedule due to the weather, we would quickly cancel our plans for the day, "brown-up" in uniform, and deliver packages to make sure our delivery reliability remained high and our clients were well served. I'll admit, it almost felt like a scene from the movie Superman as I leaped into that package car to make good on the promise to our local customers.
The boxes loaded by our team at Global Church were acts of faith made tangible. They were theology with a shipping label. And every coaching session you lead, every question you ask that unlocks someone's next step, every life you serve with your training and your presence — that too is faith made real.
3. Greatness Is Measured by How We Serve
"But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." — Matthew 20:26–28 (ESV)
In a culture that defines greatness by title, income, platform, and followers, this passage remains one of the most countercultural statements ever made. Greatness, Jesus says, is not found in being served — it is found in serving.
This is the heart of coaching done right. The most effective coaches are not the ones with the most impressive credentials or the highest-profile clients. They are the ones who show up most fully in service of another person's growth. They are the ones who subordinate their own agenda, their own need to be heard, their own impulse to give advice — and instead ask the question that helps someone else find their own answer.
When I watch leaders like Brian Jones stand in front of hundreds of boxes of emergency supplies, ready to serve families he has never met in a country he may never visit, I see Matthew 20 in action. I see what it looks like when someone has genuinely internalized that their gifts, their network, their time, and their capacity exist not to elevate themselves — but to lift others.
What Crisis Reveals About Who You Are as a Leader
Crisis does not build character. It reveals it.
The earthquake in Venezuela did not create the generosity in our community. It simply provided the moment for that generosity to become visible. In the same way, the coaching skills you develop in an ICF-accredited certification program do not manufacture something in you that wasn't there. They surface, sharpen, and give structure to the gifts and the drive to serve that already exist within you.
Many of our certified professional coaches — professionals in education, ministry, nonprofit leadership, corporate management, and law enforcement — have told us some version of the same thing: "I was already doing this. I just didn't have the framework, the credentials, or the confidence to fully own it."
That is exactly what professional coach certification does. It gives language to what you already sense. It gives structure to what you already do. It gives credibility to what you were always called to be.
The Greater Good Doesn't Wait for the Right Time
If you have been sitting on the fence about pursuing your ICF-accredited coach training — wondering whether now is the right time, whether you can fit it into your schedule, whether the investment is worth it — I want to offer you a gentle challenge.
The people who packed those boxes in Miami did not wait until their schedule cleared. They did not wait until the need was more convenient. They pivoted their plans, activated their networks, and served with what they had, where they were, right now.
You have gifts that are needed. You have a network that can be activated for greater good. You have a capacity for service that is waiting to be trained, credentialed, and released into the world at a higher level.
The world does not need more observers. It needs more equipped, credentialed, purpose-driven servant leaders who know how to walk with people through their hardest moments — with skill, with presence, and with the kind of coaching excellence that changes lives.
That is what we are building at Imagine Coaching Academy. And if this resonates with you, I would love to walk alongside you in that journey.
Imagine Coaching Academy offers ICF-accredited coach certification training 100% online, in just 5 months — built for leaders who are ready to leverage their gifts, serve others at a higher level, and make a lasting impact in their communities and careers.
Our next cohort starts August 18th. Seats are intentionally limited.
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About the Author
Marcel Sanchez is the founder of Imagine Coaching Academy, an ICF-accredited coaching education provider trusted by global leaders across North America and beyond. With a background spanning leadership development, ministry, and professional coaching, Marcel has trained and certified coaches in corporate, nonprofit, education, and faith-based sectors. His mission is simple: equip purpose-driven leaders with the skills, credentials, and confidence to serve others at the highest level.
Imagine Coaching Academy is an ICF Level 1 Accredited Coaching Education Provider, offering certified executive coach training and certified professional coach certification 100% online — designed for working leaders who are ready to make their next chapter their greatest chapter.
Connect with Marcel and learn more about upcoming cohorts at Imagine Coaching Academy →
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