There's a moment that repeats itself at the start of almost every leadership workshop we run. We ask the group what they've put into practice since the last session, and the first answer is nearly always some version of “I haven't had the time to try what I wanted to.” Dig a little further, though, and something else usually surfaces. Someone will mention a conversation they handled differently, a moment they paused before reacting, a habit they noticed in themselves for the first time. The tone shifts from what's missing to where progress has been made.

It's a useful reminder of how behavioural change really happens in a busy working life: rarely in a single leap, more often in small, half-noticed steps that accumulate over time. But it also raises a question worth exploring. If that reflection is valuable, why wait until the start of the next session? What if we could support participants in noticing, applying and building on their learning while it's happening, in their real-world context?

A well-evidenced approach, ready to extend into leadership development

This is the territory of inter-sessional activities (IA) – sometimes called homework, between-session tasks, or experiments – the structured work a participant or coaching client does between one session and the next. A recent systematic review by Wang, Passmore, Huo and Mu (2025), published in the European Journal of Training and Development, set out to establish what's known about IA and its effectiveness. It's an approach coaching and leadership development have drawn on only lightly so far, but the review makes a compelling case for extending it much further.

That's because where the evidence does exist, it's fairly consistent. Across dozens of studies in cognitive behavioural therapy, completing structured between-session work is associated with better outcomes (Kazantzis et al., 2000; Mausbach et al.,2010). The review's authors argue there's good reason to think the same mechanisms apply in coaching and leadership contexts, with a call to researchers for further investigation.

Why the space between sessions matters just as much in leadership development

One detail from the review is particularly relevant to how we design leadership programmes. Counselling tends to run on a weekly cadence; coaching and leadership development typically don't. External coaching and development programmes are usually structured around fewer, more widely spaced sessions – often four weeks apart or longer. Which means approaching the development that happens either side of the sessions with intentionality matters just as much as what’s covered in the sessions themselves.

That pattern lines up closely with the theory underpinning our own approach at ChangingPoint. Our cycle of behavioural change moves through four stages – Awareness, Discovery, Application and Follow Through – and it's really the last two, Application and Follow Through, that live in the space between sessions. Workshops and coaching conversations build awareness and surface new options; what determines whether that translates into a meaningful shift in how someone leads is what happens next, back in the real environment, under real pressure.

This isn't a new idea in learning theory. Kolb's (1984) experiential learning cycle – plan, experience, observe, reflect – describes this loop, and behavioural experiments developed within Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (Bennett-Levy et al., 2004) offer a well-tested method for turning insight into tested, lived experience rather than just a workshop takeaway. Fitts and Posner's (1967) model of skill acquisition adds a further piece: repetition matters, because it's what moves anew leadership behaviour from effortful towards something closer to automatic.

What makes inter-sessional activity work

The review is also useful for what it says about how IA needs to be designed to be effective, and this is where a lot of well-intentioned “homework” falls short. A few things stood out consistently across the therapy and coaching literature:

It must be co-designed, not assigned. Tasks a participant helps shape are more likely to feel meaningful and get followed through than anything imposed unilaterally.

It needs a strong working relationship behind it. The effectiveness of between-session work depends heavily on the quality of the coach–client or facilitator–participant relationship it sits within.

It needs to connect to what mattered most to participants in the session. Activities that echo a person's real takeaway land better than generic tasks bolted onto the end of a workshop.

It needs to be followed up. Motivation to engage with between-session work drops fast when nobody asks about it afterwards – a pattern the review notes across multiple studies (Bunnell et al., 2020; Dobson,2021).

Interestingly, the review also flags coaching-specific friction that doesn't show up as much in therapy: clients in coaching relationships sometimes bristle at the word “homework” itself, experiencing it as a subtle power imbalance rather than a collaborative next step (Passmore et al., 2023). Language and framing of these inter-session activities is important.

Where AI fits – and where it doesn't

This is also where we think there's an evidence-backed opportunity to do more between sessions than we've historically been able to offer. The Wang et al. (2025) review points directly at this: smartphone and AI-supported tools have been shown to meaningfully improve engagement with between-session work in therapy, through mechanisms like round-the-clock availability, timely prompts, and automated tracking of progress against goals. The authors go further, suggesting these same tools could help bring that same adherence benefit into coaching – offering 24/7reinforcement and personalised support precisely in the window where change should be lived out in practice.

We explored the wider question of what AI can and can't do well in coaching in an earlier piece, A Relationship in Progress: Human and AI Coaching. The short version: AI performs credibly on structured, bounded tasks – goal-tracking, reflection prompts, progress monitoring – but it isn't a substitute for the relational, adaptive work a skilled human coach or facilitator does, particularly with senior leaders navigating genuine complexity. In broader leadership development, intersession activities using purposeful AI can help to intentionally address the space between sessions through offering this structured support.

How this has shaped our Leadership Open Programme

This is the thinking behind the changes we've made to our Leadership Open Programme. Alongside the group workshops and 1:1 executive coaching, we've introduced Coach Nova – an AI-enabled layer designed specifically to support inter-session activation. Rather than generic prompts, it's tailored to what actually came up in workshop sessions and 1:1 coaching conversations, helping participants notice, reflect and build on their own progress in the weeks between formal sessions, in a way that's aligned to their goals and organisational context rather than a bolt-on generic task.

It's an addition we're excited about, not because it replaces anything in the programme, but because it strengthens exactly the part of the process the evidence says matters most and that's historically been hardest to support well.

If you'd like to know more, or you're thinking about where your organisation's leaders sit in their own change journey, our next Leadership Open Programme cohort starts in October 2026. Places are limited to two per organisation, with a maximum group size of eight, so do get in touch early if you're interested – contact Jayne at jayne@changing-point.com.

References

Bennett-Levy, J., Butler, G., Fennell, M., Hackmann, A., Mueller, M. and Westbrook, D. (Eds)(2004). The Oxford Guide to Behavioural Experiments in Cognitive Therapy. Oxford University Press.

Fitts, P.M. and Posner, M.I. (1967). Human Performance. Brooks/Cole.

Kazantzis, N., Deane, F.P. and Ronan, K.R. (2000). Homework assignments in cognitive and behavioral therapy: a meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice,7(2), 189–202.

Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.

Mausbach, B.T., Moore, R., Roesch, S., Cardenas, V. and Patterson, T.L. (2010). The relationship between homework compliance and therapy outcomes: an updated meta-analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 34(5), 429–438.

Passmore, J., Day, C. and Wang, Q. (2023). Hands up for homework: exploring inter-sessional activities in coaching. Journal of Work-Applied Management.

Wang, Q., Passmore, J., Huo, Y. and Mu, Y. (2025). A systematic review of inter-sessional activities in coaching practice: what can we learn from counselling and therapy? European Journal of Training and Development.

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