Congratulations, Dr. Patrick Williams

ILCT founder Dr. Patrick Williams has won the 2026 Edinburgh International Book Festival Community Award in Inspirational Literature (Reader's Choice) for his book When the Soul Whispers, Are You Listening? Purposeful Pausing for Healing, Hope, and Humanity.

It's a fitting match for a book that argues real change begins the moment we're willing to sit still and listen.

About the book

When the Soul Whispers draws on Dr. Williams' decades of work as a psychologist and coach, exploring what it means to pause on purpose in a world that rarely asks us to. It's a theme that runs through everything he has taught coaches at ILCT for almost thirty years: The most useful thing a coach often does is listen well enough to help someone hear themselves. That same thread remains central to ILCT’s approach to coach training today.

A founder's influence, still felt

Dr. Williams founded The Institute for Life Coach Training in the late 1990s, while the coaching profession was still taking shape. The values that shaped the book, careful listening, purposeful pausing, and a belief in people's capacity to grow, are the same ones built into ILCT's training from day one.

Congratulations to Dr. Williams on a well-earned honor, and on a book that reflects the kind of listening he has asked of coaches for nearly three decades.

When the Soul Whispers, Are You Listening? Purposeful Pausing for Healing, Hope, and Humanity is available on Amazon.

Curious what that philosophy looks like in practice? Explore Foundations, ILCT's entry point into coach training.

Photo courtesy of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.